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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

Japanese soldiers cheering early in the war, when things had been going well for them. UN Nations Forum

37. Many Japanese Had Difficulty Believing That Their Country Could Have Surrendered

In the weeks following Japan’s declaration of surrender, communications were patched up with most Japanese in the field, and word filtered down that the war was over. It came as a shock to many. While it had been obvious for some time that things had not been going well, Japan’s military had drilled into its personnel that Japanese always fought to the death, and that surrender was so dishonorable that death was a preferable alternative. Against that backdrop, Japan’s surrender astonished many of her warriors.

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.