Yokoi Shoichi (横井 庄一), March 31, 1915 - September 22, 1997) was conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army in 1941 and sent to Guam during the Japanese occupation there. He went into hiding on Guam in 1944, when Douglas MacArthur's army reconquered the island. He was born in Saori, Aichi Prefecture.

On January 24, 1972, sergeant Shoichi Yokoi, a soldier in the Imperial Japanese Army, was surprised and captured in a remote section of Guam by two American hunters. For 27 years he had been hiding in a jungle cave, refusing to believe leaflets declaring that World War II had ended.

"It is with much embarrassment that I have returned alive," he said upon his return to Japan, carrying his rusted rifle (a remark which became a popular saying).

After a whirlwind media tour of Japan, he was married and settled down in rural Aichi prefecture. After living alone in a cave for 27 years, Yokoi became a popular television personality, and an advocate for austere living. He was featured in a 1977 documentary called Yokoi and His Twenty-Eight Years of Secret Life on Guam.

He received an audience with Emperor Akihito in 1991, which he called the greatest honor of his life.

Mr. Yokoi, who had also prepared a speech of regret for his emperor, received the equivalent of $300 in back pay and a tiny pension. Months later, the sergeant told a Japanese journalist that he had in fact had a deeply personal reason for remaining isolated:

"I had a tough childhood, among many unkind relatives," he explained. "I stuck to the jungle because I wanted to get even with them."

Yokoi, who died in 1997 of a heart attack at the age of 82, became an impassioned advocate of austerity and a regular commentator on Japanese TV. He was buried at a Nagoya cemetery, under a gravestone that was initially commissioned by his mother in 1955.