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What are Japanese stragglers? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Guess he's with me? That's right,
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Speaker 1: Chuckers Bryant. I wonder how you would spell that out? Actually,
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Speaker 1: if I changed my name to that, I don't know.
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Speaker 1: It's a lot of g s and or you could
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Speaker 1: just use some punctuation marks like um, exclamation points out
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Speaker 1: true in yano mommy right. I wouldn't want to be
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Speaker 1: confused with a comic strip purse word, though, which is
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Speaker 1: also random punctuations. Yes, it is it random? Well, I
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Speaker 1: don't know. I don't think each one signifies a letter,
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Speaker 1: does it. I've driven myself mad trying to find a pattern.
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Speaker 1: There's one in there somewhere, right, Yeah, I'm like the
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Speaker 1: guy from Pie. Yeah, so, Chuck, you know much about
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Speaker 1: World War Two, you know, Josh, I'm the hugest history
1:01
Speaker 1: buff when it comes to the wars. But I know
1:04
Speaker 1: a little bit about the Great One, the Great War,
1:07
Speaker 1: the Big One. I think they're both called the Great Wars. No,
1:11
Speaker 1: I think the First War was called the Great War
1:15
Speaker 1: and the second one is the War to end all wars.
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Speaker 1: Who knows. Let's leave it to the listeners to correct this. Boy.
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Speaker 1: Um uh, did you know that during World War Two,
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Speaker 1: towards the end, although no one realized it was towards
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Speaker 1: the end yet, sure, everything was still hot and heavy,
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Speaker 1: Japan's air force was actually starting to sag quite a bit.
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Speaker 1: Which if you have an air force and you're a nation,
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Speaker 1: the last time you want your air fleet to start
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Speaker 1: showing its age is in the middle of a major war.
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Speaker 1: And if you have an air force and you're not
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Speaker 1: a nation, then uh, that's pretty damn cool. It is
1:49
Speaker 1: pretty cool. You are a real threat and a rich
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Speaker 1: rich man, I would say, probably woman. I mean, I
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Speaker 1: think about it. Bill Gates could probably a massive private army.
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Speaker 1: He probably has one, probably he can, right, Josh. The
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Speaker 1: deal was, was Japan's air force was old? Really? Yeah,
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Speaker 1: their fleet was old. Um, not the pilots, but the
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Speaker 1: planes themselves were old. Someone outdated maybeen old pilots too,
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Speaker 1: and they couldn't keep up with the newer technology that
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Speaker 1: America had to offer. No, so they came up with
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Speaker 1: a very radical idea. Actually, more to the point, Vice
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Speaker 1: Admiral Onishi taka Jiro came up with an idea. I
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Speaker 1: don't want to call it a good idea because it
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Speaker 1: sent people to their deaths. It was a good idea though,
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Speaker 1: well it worked at least. So what they did, what
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Speaker 1: he decided to do, was to take these aging planes
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Speaker 1: and strap five and fifty pound bombs to them and
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Speaker 1: then aim them right into aircraft carriers and destroyers and
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Speaker 1: and you know, basically anything that you wanted blowing up
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Speaker 1: um and use them as flying bombs. Essentially, talk these
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Speaker 1: pilots and going down. That was their problem. They used pilots.
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Speaker 1: It's called kama kaze, which means mine wind. Let's say
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Speaker 1: that together again, that's right, which is probably the coolest
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Speaker 1: name for suicide I've heard of so far, except for
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Speaker 1: Harrie koree, which is gut cut in slang in Japanese.
