Voluntarily
Teruo Nakamura was born on October 8, 1919, on the island of Taiwan, which then belonged to Japan. He was not strictly Japanese or Chinese by ethnicity, but descended from Ami, an Austronesian fishing people connected to Indonesians and Filipinos. Some accounts mention a birth name Attun Palalin, though he was widely known as Sunyo.
In November 1943, Sunyo joined the Takasago volunteers, a special unit formed from Taiwan natives. Yet the fighter later claimed that his voluntary service was a fabrication and that authorities compelled him to enlist. In 1944, his detachment moved to Morotai, an Indonesian island guarding the southern approaches to the Philippines and of strategic importance to Japan. By the fall of 1944, the US 31st Infantry Division landed there and secured the island after a brief clash, the garrison initially numbering under 500 troops.
Morotai’s terrain—hills and dense forest—made control precarious: Americans controlled the airfield area and patrolled main routes while the Japanese sought to reinforce. Attempts to attack the airfield repeatedly failed. After one final banzai assault, Japanese resistance dwindled: radio contact with headquarters was lost, and remaining soldiers adopted guerrilla tactics. The Takasago volunteers proved adept at this style of fighting because the native Taiwanese language shared similarities with Morotai’s local dialects.
Exactly how Nakamura’s wartime path unfolded remains uncertain. He later claimed that in autumn his unit went on a scouting mission, engaged the Americans briefly, and that he managed to fire at the enemy before his group was routed and he escaped. A former colleague offered a contrasting version, suggesting Nakamura left the detachment a day before the American landing due to personal conflicts, though no evidence supports this claim. Whatever happened, the Japanese military presumed him killed on November 13, 1944, a belief that would prove false in time.
Japanese Robinson
Nakamura chose a life in the forest. He had only a rifle, helmet, knife, a bowler hat, and a mirror, but his survival skills eclipsed material possessions. Raised in a tribe with a traditional way of life, he was equipped from childhood to endure the wilderness.
Isolated and uncertain of what lay beyond the trees, Nakamura learned to cook in the dark to avoid drawing attention to smoke. He tracked time by watching the moon and by tying knots to mark each lunar cycle. He credited the mountains and poverty of his upbringing with giving him resilience and practical abilities.
“I stayed calm and survived,” he later said. “Even without anyone to speak to, there was a glimmer of hope inside me. The only happiness was being alive and aware of my own existence.” (attribution: Taipei Times)
Like others living in a primitive way, Nakamura’s days centered on finding food. He grew sweet potatoes, beans, bananas, and sugar cane, and hunted birds and wild boars. Much of the time he lived without clothes, save for a carefully kept American military jacket, and slept in a simple hut. Remarkably, throughout his long retreat he kept the rifle in pristine condition, a habit that countered claims of desertion and underscored a disciplined mindset.
Nakamura’s motivations remain partially opaque. Many cases of Japanese soldiers refusing to surrender are framed through cultural lenses, but his case stands apart since a close friend named Sunyo was not Japanese and had limited ability in Japanese. When Nakamura recalls the orders he received to fight to the end, that directive frames much of his narrative.
Citizen of the Republic of China
Over the years Nakamura lived with a local companion on the island named Doyadaide. She occasionally helped with supplies, and each time he urged her to accept that the war had ended. He insisted on keeping her knowledge of his existence secret from others.
Doyadaide only revealed details about the last Japanese soldier late in Nakamura’s life, amid illness. Rumors spread across the island; Indonesian forces even dispatched a search party and found him chopping wood on December 18, 1974. When approached with a peaceful gesture, Nakamura nonetheless attacked the Indonesians with his rifle, and the detachment detained him without further harm.
He was astonished to learn that the war was over. He misread the shadow of aircraft traffic as ongoing conflict, though those flights were often linked to a nearby Indonesian air base.
The biggest surprise of all awaited on home soil. Taiwan, a place not fully under Japanese or Chinese sovereignty at the time, operated as a de facto independent entity. The reunion with his wife brought a mix of joy and tearful misunderstandings; he believed she was dead and had remarried, which led to a later divorce and a heartfelt reconciliation with his wife after decades apart. The family eventually adopted Chinese names; Nakamura became known as Lee Kuan Hui within the Republic of China, illustrating how the last Japanese soldier to surrender became part of a new national identity.