Though the Allies captured or killed the majority of these holdouts within a few months, some 130 remained in hiding by the end of World War II in September 1945. According to historian Robert Rogers, Yokoi was one of around 5,000 Japanese soldiers who refused to surrender to the Allies after the Battle of Guam, preferring life on the lam to the shame of being detained as a prisoner of war. Then 56, Yokoi had spent the past 27 years eking out a meager existence in the jungles of Guam, where he’d fled to evade capture following American forces’ seizure of the island in August 1944. One other possibility, says Harkavy-Friedman, is that suicide may be better reported and identified today than in years past, as people pay closer attention to mental health issues.When Japanese sergeant Shoichi Yokoi returned to his home country after almost three decades in hiding, his initial reaction was one of contrition: “It is with much embarrassment that I return.” Heavy social media use may also lead to fewer meaningful in-person interactions-which can protect against mental health issues and suicidal behavior-and encourage unhealthy comparison with others. “We know that now it’s used in younger ages and more intensively, and we also see some new apps that allow more anonymity, which in turn allows more bullying and more kids talking about suicide without their parents knowing,” he says. His second theory is that social media may be contributing to rising suicide rates, particularly for young people.
LAST YEAR OF WW2 CRACK
“This might give us just one more reason to crack down on” substance misuse. Kids see less of a future, they see more of their friends dying,” Miron says. The opioid epidemic may harm entire communities’ mental health, Miron says. Opioid use, he says, has been shown to drive suicidal behavior among drug users and their children and families, and so recent high rates of drug abuse and overdose may be tied to rising suicide rates. The JAMA letter doesn’t identify causes of the youth uptick, but first author Oren Miron, a research associate in biomedical informatics at Harvard Medical School, has two theories. A separate research letter published June 18 in JAMA found that youth suicide rates are at their highest point since at least 2000. Youth suicide is becoming an especially pressing problem, with rates rising more rapidly among boys and girls ages 10 to 14 than in any other age group. For both genders, suicide rates are highest among American Indians and Alaska natives, compared to other ethnicities, and when the data are broken down by age group, the most suicide deaths are reported among people ages 45 to 64-but nearly every ethnic and age group saw an increase of some size from 1999 to 2017. But female suicide rates are rising more quickly-by 53% since 1999, compared to 26% for men-and the gap is narrowing. Men have historically died by suicide more frequently than women, and that’s still true: As of 2017, the male suicide rate was more than three times higher than the female rate. It’s even more difficult to assign causes to the uptick, Harkavy-Friedman says, because it’s happening across diverse demographic groups.
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