was a machine-gunner and sergeant in the

Imperial Japanese Army The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor o ...

during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

. He was among the last hold-outs to surrender after the war ended.

War years and post-war survival

When the Americans liberated

Guam Guam (; ch, Guåhan ) is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States in the Micronesia subregion of the western Pacific Ocean. It is the westernmost point and territory of the United States (reckoned from the geographic cent ...

in July 1944, Itō was separated from his unit. He hid with two other soldiers and learned to survive in the jungle. For sixteen years, he hid even after finding leaflets declaring that the war had ended.

Surrender

When the last of his companions, Bunzō Minagawa (皆川文蔵), was captured by woodsmen in 1960, Itō was convinced to surrender on 23 May 1960 and was treated at a nearby American military base.

Later life

Itō married on January 7, 1961, and had a daughter. A movie was made about his life. He later worked as a watchman for the Toei Motion Picture Company in Tokyo. He wrote a book about his experiences entitled ''The Emperor's Last Soldiers'', published in 1967.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ito, Masashi 1921 births 2004 deaths Japanese holdouts Imperial Japanese Army personnel of World War II Imperial Japanese Army soldiers Japanese expatriates in Guam