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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 laying down their arms in Indochina, as British Indian Army troops look on. Warfare History Network

36. Some Japanese Preferred Death Over Surrender

Japanese military personnel who learned of the surrender had to first overcome the shock of defeat. For some, it was too much to process, as years of indoctrination that Japanese soldiers simply did not surrender overwhelmed their coping capacity. So caught between the imperative of obeying orders from their chain of command and laying down their arms, and the imperatives of their honor as they had been taught to see it, they committed suicide. The majority, however, got over it and surrendered in accordance with their orders.

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.