When does a war truly end? That's the question at the center of today's episode. Does it end when

victory is declared or does it end when the loser formally surrenders? Does it end when the soldiers

are sent home, or at least many, if not most of the soldiers, the ones who aren't needed for the

occupation and rebuilding of the losing side? Does it end when the losing country has been

readmitted to the UN or another international governing body?

When it's been given the same rights as every other nation and the international community is positive

that there is no fascist dictator 2.0 coming to send the country back into totalitarianism?

Or does it end when all of the fighting ends, when every last soldier has laid down their arms?

If that last answer is true, then I guess World War II was still going strong in the mid-1970s.

While the overwhelming majority of soldiers who served in both sides of the conflict either

unfortunately died in action, returned home or declared missing, perhaps they died,

perhaps they went off to live new life somewhere

else, a very small number of them decided to keep fighting, past the official end date of September

2nd, 1945, and almost all of them were Japanese. After Japan officially surrendered at the end of

World War II, numerous Japanese holdouts in Southeast Asia and the

Pacific Islands that have been part of the Japanese Empire, continued to fight local police,

government forces, local villagers, and allied troops unwilling to accept the idea that the

great empire they called home could possibly lose. Many of them were captured in the next few

years, killed themselves, or finally

defected, i.e. gave up and ultimately returned home. But there were some soldiers who simply could not

be captured, who refused to surrender, who refused to accept the Japan had lost, and the war was over.

Their training went too deep. They had too much honor. They refused to defy their orders, to never

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