What’s the straight dope on those Japanese soldiers who surrendered long after World War II was over? Did it really happen or was it yet another urban legend?
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In early 1945, Japan had about three million troops overseas, about a third of them dug in on islands throughout the Pacific. These men were thoroughly indoctrinated in the Bushido code, which held that it was better to die than to surrender–and by God, that’s what they did. Of 23,000 Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima, for example, 21,000 were killed and just 200 captured. Only after Emperor Hirohito ordered his forces to surrender following the dropping of the atom bomb did Japanese troops give themselves up in massive numbers.
This being the era before the pocket pager, however, not everybody got the message. Many Japanese soldiers had been cut off from the main army during the Allies’ island-hopping campaign and continued to resist. Sporadic fighting continued for months and in some cases years after the formal surrender. Two hundred Japanese soldiers were captured on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines in 1948, some others surrendered on an island north of Saipan in 1951, and a few hard-core types didn’t surface until the 1970s and later.
I’m not saying I know for certain what the origin of jeep is, but I’m pretty sure I know what it ain’t–namely, an elision of GP. (For one thing, the jeep wasn’t general purpose–it was designed for reconnaissance.) What we now call a jeep was actually the last of several vehicles to bear that nickname. By one account, the name jeep originally was used by motor pool mechanics in World War I to refer to any new vehicle received for testing. It was also applied derisively to the more hapless recruits. The term was little known outside the military until March 16, 1936, when a character called Eugene the Jeep was introduced in Elzie Segar’s popular Thimble Theater comic strip, home of Popeye. Eugene was a doglike critter who subsisted on orchids and had the ability to travel between dimensions and solve complex problems. The Jeep tickled the public’s fancy and his name was soon applied to a host of things, including an oil exploration vehicle, a prototype of the B-17 bomber, a military tractor, a type of truck, and so on.
