Looking for interesting things to cover for programs etc, I saw in a Japanese tourist magazine that there is a museum dedicated to Yokoi Shoichi, the Japanese soldier who emerged from the jungle 28 years after the war had ended, just a few kilometers from Tumon. Yokoi was from the Nagoya area, and so we thought it would make a great story with local contents. On the way to this museum, I looked at the surrounding jungle and thought about how Yokoi must have lived...what he must have gone through during those 28 long and lonely years...and how he must have felt once discovering he had held out for far too long....
At last, we arrived, and out front was this rather impressive sign with a number of sponsors listed below....
..and next to a sign requesting $5 entry fee, a photo of the man from Nagoya who didn't know the war had ended, and continued to fight alone until 1972,... long after peace had been made....and who died only a couple of years ago, having lived out the remaining of his life quietly at home with his wife.
However, the museum had closed down about 2 months ago, and the area was vacant bar the small explanation panels below where the photos and artifacts should have been.
...and at the end of this empty museum, amongst dust covered glass cases that once housed Yokoi's belongings and items, was a recreation of the underground cave the Japanese sergeant called home for 28 years of solitude. On closer inspection, it turns out his cave is not even in this northern region of the island where this museum was, but in the south!
Looking for interesting things to cover for programs etc, I saw in a Japanese tourist magazine that there is a museum dedicated to Yokoi Shoichi, the Japanese soldier who emerged from the jungle 28 years after the war had ended, just a few kilometers from Tumon. Yokoi was from the Nagoya area, and so we thought it would make a great story with local contents. On the way to this museum, I looked at the surrounding jungle and thought about how Yokoi must have lived...what he must have gone through during those 28 long and lonely years...and how he must have felt once discovering he had held out for far too long....
At last, we arrived, and out front was this rather impressive sign with a number of sponsors listed below....
..and next to a sign requesting $5 entry fee, a photo of the man from Nagoya who didn't know the war had ended, and continued to fight alone until 1972,... long after peace had been made....and who died only a couple of years ago, having lived out the remaining of his life quietly at home with his wife.
However, the museum had closed down about 2 months ago, and the area was vacant bar the small explanation panels below where the photos and artifacts should have been.
...and at the end of this empty museum, amongst dust covered glass cases that once housed Yokoi's belongings and items, was a recreation of the underground cave the Japanese sergeant called home for 28 years of solitude. On closer inspection, it turns out his cave is not even in this northern region of the island where this museum was, but in the south!
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