Soldier Comes Out of Jungle to Surrender Decades After War Had Ended
Hiroo Onoda (1922 – 2014) was a 22 year old lieutenant in Japanese Imperial Army when the US invaded the Philippines to liberate it from the Japanese in 1944. Onoda was an intelligence officer, who had received special training as a commando, so his superiors sent him on a reconnaissance mission to the island of Lubang in the western Philippines. He was directed to spy on US forces in the area, and to carry out guerrilla operations. He was ordered to never surrender, but was also instructed that, under no circumstances, was he authorized to take his own life.
Upon arriving on Lubang, Onoda was prevented from carrying out his mission by meddling from senior Japanese officers on the island. Within months, US forces invaded Lubang, and swiftly killed or captured all Japanese personnel on the island, with the exception of Onoda and three Japanese enlisted men. Taking charge of the survivors, Onoda took to the hills. As American forces overran the Philippines, Onoda, was cut off from his chain of command, and so did not get official word of Japan’s surrender in 1945. Without fresh orders countermanding his last ones to fight to the death, Onoda stayed hidden in the jungles and mountains, and fought on for 29 years.
For nearly three decades, Onoda and his tiny command survived in the dense thickets of Lubang. They threw together bamboo huts and eked out a living by hunting and gathering in the jungle, stealing rice and other food from local farmers, and killing the occasional cow for meat. Tormented by rats and rain, heat and mosquitoes, Onoda’s small unit made do, patching and repatching their increasingly threadbare uniforms, and keeping their weapons in working order.
Over the years, Onoda and his men came across various leaflets announcing that the war had ended, but dismissed them as fake news. Even a leaflet containing a copy of the official surrender order from their commanding general failed to convince them. Onoda and his men examined it closely, and concluded that it was a fake. Even when they recovered airdropped letters and pictures from their own families urging them to surrender, they convinced themselves that it was all part of an elaborate fake news operation to trick them.
Over the years, Onoda’s four man unit steadily shrank, as comrades were lost in various ways. In 1949, one of them simply up and left. He struck off on his own, roamed Lubang for six months, then surrendered to authorities. A second one was killed by a search party in 1954. The third and final companion was shot dead by police in 1972, who came upon him and Onoda as they were trying to burn some farmers’ rice stores. Onoda was now alone, but carried on a one man war.
In 1974, a Japanese hippie backpacker found Onoda, and befriended him. He managed to convince Onoda that the war had ended decades earlier, but he refused to surrender without orders from a superior officer. The hippie returned to Japan with photographic proof of his encounter with Onoda, and contacted the Japanese government, which tracked down Onoda’s last commanding officer.
Travelling to Lubang, Onoda’s wartime commander personally told him that the war was over, and that he was released from military duty. In 1974, clad in his threadbare uniform, Lieutenant Onoda handed in his sword and other weapons to representatives of the US and Filipino military. Nearly three decades after the conclusion of World War II, Onoda’s war came to an end.
He returned to a hero’s welcome in Japan, but admiration for his single minded devotion to duty was not universal. Back in Lubang, the locals did not see Onoda as a conscientious and honorable man devoted to duty. Instead, they viewed him as a bloody minded idiot who had needlessly engaged in a 29 year homicidal rampage. During that period, Onoda had inflicted sundry harms upon the Lubangese, stealing, destroying, and sabotaging their property. He had also killed about 30 local police and farmers, with whom he and his band had clashed while stealing or “requisitioning” food and supplies to continue fighting a war that had ended decades earlier.