episode #27 - The Last Kamikaze

episode #14 of 2nd season / Air Date: 1/19/75 written by Judy Burns Directed by Richard Moder

This is the one where Austin encounters a Japanese soldier still fighting World War II on some godforsaken Pacific island. This episode sticks out due to the unusual subject matter and is one I still remember well over 35 years later. There's no chance that any Japanese soldiers are on any of these islands today - they would all be dead by now in any case or very close to it - but back in the seventies, it was still feasible and real life stories cropped up about finding these men who thought that the war was still going on.
Austin is sent in because of an airplane crash on this island; a company was transporting a new kind of compact nuclear bomb on this aircraft illegally and it could be set off by a nearby explosion, for instance (yet it survives the crash intact ). The bigger problem, however, is that the wrong people want to get their hands on this bomb. Austin goes in with a Phillippino guide (Robert Ito) but this guy turns out to be working for those wrong people. Austin ends up captive of the Japanese soldier (John Fujioka), who regards him as the biggest liar on Earth after Austin explains some of the latest modern advances and events of the past 30 years, but he soon develops a grudging respect for the American, sensing in him a samurai spirit.
This was one of the rare episodes that gets better as it goes along; I found myself getting very interested in the character of the lost soldier, who, as it turns out, craves death for what he perceives as cowardice on his part. His kind of life story is truly remarkable - living alone for decades on an island, cut off from reality - and his scenes with Austin are very well done. It's all the more effective in that such actual soldiers were found not long before this episode first aired. In all, a very satisfying episode. BoG's Score: 7 out of 10

Bionic Trivia: the character played by Fujioka and the actor would be back in the 3rd season episode The Wolf Boy