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Speaker 1: Is it really? I didn't know that? Yeah. So anyway,
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Speaker 1: I mean, if you we have suicide bombers today, right, Chuck,
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Speaker 1: which I have to tell you, I can't wrap my
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Speaker 1: mind around that. I've yet to encounter an ideology or
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Speaker 1: dogma that I can point to and be like, yes,
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Speaker 1: I would kill myself for that not even the Simpsons, No,
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Speaker 1: not anymore. Maybe during season seven. Okay, yeah, but that's
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Speaker 1: a long time ago. Yeah, so um, we but you
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Speaker 1: can explain and I've actually read a study before UM
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Speaker 1: that kind of explains how suicide bombing works or why
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Speaker 1: suicide bombers do what they do has nothing to do
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Speaker 1: with um religious city. Oh really no. Uh. They did
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Speaker 1: as some I can't remember who did a study, but
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Speaker 1: they did a survey of people who UM and they
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Speaker 1: they defined religiousness or adherence to the Muslim religion UM
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Speaker 1: as how often you prayed every day a daily basis,
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Speaker 1: And they found that when you when you factor that
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Speaker 1: in that being equal. The the real thread that showed
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Speaker 1: support for suicide bombing or an aversion to suicide bombing
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Speaker 1: was how often you attended mosque. So it seems to
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Speaker 1: be more of a social than a religious thing. Interesting
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Speaker 1: suicide bombing, right, but still you can explain it by
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Speaker 1: um it has that kind of structured framework of religion,
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Speaker 1: right with the with the kama Kaze pilots that had
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Speaker 1: to do more with a perverted version of the code
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Speaker 1: of honor. Because this begs the question, how do you
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Speaker 1: talk a man in getting into a plane and flying
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Speaker 1: himself to his death. Well, I think the you talked
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Speaker 1: him into it by saying that your reward is lies
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Speaker 1: in the afterlife, in the case of religion or in
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Speaker 1: this case with I guess what your family name the
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Speaker 1: honor of your family name, and what it was was
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Speaker 1: a There there's a an eighteenth century um code of
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Speaker 1: the samurai called bushy dough And what is that way
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Speaker 1: of the warrior? Yes, way of the warrior? Right? Okay,
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Speaker 1: so you've got Bushi dough um. And it's this huge
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Speaker 1: code of conduct that includes everything from and it was
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Speaker 1: created in feudal Japan and it creates it involves everything
5:27
Speaker 1: from there's like a tenant that you don't hire an
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Speaker 1: incompetent person or put them in a position of power
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Speaker 1: just because they've been loyal to you for X number
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Speaker 1: of years like um in this somewhere right, this code
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Speaker 1: of conduct is basically it says that you self sacrifice
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Speaker 1: is very important, and honor comes from death, humiliation comes
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Speaker 1: from surrender, right, disgrace if you surrender. And that's where
5:55
Speaker 1: the how did you pronounce it? I always said, Harry Carey.
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Speaker 1: If Harry Carey has got harrikuri, harri cury. Uh, my
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Speaker 1: girlfriends had Japanese Dude, it's like a walking I have
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Speaker 1: a walking crib sheet next to me, similar concept, and
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Speaker 1: that uh, death brings honor, right, But that's just part
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Speaker 1: of it exactly, So there's there's all this other. Um.
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Speaker 1: It's basically like how to live as a samurai, right, um,
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Speaker 1: and the samurai were noble warriors. They were definitely in Japan.
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Speaker 1: They're still revered and they have been for centuries. Right.
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Speaker 1: So when the Japanese government took this one facet of
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Speaker 1: bushi though that you know, death death, honor comes from death,
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Speaker 1: and humiliation comes from surrender. They took it and kind
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Speaker 1: of pounded it into their military's head. It was kind
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Speaker 1: of a twisted form of it, would say. Some historians
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Speaker 1: would call it an outright perversion of right. But it
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Speaker 1: worked and that's how they got common Kazi pilots to
6:56
Speaker 1: have a real impact. I think at their debut at
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Speaker 1: the the Gulf of the Battle for the Gulf of
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Speaker 1: late they took out the U S. S. St. Low
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Speaker 1: Um with a hundred forty four men on board, and
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Speaker 1: that was the first time. By the time the Battle
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Speaker 1: of Okanawa came around, I think in um three hundred
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Speaker 1: planes outfitted with fifty pound bombs. We're just coming out
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Speaker 1: of the sky, and what do you do because I mean,
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Speaker 1: think about it, Chuck. You've told me this before, right
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Speaker 1: that if you are prepared to die, you are an
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Speaker 1: indestructible enemy. If you're prepared to give your own life.
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Speaker 1: That's part of war. Is like you're hoping to make
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Speaker 1: it out of the battle, but you don't assume you're
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Speaker 1: going to make it out of the battle. You're the
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Speaker 1: most dangerous person on the planet. And if you can
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Speaker 1: line up and imagine once they started doing this and
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Speaker 1: signing soldiers up pilots, that became a little easier to
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Speaker 1: get the next guy in line, because you certainly didn't
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Speaker 1: want to back down if you're you know, co pilot
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Speaker 1: was all gung how, I don't bet with the first
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Speaker 1: the first round of pilots, uh. Vice Admiral Taka Jiro
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Speaker 1: was like, holy, they actually did it, you know, yeah,
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Speaker 1: It's like it's gonna be easy, yeah, yea yeah, let's
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Speaker 1: line them up. So plus they tied it to the
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Speaker 1: samurai and what is like cooler probably more honorable to
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Speaker 1: a World War Two pilot in Japan than to be
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Speaker 1: tied to the ancient samit. Yeah, it was like a
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Speaker 1: resurgence of it. Absolute plus. Also, the Samurai had hands
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Speaker 1: down the coolest armor of any group of warriors in history. Agreed,
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Speaker 1: Even Tom Cruise looked cool as a Samurai, which is
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Speaker 1: really saying that says a whole lot, all five and
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Speaker 1: a half feet of them. Yeah, yeah, I think you're
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Speaker 1: being generous. Um, So this the the the perversion of
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Speaker 1: bushido was also extended to the rest of the military
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Speaker 1: to right. It wasn't just these common concert pilots, which
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Speaker 1: is why. Um. I think five percent of the Japanese
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Speaker 1: military surrendered during World War Two, not much five percent,
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Speaker 1: there was I think in the Pacific, the Japanese um
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Speaker 1: used to flood islands with tens of thousands of soldiers.
