In January of 1972, Sergeant Yokoi was found by two hunters in a remote part of Guam, and he was repatriated to Japan a month later. After a whirlwind media tour of Japan, he was married and settled down in rural Aichi prefecture. After living alone in a cave for 27 years, Yokoi became a popular television personality, and an advocate for austere living. He was featured in a 1977 documentary called Yokoi and His Twenty-Eight Years of Secret Life on Guam.
He received an audience with Emperor Akihito in 1991, which he called the greatest honor of his life.
He died of a heart attack at the age of 82, and is now buried at a Nagoya cemetery, under a gravestone that was initially commissioned by Yokoi's mother in 1955.