Hiroo Onoda

Hiroo Onoda
Hiroo Onoda, c. 1944-45
Allegiance	Empire of Japan
Service / branch	Imperial Japanese Army
Years of service	1941 - 1974
Rank	Second Lieutenant
Battles / wars	World War II Philippines Campaign (1944–45)
Other work	Cattle Farmer

Second Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda (小野田 寛郎 Onoda Hiroo; born March 19, 1922) is a former Japanese army intelligence officer who fought in World War II, and did not surrender until 1974, having spent almost thirty years holding out in the Philippines.

Military service

Onoda was trained as an Intelligence officer by the commando class "Futamata" (二俣分校, futamata-bunkou) of Nakano School, and on 26 December 1944 was sent to Lubang Island in the Philippines. He was ordered to do all that he could to hamper enemy attacks on the island, including destroying the airstrip and the pier at the harbor, his orders also stating that under no circumstances was he to surrender or take his own life.

When Onoda landed on the island, he linked up 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 US and Philippine Commonwealth forces to take the island when they landed on 28 February 1945. Within a short time of the landing, all but Onoda and three other soldiers had either died or surrendered and Onoda, who had been promoted to Lieutenant, ordered the men to take to the hills.

Time in hiding

Onoda continued his campaign, initially living in the mountains with three fellow soldiers (Private Yūichi Akatsu, Corporal Shōichi Shimada and Private First Class Kinshichi Kozuka). The first time they saw a leaflet which claimed that the war was over was in October 1945; another cell had killed a cow and found a leaflet left behind by islanders which read: "The war ended on August 15. Come down from the mountains!" However, they mistrusted the leaflet, since another cell had been fired upon a few days previously. 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.

Towards the end of 1945 leaflets were dropped by air with a surrender order printed on them from General Tomoyuki Yamashita of the Fourteenth Area Army. They were in hiding over a year at this point, and this leaflet was the only evidence they had the war was over. Onoda's group looked very closely at the leaflet to determine whether it was genuine or not, and decided it was a hoax.

One of the four, Yuichi Akatsu, walked away from the others in September 1949 and surrendered to Filipino forces in 1950 after six months on his own. This seemed like a security problem to the others and they became even more careful.

In 1952 letters and family pictures were dropped from aircraft urging them to surrender, but the three soldiers concluded that this was a hoax. Shimada was shot in the leg during a shoot-out with local fishermen in June 1953, following which Onoda nursed him back to health. On 7 May 1954, Shimada was killed by a shot fired by a search party looking for the men.

Kozuka was killed by two shots fired by local police on 19 October 1972, when he and Onoda burned rice that had been collected by farmers, as part of their guerrilla activities, leaving Onoda alone. Though Onoda had been officially declared dead in December 1959, this event suggested that it was likely he was still alive and search parties were sent out, though none was successful.

On 20 February 1974, Onoda met a Japanese college dropout, Norio Suzuki, who was traveling the world and was looking for "Lieutenant Onoda, a panda, and the Abominable Snowman, in that order". Onoda and Suzuki became friends, but Onoda still refused to surrender, saying that he was waiting for orders from a superior officer.

Suzuki returned to Japan with photographs of himself and Onoda as proof of their encounter, and the Japanese government located Onoda's commanding officer, Major Taniguchi, who had since become a bookseller. He flew to Lubang and on 9 March 1974 informed Onoda of the defeat of Japan in WWII and ordered him to lay down his arms.

Lieutenant Onoda emerged from the jungle 29 years after the end of World War II, and accepted the commanding officer's order of surrender in his uniform and sword, with his Arisaka Type 99 rifle still in operating condition, 500 rounds of ammunition and several hand grenades. This makes him the penultimate fighting Japanese soldier of World War II, 7 months before Teruo Nakamura.

Though he had killed some thirty Philippine inhabitants of the island and engaged in several shootouts with the police, the circumstances of these events were taken into consideration, and Onoda received a pardon from President Ferdinand Marcos.

Later life

Onoda was so popular following his return to Japan that some Japanese urged him to run for the Diet. He also released an autobiography, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War, shortly after his surrender, which detailed his life as a guerrilla fighter in a war that was long over. However, Onoda was reportedly unhappy being the subject of so much attention and troubled by what he saw as the withering of traditional Japanese virtues.

He said "Before ww2, we had told that don't spare your life. We had lived with being conscious of death. It's good we can live without being concious of the death today. But the citizens in Japan seems wasting their valuable times. Without being concious of the death, how can we spend our every single valuable time meaningfully?"

In April 1975 he followed the example of his elder brother Tadao and left Japan for Brazil, where he raised cattle. He married in 1976, and assumed a leading role in the local Japanese community.

After reading about a Japanese teenager who had 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 different locations in Japan.

Onoda revisited Lubang Island in 1996, donating $10,000 for the local school on Lubang. His wife, Machie Onoda, became the head of the conservative Japan Women's Association in 2006. He currently spends three months of the year in Brazil. Onoda was conferred Merit medal of Santos-Dumont by the Brazilian Air Force on December 6, 2004.

In popular culture

In 1981, the English progressive rock band Camel released a concept album Nude, which derives from "Onoda", based on the story.

See also

• Shoichi Yokoi
• Japanese holdout
• Survival techniques

Selected bibliography

• Onoda, Hiroo. No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War. Translated by Charles S. Terry

ISBN 0-7394-0756-2

ISBN 0-233-96697-8

ISBN 0-87011-240-6

ISBN 1-55750-663-9

External links

• "The War is Over... Please Come Out": Japanese Soldier Surrenders 29 Years After the End of World War II
• "Words to Live by" - Interview with Hiroo Onoda (Judit Kawaguchi, Jan 2007, Japan Times)
• "Thirty Years in the Jungle! Could you do it?" short Biography (also with Shoichi Yokoi)
• "The Soldier Who Wouldn't Quit" article by Alan Bellows
• Onoda Shizen Juku homepage (Japanese)