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Speaker 1: I can't remember which island it was, but there was one.
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Speaker 1: It may have been Saipan, it may have been Guam,
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Speaker 1: I can't remember. Um, there were twenty thousand Japanese soldiers
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Speaker 1: on there and only ten percent surrendered on that one battle.
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Speaker 1: So the rest were mostly killed, like that's just how
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Speaker 1: they fought. But that was the only thing you could do. Well, yeah,
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Speaker 1: because it's gonna surrender, you're forced to kill them, right,
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Speaker 1: So in a lot of these battles, actually, um, you
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Speaker 1: you didn't have to get killed. You could also hide right, right.
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Speaker 1: And a lot of these islands, these islands became key
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Speaker 1: towards the end of World War two because the United
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Speaker 1: States figured, hey, Midway and the Philippines and Guam would
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Speaker 1: be great places to stage attacks on Japan. In Japan thought, hey,
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Speaker 1: these are great islands of stage attacks on us. So
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Speaker 1: they became kind of the focal point. Whoever owned these
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Speaker 1: islands had great sway over the outcome of the war, right,
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Speaker 1: and like it switched hands here there. The Philippines were
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Speaker 1: a really a key island in World two in the
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Speaker 1: Pacific theater, right, So the Japanese had it for a while,
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Speaker 1: and then the Allies did their own um flooding with
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Speaker 1: Marines who took the Philippines from the Japanese um. And
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Speaker 1: while the Japanese control the Philippines, they set up their
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Speaker 1: own puppet regime, not a sign regime, not towards the Filipinos.
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Speaker 1: So the Filipinos had um. They're kind of rubbing their
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Speaker 1: hands in anticipation when the Allies liberated the island because
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Speaker 1: they started search parties and rooted out any um hiding
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Speaker 1: Japanese soldiers and just butchered them, I think up to
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Speaker 1: eighty a day for a while. Snakes. Isn't that what
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Speaker 1: they called them? Yeah, yeah, that's what somebody was quoted as, right,
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Speaker 1: And these uh, these islands were lousy with mountainous regions
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Speaker 1: and jungles. So some of these holdouts are stragglers as
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Speaker 1: we call them, could route down and kind of disappear. Yeah,
10:52
Speaker 1: and a lot of them did, a lot of them did.
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Speaker 1: And actually, interestingly enough, uh, these a lot of these
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Speaker 1: Japanese stragglers are hold out to kept the whole thing
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Speaker 1: out or straggling, depending on the verbue you want to use. Uh,
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Speaker 1: after the war ended and refused to come down. Right,
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Speaker 1: there's some really famous cases of Japanese holdouts. Yeah, there
11:11
Speaker 1: was one uh well summer a little like more heartwarming
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Speaker 1: than others. Um, definitely here there was one man who
11:17
Speaker 1: apparently was charged with securing and island off the coast
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Speaker 1: of eastern Russia. So I said, defend this island. So
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Speaker 1: he did so until nineteen long time after the war
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Speaker 1: was over. And the nice in history is that he
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Speaker 1: settled in the Ukraine. He got used to things over
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Speaker 1: there and started a new family and just kind of
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Speaker 1: was like, all right, well, this is my life now.
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Speaker 1: It's kind of nice over here. It was nice for
11:40
Speaker 1: his new family, not so much for his old family yet.
11:42
Speaker 1: Did you have an old family? Probably, I don't know,
11:44
Speaker 1: probably yeah, yeah, um yeah. That that is about as
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Speaker 1: happy as the stragglers stories go. From there, it goes
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Speaker 1: into cannibalism. Cannibalisms. One there was one group, uh it
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Speaker 1: was they were actually I think some of them were civilians,
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Speaker 1: but I think it was, uh, twenty men something like that.
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Speaker 1: Thirty uh so, twenty nine men and a woman. We've
12:10
Speaker 1: talked about this off the air, about this woman, what
12:13
Speaker 1: it must have been like to be the only woman
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Speaker 1: among thirty. Her name was her, Her first name was Kaziko.
