Final chapters of Great Tragedies: Stories of Last Heroes

History often preserves the names of the first people, but rarely the last people make history. QALAMPIR.UZ tells about 5 such “last people” whose names have been preserved in history.

The Last Person to Leave the Titanic

Charles Joaquin was one of the crew members of the Titanic on its first and last voyage in April 1912. He was on board the ship when it arrived from Belfast to Southampton. As the chief baker, Joaquin received a salary of 12 pounds sterling per month and supervised thirteen bakery employees. When the ship collided with an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. on the evening of April 14, Joaquin was off duty and resting. He felt the impact when the ship hit the iceberg and immediately got up. From the upper decks, officers were reported to be preparing the lifeboats for launch, and Joaquin sent thirteen bakers with provisions for the lifeboats.

He joined Chief Officer Henry Wilde in Lifeboat No. 10. Joaquin, along with stewards and other sailors, helped to get the women and children into the lifeboats, but after a while, the women on deck did not board the boats, saying that they felt safer on board the Titanic. Joaquin went aboard and forced the women and children into the lifeboats. Although he had been appointed captain of Lifeboat No. 10, Charles did not go aboard. After launching the lifeboat, he returned to his room and drank alcohol. He then met with an old doctor and went back upstairs. When he returned to the boat deck, all the lifeboats had already been launched, so he went down to A Deck and threw about fifty chairs into the water to use as flotation devices.

According to his testimony, he was in the water for about two hours, and as a result, his feet swelled up. Charles also said that he hardly felt the cold because of the alcohol he had drunk. Thus, he went down in history as the last person to abandon ship. Charles Joaquin died on December 9, 1956, 41 years after the Titanic tragedy, at the age of 78.

The Last Person to Die in World War I

Before World War I, Henry Gunther had a fairly successful life: at the age of 19, he worked as a teller in a Baltimore bank and was engaged. Henry did not welcome the entry of the United States into the war - he came from a family of German immigrants and did not like being drafted into a war with his historical homeland. In September 1917, he was mobilized for war and in July 1918, he was transferred to France with the rank of sergeant. During the war, Günther wrote a letter to a friend, complaining about the terrible spectacle of war and advising him to avoid mobilization at all costs. The letter reached the military censors, and Günther was reprimanded and demoted.

On September 12, his unit was sent to push the Germans out of the Meuse River and the Argonne Forest. On November 11, at around 05:20 in the morning, an armistice was signed between Germany and the Entente, the terms of which also applied to the American military contingent in Europe. The agreement was to come into force at 11:00 that day. Germany offered to cease hostilities immediately after its signing, but the Allied commander-in-chief, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, rejected the offer and most of the fighting continued. In the six hours between the signing of the armistice and its entry into force, about 11,000 people were killed or wounded, the last casualty being Henry Gunther. His squad attempted to take up positions in the village of Chaumont-devant-Damilier and, with machine gun crews, advanced towards a German checkpoint. At 10:59, Gunther, despite orders from his sergeant to stay put, attacked and was shot down a minute before the armistice took effect.

After the American soldiers returned home, author and journalist James Cain interviewed Gunther's comrades several times. The soldier's desperate attack was motivated by his desire to prove his loyalty to the United States and to regain the respect of his superiors after the war. November 11, 2008 – On Veterans Day, a monument was erected at 10:59 a.m. in Chaumont-devant-Damilier at the site of Gunther's death, and two years later a headstone was placed in a cemetery in Baltimore.

The Last Slave Brought to the United States

Matilda was born into a Yoruba community in West Africa. In 1860, her village was attacked by the Dahomey army. Two-year-old Matilda was captured with her mother and two sisters and taken to the port city of Vida. There, along with 106 other captives, she was sold to William Foster, captain of the Clotilda. The transatlantic slave trade had technically been banned in 1808, but that did not stop traders from transporting slaves to the United States and then selling them as “real estate.”

By 1860, this trade had also been virtually eliminated. The Clotilda was the last ship to continue to break the law. On July 9, it entered Mobile Bay, Alabama. The slaves were then sold to the local population. Matilda and her mother, Walker Craig, were slaves on the Craig plantation until 1865 when they became sharecroppers. At the age of 14, Matilda gave birth to her first child by a white man. She would later become a mother twice more. In 1879, she met German immigrant Jacob Schuler.

They reportedly never married or lived together, perhaps out of fear of interracial relationships, but the couple had seven children. In 1931, Matilda decided to sue for a symbolic payment for slavery after hearing that the government had paid compensation to World War I veterans for their service in the war, but the judge denied her claim. Matilda died on January 13, 1940.

The Last Man to Leave Hitler's Bunker

In 1934, electrical engineer Johannes Henschel was hired to work in the apartment of Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler, where he was responsible for the operation of electrical installations and communications. In January 1945, the Allied forces began to confidently advance towards Berlin, and Germany was bombed from the air. Therefore, on January 16, Hitler and his inner circle moved to the bunker under his office, and Henschel moved with them. On April 30, having given up hope of changing the situation on the fronts, Adolf Hitler and his wife Eva Braun committed suicide.

On May 1, after killing five of their children, Joseph and Magda Goebbels committed suicide, followed by Hans Krebs, Chief of Staff of the Wehrmacht High Command, and General Wilhelm Burgdorf. The other inhabitants of the bunker - soldiers, doctors, and employees - began to leave the bunker in groups, hoping to hide from the Soviet troops who had invaded the city.

The last people left in the bunker were Johannes Henschel the telephone operator and Hitler's former bodyguard Roxus Misch. Early on May 2, Misch also decided to leave the bunker and invited Henschel to go with him, but Johannes refused his offer. A field hospital was set up on top of the bunker and measures were taken to provide it with water and electricity. Henschel decided to stay in place to maintain the infrastructure. He is left alone for a few hours. In the morning, the Red Army takes over the bunker and Henschel is arrested. He spends four years of his life in Soviet prison camps before being released.

The Last Soldier of World War II

Teruo Nakamura, the soldier who refused to accept Japan's surrender in 1945, continued his "war" in Indonesia for nearly 30 years, unaware that World War II had ended. Drafted into the Japanese army in 1943, he was stationed on the island of Morotai in Indonesia. After U.S. forces seized control of the island in January 1945, radio communication between Tokyo and Morotai was severed.

Serving as part of a Japanese commando unit, Nakamura managed to avoid capture by retreating into the dense jungle. There, he built a small hut and survived by growing potatoes and living off the land. For nearly three decades, he lived in complete isolation, believing the war was still ongoing.

In September 1974, four Indonesian pilots accidentally discovered Nakamura's hiding place. However, rescuing him was not a simple task. It took two months of diplomatic negotiations between the Japanese embassy in Jakarta and Indonesian authorities to arrange his return. Despite their efforts, Nakamura remained convinced that he was still at war and would be killed if captured.

On December 18, 1974, Indonesian soldiers surrounded his small hut. Nakamura, now 55 years old, finally emerged. The soldiers, singing the Japanese national anthem and waving Japan's imperial flag, led him out of hiding. He surrendered a well-maintained rifle and his last five rounds of ammunition.

“My commander ordered me to fight to the end,” Nakamura explained to the soldiers.

Born in Taiwan, Teruo Nakamura was known for his courage, resilience, and extraordinary willpower. Upon learning that Taiwan was no longer a part of Japan and had become part of China, Nakamura said, “I have been Japanese for a long time. It doesn't matter that Taiwan is now a different country,” reflecting his enduring sense of identity despite the changing world around him.