Teruo Nakamura was the last known Japanese World War II holdout to surrender, doing so on Morotai in 1974.
Nakamura was an ethnically Taiwanese Indigenous soldier who served in the Imperial Japanese Army. After Japan's 1945 surrender, he remained in hiding on Morotai, an island in present-day Indonesia. He was discovered on December 18, 1974, nearly three decades after the formal surrender.
Nakamura is often confused with Hiroo Onoda, who attracted greater international attention after surrendering in the Philippines in March 1974. Onoda was one of the last prominent holdouts, but Nakamura surrendered later that year and is generally identified as the last known Japanese holdout.
The holdouts did not all share one reason for remaining. Some did not believe wartime messages, some had lost communication with their units, and others feared punishment or felt bound by military duty. Their stories show that the end of organized war did not immediately end every isolated soldier's resistance.