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Speaker 1: And apparently she used to um decide that she liked
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Speaker 1: one man as a boyfriend, and then we get tired
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Speaker 1: of him and liked another man. And um. These people
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Speaker 1: were living making milk out of or making a wine
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Speaker 1: out of coconut milk. Right, They had their own clothes,
12:37
Speaker 1: they made um they found I think a B twenty
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Speaker 1: nine super Fortress crashed nearby on this mountain that they
12:43
Speaker 1: were living on, so they pillaged it and used like
12:45
Speaker 1: the the rifle springs as fish hooks. And they were
12:50
Speaker 1: doing pretty good living like Swiss family Robinson style, right,
12:52
Speaker 1: for like six years. Right. And and the woman actually
12:55
Speaker 1: when she transferred her affections, people would mysteriously vanish. So
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Speaker 1: apparently there was a lot of in fight. And I
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Speaker 1: think um uh six or seven of the eleven deaths
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Speaker 1: that were caused um that were attributed to the group
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Speaker 1: itself were through violence. One guy turned up with thirteen
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Speaker 1: stab wounds, and then at least four other guys who
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Speaker 1: the woman had dated, uh, disappeared while fishing. Sure, that's
13:24
Speaker 1: what you call it when it's like, you know, love
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Speaker 1: straggling style. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, just checking out
13:30
Speaker 1: a movie. Right. Well, they they were finally convinced to
13:33
Speaker 1: come out um in what Yeah, which wasn't so bad.
13:39
Speaker 1: But there's there's a whopper. There's another guy. Well let's
13:42
Speaker 1: talk about um oh what was his name? M you're
13:47
Speaker 1: talking about him? Yeah, But I think we should do
13:50
Speaker 1: this dramatically. Let's lead up forward, all right, I think
13:54
Speaker 1: that's right for play it out, pay it out, yes,
13:59
Speaker 1: wait for it, pay it for Showichi Yokoi. He was um.
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Speaker 1: He was a soldier, a fellow holdout who was discovered
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Speaker 1: fishing on a riverbank in Guam, wearing burlap pants and
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Speaker 1: a tree bark shirt. Clearly a survivor, John Rambo, if
14:16
Speaker 1: you will, No, he wasn't much of a rainbow, that's true.
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Speaker 1: Wait for a rambow. He's coming up. When when Yokoi
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Speaker 1: got back, he basically I don't know if he admitted
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Speaker 1: it or what, but he he said, I thought the
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Speaker 1: war was still going on. And this is nineteen seventy two.
14:29
Speaker 1: I don't think I even said that yet. Holy cow,
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Speaker 1: this is nineteen seventy two. I was one year old,
14:37
Speaker 1: crawling around Stone Mountain, Georgia, and this guy was still
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Speaker 1: holding out and he was found fishing and kind of said, uh, famously,
14:45
Speaker 1: I'm ashamed that I've returned alive. When he finally came back,
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Speaker 1: and he would have left, but he knew the war
14:50
Speaker 1: was over, I think, But he he said that he
14:52
Speaker 1: was forced to stay because of shame. He did not
14:54
Speaker 1: want to return as a surrender. Oh you're right, yeah,
14:58
Speaker 1: And and he was kind of met with national shame
15:01
Speaker 1: here there. Everybody's like, hey, glad you made it. But
15:05
Speaker 1: kid wouldn't be the worst, right, Um. In contrast to
15:10
Speaker 1: your COI was the baddest dude in World War two.
15:15
Speaker 1: Probably as a matter of fact, I invite our listeners
15:18
Speaker 1: to email us anybody who can who want, any single
15:23
Speaker 1: individual who can top the man we're about to talk
15:26
Speaker 1: about as in badness, Okay, and Josh will personally email
15:30
Speaker 1: you back and debate you on that choice. I don't
15:33
Speaker 1: I don't know about that, but this is the Rambo.
15:36
Speaker 1: Think about it, Chuck. There can't be too many people
15:38
Speaker 1: who who exceed this guy. Now we're talking about lieutenant here, Noda,
15:44
Speaker 1: bad dude. Right. So if your Ki was just kind
15:48
Speaker 1: of hanging out fishing and ashamed of himself Onnada was
15:53
Speaker 1: doing the exact opposite. He was um staging raids on
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Speaker 1: villages in the Philippines and murdering cows and and stealing
16:02
Speaker 1: stuff out of freezers and cheating. Correct, let's start at
16:05
Speaker 1: the beginning. How did you get there? He was on
16:07
Speaker 1: what island? Chuck? He was on the island of lou Bang.
