Individuals

Groups

• Captain Sakae Ōba, who led his company of 46 men in guerrilla actions against United States troops following the Battle of Saipan, surrendered on December 1, 1945, three months after the war ended.

• On January 1, 1946, 20 Japanese Army personnel who had been hiding in a tunnel at Corregidor Island surrendered to a U.S. serviceman after learning the war had ended from a newspaper found while collecting water.^[18]

• Lieutenant Ei Yamaguchi and his 33 soldiers emerged on Peleliu in late March 1947, attacking the U.S. Marine Corps detachment stationed on the island believing the war was still being fought. Reinforcements were sent in, along with a Japanese admiral who was able to convince them that the war was over. They finally surrendered in April 1947.^[19]

• On May 12, 1948, the Associated Press reported that two unnamed Japanese soldiers had surrendered to civilian policemen in Guam the day before.^[20]

• On June 27, 1951, the Associated Press reported that a Japanese petty officer who surrendered on Anatahan Island in the Marianas two weeks before said that there were 18 other holdouts there. A U.S. Navy plane that flew over the island spotted 18 Japanese soldiers on a beach waving white flags.^[21] However, the Navy remained cautious, as the Japanese petty officer had warned that the soldiers were "well-armed and that some of them threatened to kill anyone who tried to give himself up. The leaders profess to believe that the war is still on." The Navy dispatched a seagoing tug, the Cocopa, to the island in hopes of picking up some or all of the soldiers without incident. After a formal surrender ceremony, all the men were retrieved.^[22] The Japanese occupation of the island inspired the 1953 film Anatahan^[10] and the 1998 novel Cage on the Sea.

• In 1955, four Japanese airmen surrendered at Hollandia in Dutch New Guinea: Shimada Kakuo, Shimokubo Kumao, Ojima Mamoru and Jaegashi Sanzo. They were the survivors of a bigger group.

• In 1956, nine soldiers were discovered and sent home from Morotai.^[10]

• In November 1956, four men surrendered on the island of Mindoro: Lieutenant Shigeichi Yamamoto and Corporals Unitaro Ishii, Masaji Izumida and Juhie Nakano.

Alleged sightings (1981–2005)

In 1981, a Diet of Japan committee mentioned newspaper reports that holdouts were still living in the forest on Vella Lavella in the Solomon Islands. However, it is believed that these were hoaxes made up to lure Japanese tourists to the islands.^[23] Searches for holdouts were conducted by the Japanese government on many Pacific islands throughout the 1980s, but the information was too scant to take any further action, and the searches ended by 1989.^[24] In 1992, it was reported that a few holdouts still lived on the island of Kolombangara, though subsequent searches were unable to find any evidence. An investigation into similar reports of holdouts on Guadalcanal in 2001 failed to turn up evidence.^[23]

The last report taken seriously by Japanese officials took place in May 2005, when two elderly men emerged from the jungle in the Philippines claiming to be ex-soldiers.^[25] It was initially assumed that the media attention scared the two men off as they disappeared and were not heard from again.^[26] Suspicions of a hoax or a kidnapping attempt later mounted as the area where the alleged soldiers emerged from is "notorious" for ransom kidnappings and attacks by Muslim separatists.^[26][27] It is unknown how many or if any legitimate Japanese holdouts remain today. The National WWII Museum reported in 2022 that surviving veterans are "dying quickly", as those who served are now "in their 90s or older".^[28]

Post World War II resistance

• Cursed soldiers, Polish post-World War II resistance fighters
• Forest Brothers, Baltic post-World War II resistance fighters

Fiction

• Block-Heads, 1938 Laurel and Hardy film in which Stan Laurel is found holding out in a World War I trench 20 years after the Armistice.