And aside from the governments, a lot of individual criminals and criminal gangs might be going after him too, for all his millions of bitcoins. Yeah, I know he has only ~980,000 bitcoins, but it is still worth the effort. Thus it might be a wise decision overall to disappear without a trace. Though his bitcoins should be working and not sitting idly in his wallets. Why he wouldn't just share them equally among bitcoiners?
And then people could safely forget about him
All this talk about descentralized currency, no one controls the Bitcoins... But, he made a good profit with that. If he wouldn't be the currency's creator, he wouldn't have that big profit. Surely he deserves this right, but we he had profitable benefits, going against the Bitcoin philosophy.
But for his own safety, he can't show his ID, this can be very risk for him. Governments harassing all the time, terrorists tryng to coopt him, thiefs trying to steal him or Kidnap.