Hiroo Onoda

Hiroo Onoda was a second lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II and one of the last Japanese holdouts who continued fighting after the war's end in 1945. For almost 29 years, Onoda carried out guerrilla warfare on Lubang Island in the Philippines, on several occasions engaging in shootouts with locals and the police. Onoda (who initially held out with one soldier who surrendered in 1950, and two who were killed, in 1954 and 1972) was contacted in 1974, but refused to surrender until he was relieved of duty by his former commanding officer, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, who was flown to Lubang. Onoda surrendered on 10 March 1974, and received a hero's welcome in Japan.

Early life and service
Onoda was born on 19 March 1922, in Kamekawa, Wakayama Prefecture, in the Empire of Japan. In 1939, he went to work at a branch of the Tajima Yoko trading company in Wuhan, China, and in 1942 was conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army. Onoda trained as an intelligence officer at the Futamata branch of the army's Nakano School, where he was instructed in guerrilla warfare. On 26 December 1944, Onoda was sent to lead guerrilla warfare operations on Lubang Island in the Japanese-occupied Philippines. His mission was to destroy the island's airstrip and the pier at its harbor, as well as to destroy any enemy planes or boats which attempted to land. Onoda's orders further stated that under no circumstances was he to surrender to the enemy or take his own life. When he arrived on Lubang, Onoda joined forces with a group of Japanese soldiers who had been sent there previously. The officers in the group outranked Onoda and prevented him from carrying out his assignment, which made it easier for United States and Philippine Commonwealth forces to take the island when they landed on 28 February 1945. After a short time, all but Second Lieutenant Onoda and three other soldiers (Private Yuichi Akatsu, Corporal Shōichi Shimada, and Private First Class Kinshichi Kozuka) had died or surrendered. Onoda led the men into the island's mountains.

Time in hiding
While in hiding, Onoda and his companions continued their mission, carrying out guerrilla activities, surviving on bananas, coconuts, and stolen rice and cows, and on several occasions engaging in shootouts with locals and the police. They successfully evaded American and Filipino search parties, and attacked villagers whom they believed to be enemy guerrillas, allegedly killing up to 30 civilians on the island during their time in hiding.

The first time Onoda's group saw a leaflet announcing that Japan had surrendered was in October 1945; another cell of Japanese guerillas had found a note left behind by islanders which read: "The war ended on 15 August. Come down from the mountains!" They concluded that the leaflet was Allied propaganda, and also believed that they would not have been fired on if the war had indeed been over. Toward the end of 1945, leaflets with a surrender order from General Tomoyuki Yamashita of the Japanese Fourteenth Area Army were dropped by air on the island. Onoda's group studied it closely to determine whether it was genuine, and decided it was not.

Akatsu separated from the group in September 1949, and surrendered to Philippine forces in March 1950, after six months on his own. The others considered this a desertion and a betrayal, and became even more cautious. In February 1952, letters from the three soldiers' families urging their surrender, along with family photographs, were dropped by air, but the group concluded it was a trick. Shimada was wounded in the leg in a shootout with local fishermen in June 1953, after which Onoda nursed him back to health. On 7 May 1954, Shimada was killed in a shootout with a Philippine Army mountain unit who accidentally encountered the soldiers while training. On 19 October 1972, Kozuka was killed in a shootout with local police while conducting a raid in which he and Onoda burned piles of rice harvested by the villagers, which they intended as a signal to Japanese forces that the group was still alive and carrying out its duties. Onoda was alone from this point.

On 20 February 1974, Onoda encountered Norio Suzuki, a Japanese adventurer who was traveling around the world and told friends he was looking for "Lieutenant Onoda, a panda, and the abominable snowman, in that order". Suzuki found Onoda after four days of searching on Lubang, and Onoda later described their meeting in an interview: "This hippie boy, Suzuki, came to the island to listen to the feelings of a Japanese soldier". Onoda and Suzuki became friends, but Onoda still refused to surrender, telling Suzuki that he was waiting for orders from his commanding officer. He named Major Yoshimi Taniguchi (commander of the Special Intelligence Squadron of the Fourteenth Area Army, who had given Onoda his final instructions) as such, although Onoda's real immediate superior was Lieutenant General Shizuo Yokoyama, commander of the Eighth Division, who had issued his orders.

Suzuki returned to Japan with photographs of him and Onoda as proof of their encounter, and the Japanese government located Taniguchi, who had since become a bookseller. Taniguchi flew to Lubang with Suzuki, and on 9 March, met with Onoda in the jungle and issued him the following orders:



Onoda was thus relieved of duty, and on 10 March 1974 surrendered to Philippine forces at the radar base on Lubang. On 11 March, a formal surrender ceremony was held by President of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos at Malacañang Palace in Manila, in an international media sensation. Marcos granted Onoda a full pardon for crimes he had committed while in hiding. He turned over his sword, a functioning Arisaka Type 99 rifle, 500 rounds of ammunition and several hand grenades, as well as a dagger his mother had given him in 1944 to kill himself with if captured. Onoda had held out for 28 years, 6 months, and 8 days (10,416 days) after Japan's surrender in 1945; only Private Teruo Nakamura, arrested on 18 December 1974 in Indonesia, held out longer.

Later life
Onoda, who had been declared dead by the Japanese government in 1959, received a hero's welcome upon his return to Japan in 1974. The Japanese government offered him a large sum of money in back pay, which he refused, and when money was pressed on him by well-wishers, he donated it to Yasukuni Shrine.

Onoda was reportedly unhappy at receiving such attention and at what he saw as the withering of traditional Japanese values. He then wrote No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War, a best-selling autobiography. In April 1975, he followed the example of his elder brother Tadao and left Japan for Brazil, where he became a cattle farmer. He married in 1976 and assumed a leading role in the Colônia Jamic ("Jamic Colony"), a Japanese Brazilian community in Terenos, Mato Grosso do Sul. Onoda also allowed the Brazilian Air Force to conduct training sessions on the land that he owned. After reading about a Japanese teenager who murdered his parents in 1980, Onoda returned to Japan in 1984 and established the Onoda Shizen Juku ("Onoda Nature School") educational camp for young people, held at various locations in Japan.

After the war, interviews by Filipino media with villagers who had lived on Lubang during Onoda's time in hiding alleged that he and his men had killed up to 30 civilians there, which was not mentioned in his autobiography. In 1996, Onoda visited the town of Looc on Lubang after his wife Machie (née Honoku) arranged a US$10,000 scholarship donation on his behalf to the local school. The town council presented Onoda with a resolution asking him to compensate the families of seven people whom he allegedly killed, and about 50 relatives of the alleged victims staged a protest against his visit.

After 1984, Onoda spent three months of the year in Brazil. He was awarded the Santos-Dumont Merit Medal by the Brazilian Air Force on 6 December 2004, and on 21 February 2010, the Legislative Assembly of Mato Grosso do Sul awarded him the title of Cidadão ("Citizen"). In 2006, Machie Onoda became the head of the conservative Japan Women's Association (JWA), established by the ultranationalist organization Nippon Kaigi in 2001.

Death
On 16 January 2014, Onoda died of heart failure resulting from pneumonia at St. Luke's International Hospital in Tokyo. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga commented on his death, saying "I vividly remember that I was reassured of the end of the war when Mr Onoda returned to Japan".

Interviews

 * Hiroo Onoda describes his private thirty years of war against the United States. Broadcast on The Mike Douglas Show, February 14, 1975.