16:10
Speaker 1: I love it when you say that, Chuck. My pronunciation
16:13
Speaker 1: is stellar. Here. Uh, he was he was unaware, actually
16:18
Speaker 1: the war was over he was a case that did
16:21
Speaker 1: not no no. So they he and I think four
16:24
Speaker 1: other guys end up on lou Bang. He was twenty
16:27
Speaker 1: three at the time when they landed, and lou Bang
16:29
Speaker 1: is a Filipino island. It had an Allied presence at
16:33
Speaker 1: the time. Um. But this was prior to the Allies
16:37
Speaker 1: just flooding the Philippines with marines and taking it from Japanese. Right.
16:43
Speaker 1: But I get the impression that lou Bang was kind
16:45
Speaker 1: of no man's lamp because he and his four man
16:48
Speaker 1: crack commando teams were tasked with going and sabotaging everything
16:52
Speaker 1: they could on lou Bang, right, And they did. They did.
16:55
Speaker 1: They blew stuff up. They I think they did something
16:58
Speaker 1: to one of the ports, the piers and things like that. Um.
17:01
Speaker 1: And basically they're just saboteur commandos. While they were there, though,
17:06
Speaker 1: that Allied invasion happened and these guys had to skidaddle
17:09
Speaker 1: and they did into the jungle and became guerrillas. They did.
17:13
Speaker 1: They did not stop fighting. They did not fish along
17:15
Speaker 1: the river banks and get found by somebody who anybody
17:18
Speaker 1: who wanted to talk to him. Now, these guys continued
17:21
Speaker 1: carrying out the war. Yes, all five of them until
17:24
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty when uh one of them surrendered in nineteen fifty. Yeah,
17:29
Speaker 1: and then he turned around and said he wrote a
17:31
Speaker 1: message exactly that said, hey, guys, the I've been treated
17:35
Speaker 1: very well. The war is actually over, has been for
17:37
Speaker 1: six texted them right, He's like l O L VTW
17:42
Speaker 1: war over l O L come home for sushi nel
17:46
Speaker 1: l O L exactly, I think is what the first
17:48
Speaker 1: message said. And they didn't buy it. Now they didn't.
17:50
Speaker 1: And then they blanketed the jungle with these messages. They
17:54
Speaker 1: make copies, dropped them from the plains, and evidently they
17:57
Speaker 1: even played over loud speakers into the jungle. Hey, war
18:02
Speaker 1: over right. Well, there's a contingent, contingent of Japanese diplomats
18:07
Speaker 1: that went and use loudspeakers and say, hey dude, we're
18:10
Speaker 1: from Japan, like we're for real, the war is over
18:13
Speaker 1: for like six years. It's been over right now. Lieutenant
18:16
Speaker 1: onata Um did not buy this scene. His guys just
18:19
Speaker 1: didn't buy it. They figured it was Allied tricks trying
18:21
Speaker 1: to get him out. Yeah, but you know, I can
18:23
Speaker 1: respect that. But it also shows that back in Japan,
18:27
Speaker 1: everybody was aware that this was going on in the
18:30
Speaker 1: bang there was a Japanese UM commando team that was
18:34
Speaker 1: still fighting World War Two several years after it was over, right,
18:37
Speaker 1: and the Japanese loved us, yeah, you know, in their
18:41
Speaker 1: very reserved way. Um. And but one by one these
18:45
Speaker 1: guys started to go down, right, Yeah, two of them.
18:48
Speaker 1: He became separated from the remaining two evidently, and then
18:52
Speaker 1: both of those UH holdouts were killed. So now he's
18:56
Speaker 1: by himself, right, and he's still fighting this war, still
18:59
Speaker 1: holding out. Like I said, when they wanted meat, they
19:01
Speaker 1: go and murder a cow and I guess field dress
19:04
Speaker 1: it and take the meat back into the jungle. Um.
19:08
Speaker 1: Villagers retreated as spies and were shot at. Um. They
19:11
Speaker 1: would get into firefights with the local Filipino police. Um.
19:16
Speaker 1: And I read, and this is not verified, but I
19:19
Speaker 1: read that they actually staged a raid on a local
19:22
Speaker 1: police station. This is back when there was more than
19:24
Speaker 1: just Lieutenant Nada. They raided a police station and got
19:27
Speaker 1: into a firefight to steal ammunition and guns. Okay, So
19:33
Speaker 1: flashed through the sixties, the entire decade of the sixties. Dude,
19:37
Speaker 1: go through that and go midway into the seventies to
19:40
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy So here we are. It's nineteen seventy four.
