Teruo Nakamura

Teruo Nakamura was an ethnically Taiwanese Aborigine soldier of the Japanese Army">Japanese language">Japanese Army who fought for Japan in World War II and did not surrender until 1974, holding out in the island of Morotai. He was the last known Japanese holdout to surrender after the end of hostilities in 1945.

Military service

Nakamura was an Amis aborigine, born 8 October 1919. He could not speak Japanese or Chinese. He was given the Japanese name Nakamura as a result of Japanization policies. In November 1943, he enlisted in a Takasago Volunteer Unit of the Imperial Japanese Army. Nakamura was stationed on Morotai Island, in the Dutch East Indies, shortly before the Allies overran that island in the September 1944 Battle of Morotai. Allegedly, the Imperial Japanese Army declared Nakamura dead on 13 November 1944.
After the Allies captured the island, it appears Nakamura remained there with other stragglers well into the 1950s, though setting off for extended periods on his own. In 1956, apparently, he relinquished his allegiance with his fellow holdouts, and set off to construct a solitary camp consisting of a small hut in a fenced field.

Discovery

Nakamura's hut was accidentally discovered by a pilot in mid-1974. In November of that year, the Japanese Embassy in Jakarta requested assistance from the Indonesian government in organizing a search mission, which was conducted by the Indonesian Air Force on Morotai, leading to Nakamura's arrest by Indonesian soldiers on 18 December 1974. He was flown to Jakarta and hospitalized there.
News of his discovery reached Japan on 27 December. Nakamura decided to be repatriated straight to Taiwan, bypassing Japan. As his wage arrears, Nakamura received 38,279 yen, which at the time was equal to a month's pay for a private in the Japan Self-Defense Forces. He also received 30,000 yen for "necessary expenses", so he could be repatriated to Taiwan.
Upon his return, the Taiwanese press referred to him as "Lee Kuang-hui", a name he learned of only after his repatriation. Initially, the Republic of China government on Taiwan did not receive him well, seeing him as a Japanese loyalist.
At the time, the Japanese public's perceptions of Nakamura and his repatriation differed considerably from those of earlier holdouts, such as Hirō Onoda, who had been discovered only a few months earlier and was both an officer and ethnically Japanese. As a private in a colonial unit on foreign soil, Nakamura was not entitled to a pension, and he thus received only the sum of ¥68,000. Following considerable outcry in the press, the government made an exception for Nakamura and offered him ¥3.5 million in total on top of ¥750,000 in public donations from Japanese citizens.
Five years after his repatriation, on 15 June 1979, Nakamura died of lung cancer.