War is a dirty business. It makes people believe that killing people in name of patriotism is a justified action and loyalty to the motherland (or fatherland) is of paramount importance, compared to all other human virtues. However, in spite of multiple acts of human rights violations and a frank insult to everything that is respectable and decent, war sometimes does bring out the best of the indomitable human spirit in face of insurmountable odds. The main protagonist of our true story – Hiroo Onoda’s life is a classic example of this fact.
Of all the wars fought in history, perhaps the war which brought the biggest misery to mankind and caused the largest loss of human life, property and resources was the 2nd world war of the 20th century. The war ended formally when Japanese officials signed the surrender documents on 2nd September 1945, on the deck of the American battleship - USS Missouri, formally ending the war.
However, many Japanese soldiers did not come to know about this decision and continued the war in their own way. Hiroo Onoda, was an exceptional character in this story, as he was one of the last Japanese soldiers to surrender, almost 29 years after the war had ended for everybody else.
Hiroo Onoda was born on March 19th, 1922 in Kamekawa village in Wakayama prefecture of Japan in a family, in which members over many generations were professional soldiers & had even fought in Japan’s ancient feudal past as Samurai soldiers. Even his own father had been a soldier (a sergeant in Japanese cavalry) and had died fighting in Second Sino Japanese war in China. It was this soldier’s blood in his vein, that would later immortalize his story.
At the age of 18 years, Hiroo Onoda joined the Japanese Imperial Army. As an upcoming promising soldier, he received his training as an intelligence officer in an elite commando training school. The Nakano school imparted trainees specialized training in guerrilla warfare, sabotaging enemy infrastructure, survival in jungles and propaganda warfare. These would later come in great use for Hiroo Onoda, who would later use these skills and become one of the last soldiers of WW 2 to surrender.
In the early stages of world war 2, Japan was on the offensive. As a part of this plan, the Japanese forces occupied the Philippines in 1942 after overthrowing the government. However, as the war progressed the tide of the war began to go against the Japanese forces, as American forces began to close in on the Japanese forces on their strongholds.
The Philippines, which was of strategic importance to the Japanese, faced an imminent invasion. Getting control of the Philippines was of paramount importance to the allied forces, as it would enable them to cut off the oil supplies to the Japanese by controlling closely located south Pacific sea trade routes. Without oil supplies, Japan’s fighting abilities would be seriously hampered. A violent confrontation began.
It was on 26th December 1944, that a young Hiroo Onoda was sent to Lubang Island in the Philippines, with a clear instruction to engage in guerrilla warfare against the American forces invading the island, thus stopping them from gaining foothold in the region. However, when Hiroo Onoda reached the island, his superior officers ordered him to fight by the conventional Japanese method, which dictated that the Japanese forces face the invading army directly, than retreat and fight guerrilla warfare from the jungles as Hiroo Onoda had been instructed.
Although the plan of Hiroo Onoda, which was to abandon defensive positions and escaping to the jungles & then from there launching surprising attacks on airstrip & jetty located close by; was much more practical, it was ignored by his superiors on the island. The outcome was obvious, the outnumbered Japanese forces were overpowered easily when the American forces reached the island on 28th February 1945.
However, Hiroo Onoda had been sent to the island with strict orders so as not to surrender or commit suicide if defeated; he along with 3 other soldiers – Corporal Shoichi Shimada, Private First Class Kinshichi Kozuka, Private Yuichi Akatsu escaped into the jungles of the island, from where they began launching guerrilla attacks on the enemy soldiers.
After eliminating the Japanese garrison, the American forces left the island, but skirmishes between local Filipino soldiers and Hiroo Onoda’s band continued. However, elsewhere Japan’s fortunes had changed for the worse as Japan was forced to surrender after atom bomb droppings. The signing of surrender documents on 2nd September 1945 signaled the end of the 2nd world war, but the news never reached many Japanese soldiers fighting in remote places. Hiroo Onoda and his group of men were one of these.
Hiroo Onoda and his men were quite far away to receive the news of Japan’s surrender. However, they did observe a remarkable decrease in war activities from October 1945 onwards. Unfortunately, they did not have any means of contacting the main Japanese forces, so never realized that Japan had surrendered. Hiroo Onoda came to the assumption that most probably the main focus of the war must have shifted elsewhere, to be noticeable from their remote island.
Hiroo Onoda’s guerrilla fight against the local population and police authorities continued. This news soon spread to the Americans who realized that some Japanese soldiers were still fighting on the island, as they didn’t know the war was over. Leaflets were dropped by airplanes, in an attempt to inform the Japanese soldiers that Japan had surrendered and the war was over.
Hiroo Onoda and his men eventually found one of these leaflets, but the training received by Onoda made him believe that this was false propaganda used by his enemies to make the Japanese forces come out of the forests so that they could be captured by the enemy forces. A lot of this mentality was because of the training in propaganda, that Hiroo Onoda had himself received.
Even pamphlets dropped at the end of the same year (1945) in the jungles of the Philippines with the signature of General Tomoyuki Yamashita of 14th Area Army, giving official surrender orders was not believed by Hiroo Onoda. He believed that it was impossible to defeat Japan, as Japanese would fight to the last man. With the thoughts firmly entrenched in his mind, Hiroo Onoda continued to fight against the people of the island.
