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40 Facts About the Japanese Who Refused to Surrender After WWII Had Ended

Khalid Elhassan January 3, 2019 25 min

Hiroo Onoda - Ishinosuke Uwano — Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier who kept fighting for nearly three decades after WWII had ended. Observer

The Japanese hippie backpacker who found Hiroo Onoda, posing with the holdout and his rifle in February of 1972. Rare Historical Photos

9. Onoda Kept Going, Even After Losing All His Comrades

Onoda’s tiny contingent steadily dwindled over the years. In 1949, one of them simply left the group, wandered alone around Lubang for six months, and eventually surrendered. Another was killed by a search party in 1954. Onoda’s last companion was shot dead by police in 1972, who came upon the duo as they were trying to burn the rice stores of local farmers. Onoda was thus finally alone. Yet he kept on fighting, doggedly conducting a one-man war.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.