6. A Band of Stubborn Holdouts
Without new orders to countermand his last received instructions to fight to the death, Lieutenant Onoda displayed a single-minded devotion to duty. He hid in the jungles and mountains of Lubang, and fought on for twenty nine years, into the 1970s. For nearly three decades, this most famous Japanese holdout survived with his tiny command in the dense thickets of Lubang. They erected bamboo huts, and to eke out a living, they hunted and gathered in the island’s jungle, stole rice and other food from local farmers, and slew the occasional cow for meat.
Tormented by heat and mosquitoes, rats and rain, Onoda’s band patched their increasingly threadbare uniforms, and kept their weapons in working order. In their long holdout, Onoda and his tiny band came across various leaflets that announced that the war had ended. Like other holdouts, they dismissed them as fake news: enemy propaganda and ruses of war. When they encountered a leaflet upon which had been printed the official surrender order from their commanding general, they examined it closely to determine whether it was genuine. They decided that it must be a forgery.