The rugged terrain of Lubang Island, in which Hiroo Onoda and his men hid. Inquirer
7. This Jerk Dismissed Japan’s Capitulation – and Specific Orders for His Surrender – as “Fake News”
Without clear-cut orders to surrender, Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda chose to interpret his duty as an obligation to hide and fight on – for 29 years. For nearly three decades, Onoda survived with his tiny command in the jungles and mountains of Lubang. They erected bamboo huts and eked out a living by hunting and gathering in the island’s jungle. They stole rice and other food from local farmers, and killed the occasional cow for meat. Tormented by heat and mosquitoes, rats and rain, Onoda’s band patched their increasingly threadbare uniforms, and kept their weapons in working order.
During their long holdout, Onoda and his men came across various leaflets announcing that the war had ended. They dismissed them as “fake news”, enemy propaganda, and ruses of war. When they encountered a leaflet upon which had been printed the official surrender order from their commanding general, they examined it closely to determine whether it was genuine, and decided that it must be a forgery. Even when they recovered airdropped letters and pictures from their own families urging them to surrender, Onoda’s band insisted that it was a trick.
The Japanese hippie backpacker who found Hiroo Onoda, posing with the famous holdout and his rifle in February, 1974. Rare Historical Photos
6. Hiroo Onoda Went Beyond The Bounds of Reason to Continue a Private One-Man-War
As the years flew by, Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda’s tiny four-man-contingent steadily dwindled, as he lost comrades to a variety of causes. In 1949, one of them decided that he had had enough, and simply left the group. He wandered alone around Lubang for six months, and eventually surrendered to the local authorities. Another of Onoda’s men was killed by a search party in 1954. His last companion was shot dead by police in 1972, when law enforcement came upon him and Onoda as the duo were trying to burn some farmers’ rice stores.
Onoda was thus finally alone, yet he kept on fighting. He insisted that he was being faithful to his last received orders, refused to acknowledge the authenticity of numerous leaflets that he came across containing new orders to surrender, and doggedly continued his one-man-war. Then in 1974, a Japanese hippie backpacker found Onoda in the depths of Lubang’s wilderness, befriended him, and managed to convince the holdout that the war had ended decades earlier. Even then, Onoda – still as big a jerk as ever – insisted that he would not surrender unless he received orders in person from a superior officer.
Hiroo Onoda coming out of the wilderness to turn himself in. Rare Historical Photos
5. A Drama Queen to the End, Lieutenant Onoda Engineered a Dramatic Ending to His Holdout
When Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda’s hippie backpacker friend returned to Japan with photographic proof of his encounter with the war’s most famous holdout, the news caused a sensation. The holdout’s new buddy contacted the Japanese government to let them know, and officials in Tokyo tracked down Onoda’s former commanding officer from WWII. Traveling to Lubang, Onoda’s wartime commander tracked down the holdout, and personally informed him that the war was over. He instructed Onoda that he was released from military duty, and ordered him to stand down.
In 1974, clad in his battered and threadbare uniform, Lieutenant Onoda handed in his sword and other weapons in a televised ceremony. Thus, this epic jerk finally ended his private war almost three decades after the conclusion of WWII. He returned to a hero’s welcome in Japan, but admiration for his supposed single-minded devotion to duty was not universal. Back in Lubang, the locals did not have such a positive view of Onoda as a conscientious and honorable man devoted to duty.
4. The Civilians Terrorized and Preyed Upon by This Jerk for Decades Did Not See Him as a Heroic Paragon of Devotion to Duty
While Hiroo Onoda was being lionized in Japan and around the world, those most impacted by his decades-long holdout – Lubang’s civilian population – did not hold him in such high regard. Back home, Onoda released his autobiography, No Surrender: My Thirty Year War, in which he detailed his years as a guerrilla in the Philippines fighting a long-since-ended war. However, a documentary interviewed the locals upon whom he had preyed during those years, and it revealed details that Onoda had omitted in his self-serving book. Such as the fact that he had murdered dozens of innocents.
The people of Lubang viewed the famous holdout the way we would view a psychopathic serial killer terrorizing a community with a decades-long violent crime spree. To the Lubangese, Onoda was a bloody-minded idiot and a jerk who, during his 29-year-holdout, had inflicted sundry harms upon them such as stealing, destroying, and sabotaging their property. He also killed about 30 local police and farmers with whom he and his band had clashed while stealing or “requisitioning” food and supplies in order to continue fighting a war that had ended decades earlier.
A search party that tried to track down Hiroo Onoda in 1972. Observer
3. A Lionized Hero Who In Reality Was a Murderous Jerk
Although Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda was lauded as a paragon of honor and devotion to duty, what he had done in Lubang Island was anything but honorable. Onoda had indulged in a decades-long violent tantrum, in which the only devotion he exhibited was a devotion to his ego and to a warped sense of honor that was actually quite dishonorable. In a nutshell, the famous Japanese holdout had his feelings hurt. He was upset that he and his country had been thoroughly defeated in war.
Onoda knew or should have known that the war had ended in 1945. Ample evidence, including orders from his chain of command, plus photos and letters from his and his men’s families, had been airdropped in the jungles and mountains of Lubang and picked up by the holdouts. However, in violent jerk fashion, he decided to dismiss reality as “fake news”. He took out his frustration and the perceived humiliation of his and his country’s defeat on poor Filipino civilians in an isolated island, whom he terrorized and murdered by the dozen.
Hiroo Onoda surrendering his sword to President Ferdinand Marcos. Wikimedia
2. The Unrepentant Maniac Who Got Away With Murder
It was the narrative of Onoda as a heroic holdout that took hold and captured the public imagination in Japan and around the world. The more troubling reality that Onoda was a homicidal maniac was downplayed or ignored. His decades-long crime spree in Lubang, which could have gotten him the death penalty for multiple murders, was instead swept under the rug by the authorities. At the time, the Philippines was ruled by dictator Ferdinand Marcos, a notoriously corrupt kleptomaniac. Marcos was eager for good relationships – and financial support and investments offering opportunities for graft – with Japan.
As a result, the fiction that Onoda did not know that the war had ended in 1945 was accepted as fact when it was anything but. President Ferdinand Marcos granted him a full pardon that was broadcast in a televised ceremony. In true jerk fashion, Onoda never apologized or expressed remorse for stealing the food and burning the crops of poor Lubangese, or for murdering dozens of innocent civilians in the island. Understandably, that did not sit well with the people of Lubang. When Onoda revisited the island in 1996, his return was surrounded by controversy.
Hiroo Onoda in his Brazilian cattle ranch. Observer
1. A Jerk Who Murdered Dozens, Then Lived a Long and Happy Life in Peace and Comfort
Back home, Hiroo Onoda was so popular that he was urged to run for the Diet – Japan’s national legislature. However, he had trouble fitting in. A militarist through and through who thought the war had been a sacred mission, Onoda was unable to come to terms with the pacifist and futuristic country to which he had returned. Japan and its culture in the 1970s were radically different from what he had known growing up, and Onoda was troubled by what he saw as a withering away of traditional Japanese values. So troubled, that he decided to leave the country.
