was a

Taiwanese Taiwanese may refer to: * Taiwanese language, another name for Taiwanese Hokkien * Something from or related to Taiwan (Formosa) * Taiwanese aborigines, the indigenous people of Taiwan * Han Taiwanese, the Han people of Taiwan * Taiwanese people, r ...

- Japanese soldier of 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 Emper ...

who fought for

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

World War II 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 World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

and did not surrender until 1974. He was the last known

Japanese holdout Japanese holdouts ( ja, 残留日本兵, translit=Zanryū nipponhei, lit=remaining Japanese soldiers) were soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army and Imperial Japanese Navy during the Pacific Theatre of World War II who continued fighting World Wa ...

to surrender after the end of hostilities in 1945.

Military service

Nakamura was an Amis aborigine, born 8 October 1919. In November 1943, he enlisted in a Takasago Volunteer Unit of the Imperial Japanese Army. Nakamura was stationed on

Morotai Morotai Island ( id, Pulau Morotai) is an island in the Halmahera group of eastern Indonesia's Maluku Islands (Moluccas). It is one of Indonesia's northernmost islands. Morotai is a rugged, forested island lying to the north of Halmahera. It ha ...

Island, in the

Dutch East Indies The Dutch East Indies, also known as the Netherlands East Indies ( nl, Nederlands(ch)-Indië; ), was a Dutch colony consisting of what is now Indonesia. It was formed from the nationalised trading posts of the Dutch East India Company, whic ...

, shortly before the

Allies An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...

overran that island in the September 1944

Battle of Morotai The Battle of Morotai, part of the Pacific War, began on 15 September 1944, and continued until the end of the war in August 1945. The fighting started when United States and Australian forces landed on the southwest corner of Morotai, a small isl ...

. 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 Jakarta (; , bew, Jakarte), officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta ( id, Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta) is the capital city, capital and list of Indonesian cities by population, largest city of Indonesia. Lying on the northwest coa ...

requested assistance from the Indonesian government in organizing a search mission, which was conducted by the

Indonesian Air Force The Indonesian Air Force ( id, Tentara Nasional Indonesia Angkatan Udara (TNI-AU), literally "''Indonesian National Military-Air Force''") sometimes shortened as IDAF / IdAF, is the aerial branch of the Indonesian National Armed Forces. The I ...

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 the 27th. Nakamura decided to be repatriated straight to Taiwan, bypassing Japan. Upon his return, the Taiwanese press referred to him as ''Lee Kuang-hui'' (), a name he learned of only after his repatriation. Initially, the

Chinese Nationalist Chinese nationalism () is a form of nationalism in the People's Republic of China (Mainland China) and the Republic of China on Taiwan which asserts that the Chinese people are a nation and promotes the cultural and national unity of all Chi ...

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 was an Imperial Japanese Army intelligence officer who fought in World War II and was a Japanese holdout who did not surrender at the war's end in August 1945. After the war ended, Onoda spent 29 years hiding in the Philippines until his forme ...

, who had been discovered only a few months earlier and was both an officer and ethnically Japanese. As a private in a colonial unit in foreign soil, Nakamura was not entitled to a pension (due to a 1953 change in the law on pensions), and he thus received only the sum of ¥68,000 (US $227.59 at the time, US $ in ). This caused a considerable outcry in the press, motivating the Taiwanese government and the public to donate a total of ¥4,250,000 to Nakamura. Five years after his repatriation, on 15 June 1979, Nakamura died of

lung cancer Lung cancer, also known as lung carcinoma (since about 98–99% of all lung cancers are carcinomas), is a malignant lung tumor characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. Lung carcinomas derive from transformed, mali ...

References

External links

*: article with a photo of Nakamura (on the right). {{DEFAULTSORT:Nakamura, Teruo 1919 births 1979 deaths Amis people Deaths from cancer in Taiwan Deaths from lung cancer Formerly missing people Imperial Japanese Army personnel of World War II Japanese holdouts Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies Japanese people of Taiwanese descent Missing in action of World War II Missing person cases in Taiwan People from Taitung County Taiwanese expatriates in Indonesia Imperial Japanese Army soldiers

Military service

Discovery

See also

References

External links