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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

Hiroo Onoda in later years, as a rancher in Brazil. Observer

6. Onoda Was Never Held to Account For the Dozens of Civilians Killed During His Holdout

Hiroo Onoda was never held accountable for the dozens of innocents killed during his holdout. Rather than ending his days in jail or on the gallows, he got to live a comfortable and long life, showered by accolades. A militarist through and through, who believed that the war had been a sacred mission, Onoda was unable to fit in the pacifist Japan to which he returned. The culture and country had simply grown unrecognizable to him. Within a year of returning to Japan, Onoda emigrated to Brazil, bought a cattle ranch, married, and raised family. He died in 2014, aged 91.

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.