Onoda, The Man Who Refused To Surrender
Hiroo Onoda Was Deployed On Lubang Island In 1944. He Would Not Emerge Until 30 Years Later
H. R. Richards
AS ANY YEAR 11 OR 12 BOY WHO HAS STUDIED WAR IN THE PACIFIC WOULD KNOW, World War Two didn’t go too well for the Japanese. Following Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941, they would spend the next four years engaged in a long and bloody war against America. The vast naval and industrial supremacy of the United States, coupled with some good ol’ nationalism, meant this was a war they were never going to win.
By 1943, Japan found itself over-extended across both China and South-east Asia and was pinned back by the Americans, who were rapidly advancing. Defeat seemed inevitable. In a ditch effort to hold off US Forces, the Japanese introduced a strategy of ‘defence in depth’, whereby guerilla units were deployed on islands in close proximity to the Japanese homeland.
While these holdouts may have delayed American victory, it came nonetheless. And on 2nd September 1945, after 25 million deaths, four years of fighting and two atomic bombs, Japan finally capitulated.
Naturally, as news of defeat spread, these holdouts began to empty as officers returned home. Now, that is, save Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese army lieutenant, who would continue to hide in the jungle for another 30 years following the war’s end.
Onoda. Source: Google
Deployed on Lubang island in the Philippines, Onoda was under the strict order to not surrender under any circumstances.
As people began to repopulate these islands and resume their daily lives, Onoda’s presence there caused problems. Onoda continued to shoot civilians, burn fields and generally terrorise the local population in any way he could – just as he had done to the Americans decades earlier.
Forced to come up with a solution to the remaining holdouts, the American and Japanese authorities collectively decided that they would drop leaflets throughout these islands announcing the war’s end. Indeed, many surfaced from where they had been hiding, but Onoda was not one of these.
Now, this is not because Onoda didn’t receive this news. He did. Rather, he dismissed it as nothing more than “Yankee propaganda” aimed at luring Japanese soldiers from the jungle. The great Japanese empire couldn’t have fallen, could it?
Despite further efforts to contact him, including a number of search parties, Onoda would remain on the island preying on the local population, scrounging on bugs, insects and whatever else it is that one eats in a Pacific jungle. That was, until Norio Suzuki, an eccentric Japanese explorer, assured Onoda that the war was, in fact, over and convinced him to return to Japan – Onoda’s war had finally come to an end.
In many ways, Onoda’s story is a testament to his loyalty to the Motherland and, in another, a display of stupid pride. Onoda was fighting a war that had long been lost; for an emperor who no longer existed. Therefore, his display of loyalty was unequivocally a futile one.
More than this, Onoda’s refusal to surrender cost the lives of not only two of his comrades/friends but many civilians in Lubang. As such, Beatrice Trefalt, senior lecturer of Japanese studies at Monash University, argues that “Onoda might have found it easier to convince himself that he didn’t know [the war was over], rather than to face up to the destruction engendered by his own, stupid pride.” In this sense, Onoda’s decision to stay on Lubang island was as much a display of loyalty as it was of stubbornness and pride.
Ultimately, this anecdote highlights the importance of questioning whether a cause is worth fighting for. In Onoda’s case, his cause of defending the empire had been rendered futile long ago after Japanese surrender, making his sacrifice merely a display of futile loyalty and stubbornness.