19:44
Speaker 1: I'm three years old. It was a full decade before Ghostbusters. Correct. Yeah, unfortunately,
19:50
Speaker 1: and uh a noda a noda excuse me, is still
19:55
Speaker 1: hunkered down in fighting by himself, by himself, when a
19:58
Speaker 1: Japanese student who was I heard of this legend goes
20:01
Speaker 1: and seeks him out, right, a guy, a Japanese dropout, apparently,
20:05
Speaker 1: nor Yo Suzuki. He was kind of a wandering drifters. Yeah,
20:10
Speaker 1: he was college dropout. What better person to go talk
20:12
Speaker 1: someone into quitting? So he nice he u. He leaves
20:16
Speaker 1: Japan and tells his friends he's going to look for
20:18
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Onata, a Panda and the Abominable Snowman in that order,
20:23
Speaker 1: and they're like, okay, alright, to leave your rent check. Yeah. Um,
20:26
Speaker 1: so this guy was not leaving rent. No, he's he
20:30
Speaker 1: was the hippie rob of Japan exactly. So he goes
20:33
Speaker 1: um to lou Bang if the first thing he did
20:36
Speaker 1: was go to lou Bang to look for um Lieutenant Onada,
20:39
Speaker 1: who by this time, this nineteen seventy four, everyone in
20:42
Speaker 1: Japan is still aware that this guy's killing people left
20:45
Speaker 1: and right, and and and he's carrying on the war
20:48
Speaker 1: right in his fifties at this point. Yeah he uh
20:51
Speaker 1: was twenty eight years later. Yeah, um, so he's still
20:57
Speaker 1: fighting and everyone's aware of it. And so I guess
21:00
Speaker 1: Szuki is kind of like going to make a name
21:02
Speaker 1: for himself too as being the one who gets this
21:04
Speaker 1: guy to come out. And he actually meets Sonata in
21:07
Speaker 1: the jungle and they become friends. Crazy. Yeah, this needs
21:09
Speaker 1: to be made in to a film. I can't believe
21:11
Speaker 1: it hasn't already. Nanda even wrote a memoir. Yeah, it
21:16
Speaker 1: was a best seller as far as in it. And
21:18
Speaker 1: that was different. That was an entirely different story resemblance.
21:24
Speaker 1: That was different too. Um. So Suzuki actually meets Sonata
21:29
Speaker 1: and they become friends, right yeah, and he kind of
21:31
Speaker 1: tells him, hey man, this is the worst pinover for
21:34
Speaker 1: a long, long long time. You missed the sixties, you
21:37
Speaker 1: miss Woodstock. Uh, Disco is on the horizon, He's like,
21:41
Speaker 1: but Ghostbusters is coming because coming in a decade. Yeah. Um,
21:45
Speaker 1: And here's here's the problem. Here's the problem. And this
21:48
Speaker 1: is where the story starts to get sad. You get
21:50
Speaker 1: the impression at this point that lieutena Onata. Lieutenant Onata
21:53
Speaker 1: is aware that the war is probably over, but he
21:58
Speaker 1: says that he can't stop fighting until his commanding officer
22:03
Speaker 1: tells him to surrender because his he was originally given
22:08
Speaker 1: orders not to kill himself. He was under no circumstances
22:10
Speaker 1: allowed to take his own life, and he wasn't to
22:13
Speaker 1: stop until they came and got him. And so Suzuki
22:17
Speaker 1: was like, all right, let me see what I can do,
22:19
Speaker 1: goes back to Japan, finds this guy's former commanding officer
22:23
Speaker 1: who's now staged stooped over bookseller and um selling little
22:29
Speaker 1: gremlins in the alley. As as part of the Marshall Plan,
22:34
Speaker 1: Japan didn't even have an army anymore. There's no standing
22:37
Speaker 1: army in Japan, they're not allowed to have one, right
22:39
Speaker 1: um so, But this nice bookseller uh decides to come
22:44
Speaker 1: along to lou Bang and Suzuki takes him to meet Onata,
22:48
Speaker 1: and the guy officially orders Onata to surrender put down
22:52
Speaker 1: his arms, and so after a second apparently it really
22:55
Speaker 1: sinks in and Onata is hit with the fact that
22:59
Speaker 1: he's just at twenty nine more than half of his life,
23:02
Speaker 1: twenty nine years of his life fighting a war needlessly
23:06
Speaker 1: and killing people needlessly, killing thirty people and wounding a
23:10
Speaker 1: hundred others and god knows how many cows. Right, So
23:12
Speaker 1: he felt bad all of a sudden, Yeah, he felt
23:15
Speaker 1: like a fully felt bad, But he did come back
23:17
Speaker 1: as a national hero. Depending quite know what to do
23:20
Speaker 1: with them, because again, they're trying to move past this.
