Japanese holdout

Japanese holdouts (Japanese: 残留日本兵, romanized: Zanryū nipponhei, lit. 'remaining Japanese soldiers') were soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army and Imperial Japanese Navy during the Pacific Theatre of World War II who continued fighting after the surrender of Japan at the end of the war. Japanese holdouts either doubted the veracity of the formal surrender, were not aware that the war had ended because communications had been cut off by Allied advances, feared they would be killed if they surrendered to the Allies, or felt bound by honor and loyalty to never surrender.

After Japan officially surrendered at the end of World War II, Japanese holdouts in Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands that had been part of the Japanese Empire continued to fight local police, government forces, and Allied troops stationed to assist the newly formed governments. Many holdouts were discovered in the jungles of Southeast Asia and the Pacific over the following decades, with the last verified holdout, Private Teruo Nakamura, surrendering on the island of Morotai in 1974. Newspapers throughout East Asia and the Pacific reported more holdouts and searches for them were conducted until 2005, but the evidence was too scant, and no further holdouts were confirmed.

Some Japanese soldiers acknowledged Japan's surrender and the end of World War II but were reluctant to demobilize and wished to continue armed combat for ideological reasons. Many fought in the Chinese Civil War, the Korean War, and local independence movements in Southeast Asia such as the First Indochina War, Malayan Emergency, and the Indonesian National Revolution, and these Japanese soldiers are not usually considered holdouts.