[This is the second of two articles about the Japanese holdouts on Anatahan Island. For Part I, click here]
As seen in Part I, dozens of Japanese sailors and soldiers in World War II were shipwrecked on Anatahan, an island that had only one woman, Kazuko Higa. They soon fell into Lord of the Flies dynamics as they competed – often violently – for her attentions. As seen below, things got even more complicated when the war ended – and the castaways refused to believe that Japan had surrendered.
The Castaways’ Refusal to Believe that World War II Had Ended
After WWII ended, the American authorities in the Marianas remembered the Japanese on Anatahan. Leaflets were printed and airdropped on the island, informing its denizens that the war was over and directing them to surrender. However, the castaways refused to surrender. The Anatahan castaways dismissed the airdropped leaflets as propaganda, and refused to believe that their government could have surrendered. Far as US authorities were concerned, Anatahan was even less important after the war ended than it had been while the conflict raged. As to the inhabitants, they were just as isolated and harmless to the outside world.
As such, it was not seen as worth the trouble to send in US forces to root them out. And so the Japanese of Anahatan were left to their own devices. From time to time, an airplane would be sent to drop new leaflets over Anatahan, to the effect that the war was over and the island’s denizens should surrender. The castaway soldiers and sailors persisted in their refusal to believe the leaflets, and thus matters continued in the same vein – for years.
The End of the Holdout on Anatahana Island
It was only in 1950, when Kazuko Higa sighted a passing US vessel, raced to the beach, flagged it down and asked to be taken off the island, that American authorities discovered that the Japanese on Anahatan did not believe that the war had ended. The information was relayed to Japan, where the holdouts’ families were contacted. They wrote letters to their castaway kin that told them that it was no enemy trick. The war had, indeed, ended years earlier.
The letters, along with an official message from the Japanese government, finally convinced the Japanese on Anatahan. They surrendered in 1951, and were shipped back to Japan. There, their story became a sensation that led to numerous books, plays, and movies. The best known of the Anatahan castaways, Kazuku Higa, was nicknamed “The Queen Bee of Anahatan Island” by the Japanese press. She found temporary fame as a tropical temptress, sold her story to newspapers, and recounted it to packed theaters. However, the public’s interest eventually waned, and things got rough. She fell into prostitution and abject poverty, and died at age fifty one while working as a garbage collector.
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Some Sources & Further Reading
Japan Times, May 3rd, 2014 – A Homage to the ‘Queen of Anatahan’
New Yorker, The, March 17th, 1962 – The Stragglers: Even If it Takes a Hundred Years
