5. A One Man War in the Jungles
Even when Hiroo Onoda and his companions recovered airdopped letters and pictures from their own families that urged them to surrender, the band convinced themselves that it was a trick. As the years flew by, Onoda’s tiny four man contingent steadily dwindled, as he lost comrades to a variety of causes. In 1949, one of them simply left the group, wandered alone around Lubang for six months, and eventually surrendered to the authorities. Another was slain by a search party in 1954.
His last companion was shot dead by police in the early 1970s, when they came upon the duo as they tried to burn the rice stores of local farmers. Onoda was thus finally alone. Yet he continued to fight, faithful to his interpretation of his last received orders, and doggedly conducted a one man war. In 1974, a backpack travelling Japanese hippie found Onoda, and befriended him. He managed to convince the holdout that the war had ended decades earlier, but Onoda still refused to surrender, absent orders from a superior officer.