March 9, 1974. End of the story of a Japanese officer who refused to surrender and believed the end of World War II
The heroes were received in Japan, but he could not bear the shock of the great change in society after him, so Onoda fled to Brazil, where he became a cattle-raiser in a remote corner.
A Japanese reconnaissance officer could not believe that World War II was over, and he spent 30 years in the jungles of the Philippines waiting for new instructions from his commander, who ordered him not to leave his area of operations until he returned to him.
Hiroo Onoda is the last soldier to surrender in this war in which he would not have believed that the Emperor of Japan would submit to the Americans.
On the occasion of the anniversary of Onoda’s surrender and laying down of arms, the French magazine Le Point prepared a report detailing his story.
Lupoan says that young Onoda joined the Japanese army in 1942, when he was 20 years old, and had undergone commando training to become an intelligence officer.
In December 1944, his commanders, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi and Takahashi, summoned him to tell him that he would soon land on the Philippine island of Lubang with a few men to help the local garrison carry out acts of sabotage there.
Before he said farewell, Major Taniguchi firmly told him, “It is forbidden for you to commit suicide, and your mission may last 3 years and may last up to 5, but whatever it is, we will return to search for you, and until then, you are the commander of any soldier who is with you .. You may have to Eat coconut, eat it if you can not find another, but the most important thing is that you are prohibited under any circumstances from ending your life voluntarily. ”
The magazine comments on that by saying that the orders were clear and that Onoda applied them to the letter, but he remained there for 30 years!
Scattered scattered scattered
In fact, according to the magazine, the Japanese garrison to which this officer belonged, as soon as it landed on the Philippine island of Lubang, until they were crushed by an American bombing, after which the survivors dispersed the hands of Sheba in the forest, and thus Onoda found himself with 3 soldiers:
Shimada, Kozuka and Akatsu, so the three began to organize The way they survive, they stole rice from the villagers during the raids they carried out against them, and for the rest, the forest is generous, it provides bananas, mangoes and coconuts, while the meat was more difficult to obtain, and whenever they encountered a lost bull, they slaughtered it and enjoyed eating its meat for days, and dried What is left in the sun for later use.
They did not forget that they were fighters, so in the first months of their isolation they set up ambushes for American patrols and carried out attacks on villages they believed were loyal to the enemy.
One day, Onoda and his men found a pamphlet in which they read in amazement these few lines, “The war has ended since 15 August, they came down from the mountains.” Then they found a second and third leaflet, and they consulted among themselves, asking, “Is it possible that the invincible emperor had lost the war.” ? ” Which they responded in the categorical denial, considering that what they found was nothing more than a trick to make them fall into the trap of surrender.
At the end of 1945, the Americans dropped other leaflets on the island from a Boeing B-17, signed by General Yamashita of the 14th Army, giving the order to the last resistance fighters in the woods to lay down their arms, but they did not believe all of it and continued to do so. Their war ..
Nothing can bring them back to their senses, neither the newspapers, nor the photographs, nor the letters of their relatives that were also left to them in the forest. Even the arrival of some of their relatives to the forest did not convince them. The same was true of other groups of Japanese soldiers who went missing in the woods.
In September 1949 Akatsu escaped, leaving his comrades in the woods for six months, hesitating, and finally surrendering. He was forced to write a letter to his former companions to persuade them to copy him. But they considered it a trap and continued to fight relentlessly.
Five years later, on May 7, 1954, they opened fire on a patrol that was looking for them, and they responded by killing Shimada. Onoda and Kozuka fled without wavering their conviction that the conflict was continuing and the remaining two continued their battle deep in the jungle for 19 years.
In Japan, it was believed that they had been killed, but they waited patiently for the Japanese army to come and take them.
In October 1972, while the two fighters were preparing to burn the rice crop in a supposedly hostile village, they were surprised by a Filipino patrol, followed by a shootout in which Kozuka was killed after 27 years of heroic resistance, and that confrontation made headlines in Japanese newspapers, with no survivors. Only Onoda!
Onoda surrenders
New expeditions have been sent to search for him, but they all returned empty-handed. And the first person who succeeded in gaining the trust of the only soldier was a young Japanese hippie named Norio Suzuki, who landed on Lubang Island in the spring of 1974, and kept wandering about it without fear, with nothing but a backpack until he found Onoda, and he explained to him the truth of what it turned out to be. Matters, but the soldier told him he would agree to surrender, provided an order from his commander came to him at that time.
Suzuki accepted the challenge, returned to Japan, and with the help of the authorities he managed to find Major Taniguchi, who became a bookseller, and persuaded him to go with him to Lubang Island.
The two men were deeply moved and bowed to each other. The former officer, who became a bookseller, opens a document and begins reading it to his subordinate wearing, for the occasion, pieces of his uniform. “This war is over, I give orders to stop the fighting.”
Onoda was stunned, “Is that true, have we really lost the war? How can they be so helpless?”
And here Onoda says with astonishment, “Why did I not believe all these leaflets that I found in the woods calling me to surrender?”
After that, the brave fighter bends down, unloads his rifle and puts his belongings on the ground, thinking about him, remembers his two friends who were killed and the 30 or so Filipinos who were killed during that period, and wonders why he did not kill him too.
Onoda finally returns home, and the heroes are welcomed in Japan. He did not bear the shock of the great change in society after him, so Onoda fled to Brazil, where he became a rancher in a remote corner, and did not return to Japan until the 1980s to marry and set up a camp for teenagers who wanted to immerse themselves in nature.