23:23
Speaker 1: They were, they stood and still staying accused of a
23:26
Speaker 1: lot of atrocities during World War two. Um, and they've
23:29
Speaker 1: been trying to distance themselves ever since of their role
23:32
Speaker 1: in World War Two because you know, there they were
23:36
Speaker 1: definitely the losers. They had two atomic bombs dropped on him,
23:39
Speaker 1: which arguably the worst thing any group of humans ever
23:42
Speaker 1: done to another group of humans. But at the same time,
23:45
Speaker 1: they lost another hanging out with the victors. They want
23:48
Speaker 1: to be friends with everybody, so they're distancing themselves from that,
23:50
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, bam, here comes this guy
23:52
Speaker 1: that exemplifies everything that the Japanese Imperial military was about
23:58
Speaker 1: during World War Two. But they still treated him like
24:01
Speaker 1: a hero. The guy, and he was pardoned by Ferdinand Marcos,
24:04
Speaker 1: husband of Emelda Marcos, who famously had millions and trillions
24:08
Speaker 1: of shoes. You remember the marquess is in the Philippines.
24:11
Speaker 1: Irony is rich in this one because o'nada didn't have
24:15
Speaker 1: any shoes. But when he was found he had his rifle,
24:19
Speaker 1: five pounds of ammunition, and a couple of hand grenades
24:22
Speaker 1: on him. Still a good thing to hang on to.
24:25
Speaker 1: That stuff, well he needed early. Of course it was
24:28
Speaker 1: an old weaponry and that no, it's in pristine shape. Still,
24:32
Speaker 1: Oh cool guy like that takes care of his gun.
24:34
Speaker 1: I can tell you. Yeah, you know what he said sadly. Yeah,
24:38
Speaker 1: you close your article with his very poigny. And I
24:39
Speaker 1: thought when he was talking about his dead comrades who
24:42
Speaker 1: he lost years and years earlier, he said, wouldn't it
24:44
Speaker 1: have been better if I had died with them? You
24:47
Speaker 1: can imagine, man, that's so kind of a waste of life.
24:51
Speaker 1: So people have heard stories of these holdouts and Japanese
24:56
Speaker 1: soldiers being found. I know it's supposed that he found
24:58
Speaker 1: some in the eighties and then the Nine Easy a
25:00
Speaker 1: few years ago, but we haven't found that those were substantiated. Now,
25:03
Speaker 1: Chuck and I figured out a long time ago that
25:05
Speaker 1: if you are doing research and you find a sensational
25:09
Speaker 1: story and in it it says, but they're still trying
25:12
Speaker 1: to figure out whether or not it's for real. And
25:14
Speaker 1: then there's no follow up whatsoever. Then it was a
25:17
Speaker 1: hoax ye or it wasn't real. Uh. And also, Chuck,
25:20
Speaker 1: did you want to mention Japanese stragglers in pop culture? Yeah?
25:24
Speaker 1: I think we need to be remiss if we did
25:26
Speaker 1: not mention Gilligan's Island, which occurred to me while I
25:30
Speaker 1: was reading circles, like, wait a minute, man, I remember
25:32
Speaker 1: a Gilligan's Island episode with this, And sure enough there
25:34
Speaker 1: was an episode called sorry so Sorry my Island now
25:38
Speaker 1: and uh, I sent you the clip. Also, a racist
25:43
Speaker 1: was in true Hollywood Forum. They hired an Italian man
25:46
Speaker 1: to play a Japanese soldier through some thick glasses on him,
25:50
Speaker 1: told him to squint and talk funny. What do you
25:52
Speaker 1: think I'd done? Ahead exactly And if you think we're
25:56
Speaker 1: being jerks ourselves, you should look it up on YouTube.
25:58
Speaker 1: That's actually a kind portrayal of what this guy said.
26:02
Speaker 1: His name was Vito Scotti, and he played on the
26:04
Speaker 1: same show a season later, played a Russian mad scientist.
26:08
Speaker 1: I remember that one casting Gilligan's Island. They weren't reaching
26:11
Speaker 1: too far. Yeah, send a six million dollar man. Yeah,
26:14
Speaker 1: do do do do do. Steve Austin was held captive
26:17
Speaker 1: by a Japanese holdout in one episode of the Six Months.
26:20
Speaker 1: I mean, you gotta think about it. When when Onana
26:22
Speaker 1: came back to Japan. That was that was huge. It
26:24
Speaker 1: doesn't get bigger than that, right, that's like world news,
26:27
Speaker 1: big time huge, pretty pretty cool. So that's that ay?
