5. Deadly Hero, or Deadly Idiot?
Lieutenant Onoda returned to a hero’s welcome in Japan. However, admiration for his single-minded devotion to duty was not universal. Back in Lubang, the inhabitants did not view Onoda as a conscientious and honorable man devoted to duty. Instead, they saw him as a bloody-minded deadly idiot. During his 29 year holdout, Onoda had inflicted sundry harms upon the Lubangese, stealing, destroying, and sabotaging their property. He also needlessly killed about 30 local police and farmers with whom his band had clashed while stealing or “requisitioning” food and supplies, in order to continue fighting a war that had ended decades earlier.
A militarist through and through, Onoda believed that the war had been a sacred mission. The pacifist and futuristic Japan to which he returned were unrecognizable to him. Onoda found himself unable to fit in a country and culture so radically different from the one in which he had grown up. Within a year of returning to Japan, he moved to Brazil, where he bought a cattle ranch, settled into the life of a rancher, married, and raised a family. He died in 2014, aged 91.
