Soldier who hid in jungle for 3 decades dies at 91
Print Edition
A Japanese soldier who hid in the Philippine jungle for three decades, refusing to believe World War II was over until his former commander returned and ordered him to surrender, has died in Tokyo aged 91.
Hiroo Onoda waged a guerilla campaign in Lubang Island near Luzon until he was finally persuaded in 1974 that peace had broken out, ignoring leaflet drops and successive attempts to convince him the Imperial Army had been defeated.
He died in a Tokyo hospital on Thursday of heart failure.
Onoda was the last of several dozen so-called holdouts scattered around Asia, men who symbolized the astonishingly dogged perseverance of those called upon to fight for their emperor. Their number included a soldier arrested in the jungles of Guam in 1972.
Trained as an information officer and guerrilla tactics coach, Onoda was sent to Lubang in 1944 and ordered never to surrender, never to resort to suicidal attacks and to hold firm until reinforcements arrived. He and three other soldiers continued to obey that order long after Japan’s 1945 defeat.
Their existence became widely known in 1950, when one of their number emerged and returned to Japan.
The others continued to survey military facilities in the area, attacking local residents and occasionally fighting with Philippine forces. One of them died soon afterwards.
Tokyo declared them dead after nine years of fruitless search. But in 1972, Onoda and the other surviving soldier got involved in a shootout with Philippine troops.
His comrade died, but Onoda managed to escape.
The incident caused a sensation in Japan, which took his family members to Lubang in the hope of persuading him that hostilities were over.
Onoda later explained he had believed attempts to coax him out were the work of a puppet regime installed in Tokyo by the United States. He read about his home country in newspapers that searchers deliberately scattered in the jungle for him to find, but dismissed their content as propaganda.
The regular overflight by US planes during the long years of the Vietnam war also convinced him that the battle he had joined was still being played out across Asia.
It was not until 1974, when his old commanding officer visited him in his jungle hideout to rescind the original order, that Onoda’s war eventually ended.
Asked what he had been thinking about for the last 30 years, he told reporters: “Carrying out my orders.”
Onoda had difficultly adapting to the new reality and emigrated to Brazil in 1975 to start a cattle ranch, although he continued to travel back and forth.
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