Hiroo Onoda

The native form of this personal name is Onoda Hiroo. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.

Hiroo Onoda (Japanese: 小野田 寛郎, Hepburn: Onoda Hiroo, 19 March 1922 – 16 January 2014) was a Japanese second lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. One of the last Japanese holdouts, he continued fighting for decades after the war's end in 1945.

Hiroo Onoda
Onoda, c. 1944
Native name	小野田 寛郎
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

For almost 29 years, Onoda carried out guerrilla warfare on Lubang Island in the Philippines, on several occasions engaging in shootouts with locals and the police. Onoda initially held out with three other soldiers: one surrendered in 1950, and two who were killed, one in 1954 and one in 1972. They did not believe flyers saying that the war was over. Onoda was contacted in 1974 by a Japanese explorer, but still refused to surrender until he was relieved of duty by his former commanding officer, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, who flew from Japan to Lubang to issue the order.

Onoda surrendered on 10 March 1974 and received a hero's welcome when he returned to Japan. That year he wrote and published his autobiography. He later followed his brother to Brazil, where he joined an established Japanese immigrant community in Mato Grosso do Sul. He set up a cattle ranch. After 1984, he spent three months of the year in Brazil and the rest of his time in Japan.

Early life and 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 army's Nakano School, where he was instructed in guerrilla warfare.

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

On 26 December 1944, Onoda was sent to lead guerrilla 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 that 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 bananas, coconuts, and stolen rice and cows, and on several occasions engaging in shootouts with locals and the police. They successfully evaded American and Filipino search parties, and attacked villagers whom they believed to be enemy guerrillas, allegedly killing up to 30 civilians on the island during their time in hiding.

The first time Onoda's group saw a leaflet announcing that Japan had surrendered was in October 1945; another cell of Japanese guerillas had found a note left behind by islanders that read: "The war ended on 15 August. Come down from the mountains!" The men concluded that the leaflet was Allied propaganda, and believed that they would not have been fired on if the war was indeed 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 the island. 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, after six months on his own, surrendered to Philippine forces in March 1950. The others considered this a desertion and a betrayal, and became even more cautious. In February 1952, letters from the three soldiers' families urging their surrender, along with family photographs, were dropped by air, but the group concluded it 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 in a shootout with a Philippine Army mountain unit who accidentally encountered the soldiers while training. On 19 October 1972, Kozuka was killed in a shootout with local police while conducting a raid in which he and Onoda burned piles of rice harvested by the villagers, which they intended as a signal to Japanese forces that the group was still alive and carrying out its duties. Onoda was alone from this point.

On 20 February 1974, Onoda encountered Norio Suzuki, a Japanese adventurer who was traveling around the world and told friends he was looking for "Lieutenant Onoda, a panda, and the abominable snowman, in that order". Suzuki found Onoda after four days of searching on Lubang. Onoda later 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 that he was waiting for orders from his commanding officer. He named Major Yoshimi Taniguchi (commander of the Special Intelligence Squadron of the Fourteenth Area Army, who had given Onoda his final instructions) as such, although Onoda's real immediate superior was Lieutenant General Shizuo Yokoyama, commander of the Eighth Division, who had issued his orders.

Suzuki returned to Japan with photographs of him and Onoda as proof of their encounter. The Japanese government located Taniguchi, who had become a bookseller after the war. Taniguchi flew to Lubang with Suzuki, and on 9 March, met with Onoda in the jungle and issued him 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 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.

Onoda surrendering his sword to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos at the ceremony on 11 March 1974

Onoda was thus relieved of duty, and on 10 March 1974 surrendered to Philippine forces at the radar base on Lubang. On 11 March, a formal surrender ceremony was held by President of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos at Malacañang Palace in Manila, in an international media sensation. Marcos granted Onoda a full pardon for crimes he had committed while in hiding. Onoda 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 had held out for 28 years, 6 months, and 8 days (10,416 days) after Japan's surrender in 1945. 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 upon his return to Japan in 1974. The Japanese government offered him a large sum of money in back pay, which he refused. 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 believed to be the withering of traditional Japanese values. He wrote No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War, a best-selling autobiography. 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, Filipino media reported interviews with villagers who had lived on Lubang during Onoda's time in hiding and alleged that he and his men had killed up to 30 civilians there. He did not mention these deaths 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. 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. On 21 February 2010, the Legislative Assembly of Mato Grosso do Sul awarded him the title of Cidadão ("Citizen"). In 2006, his wife Machie Onoda became the head of the conservative Japan Women's Association (JWA), which had been established in 2001 by the ultranationalist organization Nippon Kaigi.

Death

On 16 January 2014, Onoda died of heart failure resulting from pneumonia at St. Luke's International Hospital in Tokyo. Chief Cabinet Secretary 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

Representation in other media

• Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle – 2021 French film co-written and directed by Arthur Harari based on historic accounts of Onoda's life
• The Twilight World – 2021 novel by German director Werner Herzog based on Onoda's life

See also

• List of solved missing person cases: pre-2000
• Shoichi Yokoi – another Japanese holdout, discovered on Guam in 1972

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.