For most of the 28 years that Shoichi Yokoi, a World War II Lance Corporal in the Japanese Army, was hiding in the jungles of Guam, he firmly believed his former comrades would one day return for him.
And even when he was eventually discovered by local hunters on the Pacific island, on 24 January 1972, the 57-year-old former soldier still clung to the notion that his life was in danger.
"He really panicked," says Omi Hatashin, Yokoi's nephew.
Startled by the sight of other humans after so many years on his own, Yokoi tried to grab one of the hunter's rifles, but weakened by years of poor diet, he was no match for the local men.
"He feared they would take him as a prisoner of war - that would have been the greatest shame for a Japanese soldier and for his family back home," Hatashin says.
As they led him away through the jungle's tall foxtail grass, Yokoi cried for them to kill him there and then.
His book, Private Yokoi's War and Life on Guam, 1944-1972, was published in English in 2009.
"I am very proud of him, he was a shy and quiet person, but with a great presence," he says.
Underground shelter
Yokoi's long ordeal began in July 1944 when US forces stormed Guam as part of their offensive against the Japanese in the Pacific.
The fighting was fierce, casualties were high on both sides, but once the Japanese command was disrupted, soldiers such as Yokoi and others in his platoon, were left to fend for themselves.
"From the outset they took enormous care not to be detected, erasing their footprints as they moved through the undergrowth," Hatashin said.
But fearing detection from US patrols and later from local hunters, they gradually withdrew deeper into the jungle.
There they ate poisonous toads, river eels and rats.
Yokoi made a trap from wild reeds for catching the eels. He also dug himself an underground shelter, supported with strong bamboos.
"He was an extremely resourceful man," Hatashin says.
Keeping himself busy also kept him from thinking too much about his predicament, or his family back home, he said.
Return to Guam
Yokoi's own memoirs of his time in hiding reveal his desperation not to give up hope, especially in the last eight years when he was totally alone - his last surviving two companions died in flooding in 1964.
And of another occasion, when he was desperately sick in the jungle, he writes: "No! I cannot die here. I cannot expose my corpse to the enemy. I must go back to my hole to die. I have so far managed to survive but all is coming to nothing now."
Two weeks after his discovery in the jungle, Yokoi returned home to Japan to a hero's welcome.
He was besieged by the media, interviewed on radio and television, and was regularly invited to speak at universities and in schools across the country.
Hatashin, who was six when Yokoi married his aunt, said that the former soldier never really settled back into life in modern Japan.
He was unimpressed by the country's rapid post-war economic development and once commented on seeing a new 10,000 Yen bank note that he the currency had now become "valueless".
According to Hatashin, his uncle grew increasingly nostalgic about the past as he grew older, and before his death in 1997 he went back to Guam on several occasions with his wife.
Some of his prize possessions from those years in the jungle, including his eel traps, are still on show in a small museum on the island.
From : BBC News
