Japanese soldiers were sent to the islands to defend them at all costs. Many of them, including Lieutenant Hiroo Onodu, were ordered to fight to the death. Surrender was not an option, so Hiroo Onoda blindly followed them.
Even when World War II was long over, he continued to fight a full 29 years later.
In the 20th century, Japan changed its ancient concept of the Bushido military code of conduct, as a "way of dying" that required samurai to be willing to lay down their lives for their masters. But this concept was used in World War II as a propaganda tool and as a culture of death before surrender, which was considered an unforgivable sin.
Such an attitude put Lieutenant Hiroo and his men in a situation of hiding in the mountains of Lubang Island in the Philippines, after Allied forces took it over from the Japanese in February 1945.
During his stay in the jungle, Onoda fought a guerrilla war and had several skirmishes with local Filipinos and police. In October 1945, he and his group found a leaflet that read: "The war ended on August 15. Get off the mountain!"
Later that year, he came across more such leaflets, but he and his soldiers were convinced that it was American propaganda.
And so they remained in the jungles of the island of Lubang for the next 29 years.
They continued to fight with the local Philippine police, so they concluded that the war was still going on. One of his men eventually surrendered in 1950. Another was killed in 1954.
After they burned a rice field in 1972, as part of the guerrilla war they were waging, the police killed Onod's last comrade-in-arms, leaving him alone in the jungle.
In February 1974, Onoda finally decided to look for soldier Norio Suzuki. He found him, but the lieutenant still refused to surrender. He agreed only on the condition that his commander, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, order him to do so.
Suzuki returned to Japan, found Taniguchi, then an old man working in a bookstore, and brought him to Lubang. And finally, 29 years later, Onoda received the order he wanted to hear.
Before returning to Japan, Hiroo Onoda handed over his sword to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos as a sign of surrender. Marcos acquitted him of the murders and let him go home.
Onoda was welcomed in Japan. However, he could no longer cope in a country that has completely changed since he last stayed there.
In 1975, he went to Brazil, where he joined the Japanese community there and engaged in animal husbandry. He returned to Japan in 1984 and started a school for survival in the wild. He also wrote a book about his incredible feat.
He died on January 16, 2014 in Tokyo. He was 91 years old.
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