Besides collecting fruits that they could find, the small band of Japanese soldiers also raided nearby villages and farms for their food (coconut, rice & meat of slaughtered cattle) & other basic supplies. During this, they also came into confrontation with farmers and local police authorities. However, their ample supply of ammunitions helped them with their survival. Believing that they were still soldiers fighting a war, they also destroyed boats and other targets that they believed were important
Four years passed like this. In the year 1949, one of the soldiers in Hiroo Onoda’s team began to have doubts about the decision of staying in the jungle and fighting when all around the signs indicated that the war had ended. So, with a mind full of doubts Private Akatsu, one day left the team without telling anyone and disappeared into the jungle, where he lived on his own for 6 months before deciding to surrender to the soldiers of Philippine army in March 1950.
Through Private Akatsu, the Filipino and American authorities came to know about Hiroo Onoda and his men still fighting on the island. With the details of the 3 remaining men being known now, the authorities went searching for the family members of the three remaining soldiers of the Japanese army. After some difficulty, they managed to track down family members of the soldiers. Armed with family photos and emotional letters from relatives (requesting the soldiers to surrender and come home), the authorities dropped the copies of these messages from the air, all across Lubang island in the year 1952.
Hiroo Onoda and the two men remaining with him eventually discovered these messages. Unfortunately, however, the men believed that the US forces had taken over Japan and their relatives and friends had been forced to write these letters. This wrong belief had the opposite effect on Hiroo Onoda and his men. They resolved to keep on fighting as a way to show their defiance to the army, which supposedly was occupying their homeland.
This wrong decision led to only further pain and suffering for Hiroo Onoda and his men. The soldiers of the Filipino army were searching for the Japanese soldiers responsible for the death of many people & disruption of law and order on Lubang Island. One such team encountered Hiroo Onoda and his men another 2 years later in 1954. In one such encounter Corporal Shoichi Shimada was fatally shot & died soon after.
In spite of the death of their colleague, Hiroo Onoda and his only remaining companion – Private First Class Kinshichi Kozuka would continue fighting for another 18 years against the local police and farmers. However, in 1972 luck would again run out for Hiroo Onoda, when at the time of raiding a village, his only remaining soldier – Kozuka, would die in a shoot-out with police. Hiroo Onoda was left totally alone now, but he still refused to surrender.
Although Hiroo Onoda did not surrender or return to Japan, with each passing day, he was assuming a more and more legendary status in Japan, where people were left amazed by this defiant Japanese soldier, who in spite of insurmountable odds refused to surrender to the situation or the enemies.
In 1974, another Japanese – Norio Suzuki set out on a journey around the world. An adventurer by heart, he declared to the world that his chief aim of the expedition was to meet Lieutenant Onoda, a Panda and the famous Abominable snowman, in that order. We do not know about the last 2 but in February 1974, Norio Suzuki was finally able to contact Hiroo Onoda, after reaching Lubang island. His courteous greetings & mentioning that the emperor and people of Japan, were worried about him, somehow allayed Onoda’s suspicions.
Hiroo Onoda was informed that the war had ended many decades ago and there was no point in holding out any longer. However, Hiroo Onoda, who had given his word to his superiors that he would never surrender or take his own life, insisted that he could not surrender, until ordered to do so by a senior officer.
This message was relayed back to the Japanese government, who were successful in tracking down the commanding officer of Hiroo Onoda – Major Yoshimi Taniguchi (who had become a bookseller by now), who was flown to the Lubang island. Finally, Hiroo Onoda emerged out of the jungle on 9th March 1974. 52 years old Hiroo Onoda was still attired in his worn-out service uniform & carried his sword and rifle with him and accepted the surrender orders from his commanding officer. He was pardoned by the President of Philippines for his crimes, as Hiroo Onoda always believed that he was a soldier still fighting world war 2.
Hiroo Onoda returned to Japan a hero. His indomitable spirit had won over the heart of the people. However, the only person who was not happy was Hiroo Onoda himself. The dissolution of Japan’s military force & apologizing for the war were clearly not accepted by Hiroo Onoda. Japan in post world war 2 was very different from what it was before the war & Hiroo Onoda clearly found difficulty assimilating into the new society.
Hiroo Onoda’s extreme right views on the country’s need to return to its former military might and domination of the world did not find much support. The general population had suffered enough because of the war & had no intention of returning to the past horrors. Frustrated with the outlook of the changing world, Hiroo Onoda emigrated to Brazil in 1975. In Brazil he would go on to raise cattle on a ranch and even started a family.
After many years he once again came back to Japan to create a nature camp for children. He believed that it would help them to connect better with nature. On 6th January 2014, Hiroo Onoda finally died at the age of 91 years due to heart failure on 16th January 2014 at St. Luke’s International Hospital, Tokyo, Japan.
Here it would be important to mention that, Hiroo Onoda was in truth penultimate world war 2 last Japanese soldier to surrender. The distinction of being the last world war 2 Japanese soldier surrendering was – Teruo Nakamura, a soldier born in Taiwan, who surrendered in late 1974 in Indonesia. However, Hiroo Onoda’s story remains more dramatic and adventurous and hence more popular.
Most people would believe that Hiroo Onoda’s 29 years of defiance and fight in a remote island was a totally impractical endeavor, that just reflected stubbornness and delusion. Thought that is certainly true in some ways, but his perseverance, loyalty, commitment, and love for his country, certainly commands respect.