End of Tyranny

A white flag was raised last week to signal the surrender of 19 Japanese holdouts still fighting World War II on tiny Anatahan Island. One of their group, Japanese Petty Officer Junji Inoue, had surrendered to the crew of a U.S. Navy tug three weeks ago (TIME, June 25). He told his captors then that the others were being held in thrall at machine-gun point by a tyrannical seaman named Ichiro. The Navymen dropped encouraging letters on the holdouts' camp from the air and waited. Last week the remaining Japanese met them on the beach, bearing the ashes of companions killed by accidents or internal strife, a pet cat and a new version of Inoue's story. The petty tyrant of Ana-tahan, it seemed, had been not Ichiro, but Inoue himself. His highhanded rule caused his compatriots to banish him from their group to a lonely spot on the island from which he had engineered his own surrender.

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