Hiroo Onoda

Hiroo Onoda
Onoda, c. 1944
Born	(1922-03-19)19 March 1922 Kamekawa, Wakayama, Empire of Japan
Died	16 January 2014(2014-01-16) (aged 91) Tokyo, Japan
Allegiance	Empire of Japan
Service/branch	Imperial Japanese Army
Years of service	1942–1945 (continued service until 1974)
Rank	Second Lieutenant
Battles/wars	World War II Philippines campaign
Other work	Cattle farmer

Hiroo Onoda (Japanese: 小野田 寛郎, Hepburn: Onoda Hiroo, 19 March 1922 – 16 January 2014) was an officer of the Imperial Japanese Army who fought in World War II but did not surrender at the war's end in September 1945. For the next 29 years, Onoda carried out guerilla warfare on Lubang Island in the Philippines, surviving on wild fruits and stolen food, and on several occasions engaging in shootouts with locals and the police. In 1974, adventurer Norio Suzuki found Onoda and relayed the message that the Emperor wanted him to return to Japan, but he still refused to surrender until he was relieved of duty by his former commanding officer, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, who was found and flown to Lubang. Onoda surrendered on 11 March, and received a hero's welcome in Japan.

Early life and military 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 Nakano Military School, where he was instructed in guerilla warfare.

Hiroo Onoda (right) with his younger brother Shigeo, c. 1944

On 26 December 1944, Onoda was sent to lead guerilla 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 wild fruits and stolen game and rice, and engaging in occasional shootouts with locals and the police. Onoda, along with his fellow soldiers, allegedly killed up to 30 Filipino civilians on Lubang during their time in hiding.

The first time they saw a leaflet announcing that Japan had surrendered was in October 1945; another cell of guerillas had killed a cow and found a leaflet 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 Lubang. 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. This seemed like a security breach to the others, and they became even more cautious. In 1952, letters and family pictures urging them to surrender were dropped from an aircraft, but the three soldiers concluded that this 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 by a shot from a police search party. Kozuka was killed by two shots fired by local police on 19 October 1972, while he and Onoda were burning piles of harvested rice, which they intended as a beacon for Japanese forces. Onoda was alone from that point.

On 20 February 1974, Onoda encountered Norio Suzuki, a Japanese university dropout who was traveling around the world and who told his friends he was looking for "Lieutenant Onoda, a panda, and the abominable snowman, in that order". Suzuki found Onoda after just four days of searching on Lubang. Onoda 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 he was waiting for an order to surrender 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 former commanding officer, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, who had since become a bookseller. Taniguchi was flown to Lubang, and on 9 March 1974, finally met with Onoda and fulfilled a promise he had made in 1944: "Whatever happens, we'll come back for you". Taniguchi issued Onoda the following orders:

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 of Staff's Headquarters is relieved of all military duties.
3. Units and individuals under the command of 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.

Onoda handing over his sword to President of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos on the day of his surrender, 11 March 1974

Onoda was thus relieved of duty, and formally surrendered to President of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos at Malacañang Palace in Manila on 11 March 1974, 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 held out for 28 years, 6 months, and 7 days (10,415 days) after Japan's surrender; 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 on his return. Some urged him to run for a seat in the National Diet, Japan's legislature. Later in 1974, he published No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War, a best-selling autobiography which detailed his life as a guerrilla fighter in a war that was long over. 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. 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 from complications due to pneumonia at St. Luke's International Hospital in Tokyo. Chief Cabinet Secretary and later Prime Minister 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".

Bibliography

• Onoda, Hiroo (1974). わがルバン島の30年戦争 [Waga Ruban-tō no 30-nen sensō] (in Japanese). Tokyo: Kodansha. OCLC 976947108.
• Onoda, Hiroo (1974). No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War. Translated by Terry, Charles S. New York: Kodansha International. ISBN 978-0-87011-240-9.

Interviews

• Hiroo Onoda describes his private thirty years of war against the United States. Broadcast on The Mike Douglas Show, February 14, 1975. OCLC 27191000

See also

• Japanese holdouts
  • Shoichi Yokoi, among the last three Japanese holdouts to be found after the war, discovered in Guam in 1972
• List of solved missing person cases
• Siege of Baler

Further reading

• Herzog, Werner (2021). Das Dämmern der Welt (The Twilight World). Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH & Co. ISBN 9783446270763.
• Robert D. McFadden, "Hiroo Onoda, Soldier Who Hid in Jungle for Decades, Dies at 91," New York Times, 17 January 2014.

External links

• Thirty Years in the Jungle! Could you do it? (biography), Primitive Ways (also with Shoichi Yokoi).
• Bellows, Alan, The Soldier Who Wouldn't Quit, Damn Interesting.
• Onoda Shizen Juku (in Japanese)
• Article and 5:57 minute video of a 2010 news broadcast showing interview with 88-year-old Onoda, his wife, color footage of when he left the jungle in 1974, etc. abc.net.au
• Taylor, Alan. Image No. 45 (last at bottom): Photo of Onoda wearing his sword, on his last day before being relieved, with narrative caption, World War II: After the War, A Retrospective in 20 Parts. The Atlantic, 30 October 2011.
• "The War is Over... Please Come Out: Japanese Soldier Surrenders 29 Years After the End of World War II", History: 1900s, About, archived from the original on 18 May 2008, retrieved 27 March 2004.
• Hiroo Onoda obituary The Daily Telegraph.
• Hiroo Onoda fought WWII For 30 Additional Years (video)
• Hiroo Onoda (middle): The Imperial Japanese soldier who hid in the Philippine jungle for 30 years after WWII. March 11, 1974 (photo), Imgur.