Another very interesting piece, also from the BBC, which can be accessed here. It is about a Japanese soldier who had survived on the island of Guam for years after the end of World War Two.
It reminds me of an article I published at the Journal of Strategic Studies (April 2009, VOlume 32, No. 2), entitled “Decisive Battle, Victory and the Revolution in Military Affairs”, in which I argued that if war is a clash of wills (see Clausewitz), victory in war comes when the opponent decides to give up. Battles are decisive inasmuch as they bring about this collapse of the opponent’s will to resist. But will can be a difficult thing to understand. This story of a Japanese soldier found in the jungles of Guam many years after the end of the war resonates with the argument I made. Indeed, many American soldiers fighting in the Pacific in World War Two often could not get their heads around the refusal of their Japanese opponents to surrender, even though it was patently obvious (at least to American soldiers) that the Japanese had already lost specific battles.