26:33
Speaker 1: So yeah, oh yeah, you can read this article, um,
26:37
Speaker 1: which is pretty much a rehash of what Chuck and
26:38
Speaker 1: I just said one dot com I did, right, and
26:43
Speaker 1: yeah you should be proud of it. Yeah, that's in
26:46
Speaker 1: the handy search bar. What just type Japanese holdouts or
26:49
Speaker 1: something like sure? Yeah? Uh And since I just that
26:51
Speaker 1: handy search bar, that means Chuck, it's time for the listener, Mayle, Josh.
26:59
Speaker 1: I'm gonna just call this, um funny email from Natalie
27:05
Speaker 1: who does not who definitely does not want to kill
27:07
Speaker 1: her husband. That's what I'm gonna call it. Oh, is
27:09
Speaker 1: this the pet on the back? We didn't even know it? No,
27:13
Speaker 1: this is different. Hello Chuck and Josh or Charles and Joshua.
27:17
Speaker 1: If we're going formal, we're not. I love your podcast.
27:20
Speaker 1: Have been a big fan for a while, and I
27:22
Speaker 1: have an idea for a show. Can someone truly be
27:24
Speaker 1: framed for murder? Interesting, don't you think, Josh? Huh? Interesting? Yeah? Well, yeah, okay,
27:33
Speaker 1: we know that many have tried and failed, but there
27:34
Speaker 1: have been Has there ever been in an attempt that
27:36
Speaker 1: was successful? I know if it was successful, we wouldn't
27:40
Speaker 1: really know. Said, that's my first thing that I was
27:43
Speaker 1: going to say right back, because we wouldn't know. Let
27:46
Speaker 1: me explain why I asked this before you think I'm
27:48
Speaker 1: trying to accomplish us an act. My husband Paul, had
27:52
Speaker 1: two separate freak accidents within the last seven months. The
27:55
Speaker 1: first one was when he was taking some items up
27:57
Speaker 1: to the attic and the spring loaded met achanism came
28:00
Speaker 1: loose and sprang up and hit him in the shoulder.
28:03
Speaker 1: Oh luckily it didn't hit him in the head and
28:05
Speaker 1: he was just badly bruised. Yeah, it probably would have
28:07
Speaker 1: killed him if he had hit him in the head. Perhaps.
28:10
Speaker 1: The second he aimed a little more poker right. The
28:13
Speaker 1: second accident was when he dropped a floor tile on
28:15
Speaker 1: his head. Yes, a floor tile. He was cleaning his
28:19
Speaker 1: workshop garage and had put some floor tiles up on
28:21
Speaker 1: a shelf, then moved a ladder and one of the
28:23
Speaker 1: tiles came right down on top of his noggin. While
28:26
Speaker 1: he was building the shelves, he had bruised his hands
28:28
Speaker 1: and cut his fingers, so it appeared that he had
28:30
Speaker 1: defensive wounds. He said that he could totally set me
28:34
Speaker 1: up if he had another accident and came up dead,
28:37
Speaker 1: because all of the marks all over him, and all
28:39
Speaker 1: the shows that we have recorded in our t vow
28:42
Speaker 1: would indicate that I did it. I love all the
28:44
Speaker 1: crime shows C S I and C I S and
28:48
Speaker 1: that is from Natalie and Natalie. One thing that I
28:51
Speaker 1: think you've missed in all this is typically when you
28:53
Speaker 1: frame someone from murder, you commit a murderer and you
28:57
Speaker 1: try and blame someone else. You do not get murdered
29:01
Speaker 1: and set someone up to have police think that they
29:04
Speaker 1: killed you. Right. Well, maybe her husband hates her gut,
29:08
Speaker 1: you know, and is willing to die for that. Sure.
29:10
Speaker 1: Maybe he's a holdout maybe or a suicide bomber. So
29:15
Speaker 1: I think Natalie kind of was a little confused here.
29:17
Speaker 1: When you frame someone for murder, it's typically not something
29:19
Speaker 1: you do for your own murder. Agreed, Chuck, and sounds
29:23
Speaker 1: like your husband Paul is a bit of a klutz,
29:25
Speaker 1: and I don't think the cops would buy that story. Well,
29:29
Speaker 1: if you're looking for Chuck and I to serve as
29:31
Speaker 1: your alibi, UM, just go ahead and send us an
29:34
Speaker 1: email to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com
29:44
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does
29:46
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com. Want more house stuff works,
29:50
Speaker 1: check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
29:52
Speaker 1: com home page. Brought to you by the reinvented two
29:57
Speaker 1: thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, are you