Hiroo Onoda is a Japanese citizen who at 20 years old, was called to join the Japanese army. He promptly quit his job and headed off to training in Japan. At Nakano School, a specialized military intelligence training, he was specifically taught methods of gathering intelligence and how to conduct guerrilla warfare. He was being groomed to go in behind enemy lines and be left with small pockets of soldiers to make life miserable for Japan’s enemies and gather intelligence in the process.
On December 26th, 1944, Onoda was sent to Lubang Island in the Philippines. His orders from his commanding officers, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, were simple:
You are absolutely forbidden to die by your own hand. It may take three years, it may take five, but whatever happens, we’ll come back for you. Until then, so long as you have one soldier, you are to continue to lead him. You may have to live on coconuts. If that’s the case, live on coconuts! Under no circumstances are you [to] give up your life voluntarily.
Onoda then linked up with Japanese soldiers already on the island and shortly thereafter the island was overrun by enemy troops. Japan eventually lost the war.Shortly after the island was conquered the remaining Japanese soldiers split up into small groups of 3 or 4 and headed into the jungle.
Most of these small groups were quickly killed off. However, Onoda’s group consisting of himself, Yuichi Akatsu, Siochi Shimada, and Kinshichi Kozuka, were not. They continued to use guerrilla warfare tactics to harry the enemy troops as best they could while strictly rationing supplies including food, ammo, etc. Supplementing their small rice rations with bananas, coconuts, and other food from the jungle as well as doing raids on local farms when they could manage it.
They felt that there was no way that Japan could have lost so quickly since the time when they were deployed. Japan couldn’t lose, so the war must still be going.Years passed in the jungle with these four soldiers continuing to perform their sworn duty of harrying the enemy at every opportunity and gather intelligence as best they could.
As years went by, Akatsu had quietly surrendered while Shimada was killed in a skirmish. Now in October 1972, after 27 years of hiding, Kozuka was killed during a fight with a Filipino patrol.
The Japanese had long thought he had already died. They didn’t think he could have survived so long in the jungle. But now when they had his body, they began thinking perhaps Onoda was also still alive, even though he had also long since been declared dead.
The Japanese then sent a search party to try to find Onoda in the jungle. Unfortunately, he was too good at hiding with 27 years of practice. They could not find him. Onoda continued his mission.
Finally in 1974 a college student, Nario Suzuki, decided to travel the world. Among his list of things to do on his journey was to find “Onoda, a panda, and the Abominable Snowman”. He traveled to the island and trekked through the jungle searching for signs of Onoda. Shockingly, where literally thousands of others through the last 29 years had failed, Suzuki succeeded. He found Onoda’s dwelling and Onoda himself.
Suzuki then traveled back to Japan with the news he’d found Onoda. Major Taniguchi, now retired and working at a book store, was then brought back to the island and to Onoda to tell him that Japan had lost the war and he was to give up his weapons and surrender to the Filipinos.
As you might expect, after living in the jungle doing what he thought was his duty helping Japan, now only turning out to be wasting 29 years of his life, this came as a crushing blow to Onoda.
On March 10th, 1975 at the age of 52, Onoda in full uniform that was somehow still immaculately kept, marched out of the jungle and surrendered his samurai sword to the Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos who pardoned Onoda for his crimes, given that Onoda had thought he was still at war the entire time.
We can’t ignore that this was a man who did something great with respect to doing something that few others could have done; had circumstances been as he thought, what he did was something to be admired. He faced (what he thought) was death around every corner and lived in an extreme situation for 30 years, fighting for his country. That should be respected.
Bonus Onoda Facts:
- When Onoda returned to Japan, he was seen as a hero. He was also given his pay for the last 30 years. Life was much different in Japan now than he remembered, and not at all to his liking. Many of the traditional Japanese virtues he cherished such as patriotism were nearly non-existent in the culture; indeed in his view Japan now cow-towed to the rest of the world and had lost its pride and sense of itself. So he moved to Brazil and used his pay to buy himself a ranch there and eventually married.
- Onoda released an autobiography: No Surrender, My Thirty-Year War in which he details his life as a guerrilla fighter.
- After reading about a Japanese teenager who had murdered his own parents in 1980, Onoda became even more distressed at the state of his country and young people in Japan. He then returned to Japan in 1984, establishing a nature school for young people where he could teach them various survival techniques and teach them to be more independent and better Japanese citizens.
- In May 1996, he returned to the Philippines to the island he had lived for 30 years donating $10,000 to local schools; as you might imagine, he is not too popular with the locals there, despite the donation.
Bonus Onoda Quotes:
- Men should never give up. I never do. I would hate to lose.
- Men should never compete with women. If they do, the guys will always lose. That is because women have a lot more endurance. My mother said that, and she was so right.
- One must always be civic-minded. Every minute of every day, for 30 years, I served my country. I have never even wondered if that was good or bad for me as an individual.
- Parents should raise more independent children. When I was living in Brazil in the 1980s, I read that a 19-year-old Japanese man killed his parents after failing the university entrance exam. I was stunned. Why had he killed his parents instead of moving out? I guess he didn’t have enough confidence. I thought this was a sign that Japanese were getting too weak. I decided to move back to Japan to establish a nature school to give children more power.
- Parents should remember that they are supposed to die before their children. Nobody will help them later on, so the greatest gift parents can give their children is independence.
- Never complain. When I did, my mother said that if I didn’t like my life, I could just give up and die. She reminded me that when I was inside her, I told her that I wanted to be born, so she delivered me, breastfed me and changed my diapers. She said that I had to be brave.
Sources:
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