Yet, a return after so long has to be bittersweet. He later received various donations from Japanese, Indonesian and local sources. But after some commotion in the media, the Japanese government decided to give him over NT$380,000 instead. Suniuo was given the choice, and he chose his homeland.Īccording to this biography, his back pay as a soldier over 30 years only amounted to about NT$7,000. This brought up the question of whether he should be repatriated to Japan or Taiwan. In November 1974, local reports surfaced of a “naked wild man” in the mountains, prompting the Indonesian army to send an expedition force, which, after 30 hours, found Suniuo chopping wood outside his hut. “I made one simple wrong judgment, and it cost me 30 years,” he says. As aviation technology improved over time, planes became faster and sleeker, and Suniuo thought it was the result of an arms race between the two warring sides. Suniuo says he made a grave error in assuming that war wasn’t over from the planes that flew by above him each day, only later to find out that it was because the jungle was near an Indonesian air force base. In order to keep himself from thinking of his family at home, he stayed busy exploring his surroundings and undertaking various improvement projects around his hut. The only two forms of entertainment he had was fishing and fiddling with a home-made abacus. “Not to lose my life became my only goal, and that exhausted almost all of my time,” he says. He grew sweet potatoes, beans, bananas and sugar cane in his garden, gathered roots and fruits and trapped boar, pheasant and other birds. Most of his time was devoted to finding food, he says. The only trace of happiness during this time came from the fact that I was still alive and I hadn’t lost my sense of existence yet.”Īs Suniuo’s only clothes deteriorated over time, he says he became used to being naked most of the time, only using a US Army jacket he found to cover himself at night. “Although I didn’t have anybody to talk to, buried deep in my heart seemed to be a glimmer of hope and expectation. He says his upbringing in the mountains in relative poverty provided him the will and ability to survive for so long. In a first-hand account published shortly after his return titled Struggle in the Jungle for 30 Years (叢林掙扎三十年), Suniuo recalls counting the days by the moon and recording each cycle by tying a knot in a rope. Unsure of the situation outside of the jungle, Suniuo stayed hidden at all costs, cooking only in the dark so people wouldn’t see the smoke. Allied troops launched an offensive in the jungles of Morotai, Indonesia in September 1944, during which Suniuo lost contact with his troop.

Teruo nakamura ww2