On December 17, 1944, the Japanese army sent a twenty-three year old soldier named Hiroo Onoda to the Philippines to join the Sugi Brigade. He was stationed in the Philippines, and his orders were to carry out guerrilla warfare. At that time, the Asian leg of WWII was raging and his mission was to destroy Lubang island's (approximately seventy-five miles southwest of Manila) airstrip and the pier at its harbor ahead of the Allied invasion.
Before leaving, his division commander told him that under no circumstances was he to give up his life voluntarily; however long the war lasts, so long as he has one soldier, he has to continue to lead him even if he has to live on coconuts. It turned out that Onoda was exceptionally good at following orders, and it would be 29 years before he finally laid down his arms and surrendered.
A couple of months after Onoda came to Lubang, the Allied forces defeated the Japanese. As they moved inland, Onoda and the three other guerrilla soldiers in his group retreated into the dense jungle. They survived by rationing their rice supply, eating coconuts and green bananas from the jungle, and occasionally killing one of the locals’ cows for meat which would sometimes bring them into conflict with the locals. It was upon killing one of these cows that one of the soldiers found a note left behind by a local resident, and it said, “The war ended on August 15. Come down from the mountains!”
The guerrilla soldiers decided that it was an Allied propaganda trick to coax them out of hiding. They got several such messages over the years - fliers were dropped from planes, newspapers were left, and they got letters from relatives with photos. Each attempt was viewed by the soldiers as a clever hoax constructed by the Allies. They braved jungle heat, incessant rain, rats, insects, and the occasional armed search party for years. Any villagers they sighted were seen as spies, and attacked by the four men, and over the years a number of people were wounded or killed by them.
In a few years, one of the soldiers left and one was killed. The two remaining soldiers operated under the conviction that the Japanese army would eventually retake the island from the Allies, and that their guerrilla tactics would prove invaluable in that effort. On October of 1972, one of the remaining soldiers was killed by a Filipino police patrol. Onoda escaped back into the jungle, and was now alone in his delusional mission.
He had been declared legally dead about thirteen years earlier but after this skirmish, it was concluded that he was still alive. More search parties were sent in to find him, however he successfully evaded them each time. But in February of 1974, after Onoda had been alone in the jungle for a year and a half, a Japanese college student named Norio Suzuki managed to track him down.
Onoda and Suzuki became good friends. Suzuki tried to convince him that the war had ended long ago, but Onoda explained that he would not surrender unless his commander ordered him to do so. Suzuki convinced Onoda to meet him again about two weeks later in a prearranged location. Suzuki returned to the island with Onoda’s one-time superior officer, Major Taniguchi. Onoda came in his uniform, wearing his sword and carrying his rifle, 500 rounds of ammunition, and several hand grenades. Major Taniguchi, who had long since retired from the military and become a bookseller, read aloud the orders:
Command from Headquarters, Fourteenth Area Army. Orders from the Special Squadron, Chief of Staff’s Headquarters, Bekabak, September 19, 1900 hours.
“1. In accordance with the Imperial Command, the Fourteenth Area Army has ceased all combat activity.
“2. In accordance with Military Headquarters Command No. A–2003, the Special Squadron in the Chief of Staff’s Headquarters is relieved of all military duties.
“3. Units and individuals under the command of the Special Squadron are to cease military activities and operations immediately and place themselves under the command of the nearest superior officer. When no officer can be found, they are to communicate with the American or Philippine forces and follow their directives.
“Special Squadron, Chief of Staff’s Headquarters, Fourteenth Area Army, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi.”
Onoda waited for some time feeling sure Major Taniguchi would come up to him and whisper, “That was so much talk. I will tell you your real orders later.” After all, Suzuki was present, and the major could not talk to him confidentially. He waited for some time but when the major remained silent, he realized the impossible: This was no trick - Japan had really lost the war! After a moment of quiet anger, Onoda pulled back the bolt on his rifle and unloaded the bullets, and then took off his pack and laid the rifle across it. When the reality of it sunk in, he wept openly.
By the time he formally surrendered to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos in 1974, Onoda had spent twenty nine of his fifty two years hiding in the jungle, fighting a war that had long been over for the rest of the world. He and his guerrilla soldiers had killed some thirty people unnecessarily, and wounded about a hundred others. But they had done so under the belief that they were at war, and consequently President Marcos granted him a full pardon for the crimes he had committed while in hiding.
