In September 1945, Japan announced its surrender, ending World War II. But for some, the war was not over.
Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda was 22 years old when he was sent to the Philippines as the commander of a special squad to conduct sabotage operations behind enemy lines. He arrived in Lubang in December 1944, and the allied forces landed on the island in February 1945. Soon, only Onoda and three of his colleagues were among the survivors, who retreated into the mountains to continue the partisan war.
The group survived on bananas, coconut milk and stolen cattle, engaging in occasional gun battles with local police.
In late 1945, the Japanese read leaflets dropped from the air that the war was over. But they refused to surrender, thinking it was enemy propaganda.
1944 year. Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda.
Every Japanese soldier was ready to die. As an intelligence officer, I was ordered to wage a guerrilla war and not die. I was a soldier and had to follow orders.
Hiroo Onoda
One of Hiroo Onoda's comrades surrendered in 1950, another was killed when confronted by a search party in 1954. His last comrade, Upper-Class Private Kinsichi Kozuka, was shot dead by the police in 1972 while he and Onoda were destroying a rice stock at a local farm.
Onoda was left alone and became a legendary figure on the island of Lubang and beyond.
The story of a mysterious Japanese soldier intrigued a young traveler named Norio Suzuki, who went in search of "Lieutenant Onoda, pandas and Bigfoot."
Norio Suzuki told Onoda about Japan's long-standing surrender and prosperity in an attempt to persuade him to return to his homeland. But Onoda firmly replied that he could not surrender and leave the duty station without the order of a superior officer.
February 1974. Norio Suzuki and Onoda with their rifle on Lubang Island.
Suzuki returned to Japan and, with the help of the government, sought out Commander Onoda. It turned out to be a former major of the Imperial Army, Yoshimi Taniguchi, already an elderly man who works in a bookstore.
Taniguchi flew to Lubang and on March 9, 1974 officially ordered Onoda to lay down his arms.
March 11, 1974 Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda, sword in hand, emerges from the jungle on Lubang Island after a 29-year guerrilla war.
March 11, 1974.
Three days later, Onoda surrendered his samurai sword to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos and received a pardon for his actions over the previous decades (he and his comrades killed about 30 people during the guerrilla war).
Onoda returned to Japan, where he was greeted as a hero, but decided to move to Brazil and became a herder. Ten years later, he returned to Japan and founded the public organization "School of Nature" to educate a healthy young generation.
As for the adventurer Norio Suzuki: shortly after finding Onoda, he found pandas in the wild. But in 1986, Suzuki died in an avalanche in the Himalayas while continuing to search for Bigfoot.
Onoda died in 2014 at the age of 92. A few of his photographs:
March 11, 1974 Onoda hands over his sword to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos in surrender at Malacanang Palace in Manila.
March 12, 1974. Arrival of Onoda in Tokyo.
On a hot morning on March 10, 1974, a smart elderly Japanese man in the half-rotted uniform of the imperial army came out to the police headquarters. Having ceremoniously bowed to the policemen who had opened their mouths in surprise, he carefully laid the old rifle on the ground. “I am Second Lieutenant Hiro Onoda. I obey the order of my boss, who ordered me to surrender. " For 30 years, the Japanese, not knowing about the surrender of their country, continued to fight with his detachment in the jungles of the Philippines.
Fatal order
“This man couldn’t come to his senses for a long time,” recalled Imelda Marcos, the “first lady” of the Philippines, who spoke to him shortly after surrender. - He experienced a terrible shock. When he was told that the war was over in 1945, his eyes just darkened. “How could Japan lose? Why did he look after the rifle like a little child? Why did my people die? " - he asked, and I did not know what to answer him. He sat and wept bitterly.
The story of the Japanese officer's many years of jungle adventures began on December 17, 1944, when battalion commander Major Taniguchi ordered 22-year-old second lieutenant Onoda to lead a guerrilla war against the Americans on Lubang: “We are retreating, but this is temporary. You will go to the mountains and make sorties - plant mines, blow up warehouses. I forbid you to commit suicide and surrender. It may be three, four or five years, but I'll be back for you. This order can only be canceled by me and no one else. " Soon the US soldiers landed on Lubanga, and Onoda, having broken his "partisans" into cells, retreated into the jungle of the island along with two privates and Corporal Shimada.
“Onoda showed us his hideout in the jungle,” said former Lubanga deputy sheriff Fidel Elamos. “It was clean there, there were slogans with the hieroglyphs“ War to victory ”, and a portrait of the emperor carved from banana leaves was fixed on the wall. While his subordinates were alive, he conducted trainings with them, even arranged contests for the best poems.
Onoda did not know what happened to the soldiers from the other cells. In October 1945, he found an American leaflet that read: “Japan surrendered on August 14th. Get down from the mountains and surrender! " The lieutenant hesitated, but at that moment he heard shooting nearby and realized that the war was still going on. And the flyer is a lie to lure them out of the forest. But they will turn out to be smarter than the enemy and will go even further, to the very depths of the island.
“My father fought against him, then I became a policeman and also fought with Onoda's squadron — it seemed like it would never end,” Elamos says. - We combed the jungle over and over again and did not find them, and at night the samurai again shot us in the back. We threw fresh newspapers to them so that they could see that the war was over long ago, threw off letters and photos from relatives. I asked Hiro later: why didn't he give up? He said he was sure the letters and newspapers were forged.
Year after year passed, and Onoda fought in the jungle. In Japan, the ranks of skyscrapers grew, Japanese electronics conquered the whole world, businessmen from Tokyo bought the largest American concerns, and Hiro still fought in Lubang for the glory of the emperor, believing that the war continues. The lieutenant boiled water from a stream on a fire, ate fruits and roots - during all the time he only once seriously fell ill with a sore throat. Sleeping in the pouring tropical rain, he covered the rifle with his body. Once a month, the Japanese ambushed military jeeps, shooting the drivers. But in 1950, one of the privates lost their nerves - he went to the police with his hands up. Four years later, Corporal Shimada was killed in a shootout with police on Gontin Beach. The second lieutenant and the last private Kozuka dug a new underground shelter in the jungle, invisible from the air, and moved there.
“They believed they would come back for them,” Lubang Lieutenant Governor Jim Molina grins. - After all, the major promised. True, in the last year the second lieutenant began to doubt: have they forgotten about him? Once the thought of suicide occurred to him, but he immediately rejected it - this was forbidden by the major who gave the order.
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Lone wolf
In October 1972, near the village of Imora, Onoda planted his last mine on the road to detonate a Filipino patrol. But it rusted and didn't explode. Then he and Private Kozuka attacked the patrolmen - Kozuka was shot, and Onoda was left completely alone. The death of a Japanese soldier, who died 27 years after Japan's surrender, caused shock in Tokyo. Search campaigns rushed to Burma, Malaysia and the Philippines. And then the incredible happened. For almost 30 years, Onoda could not find the best parts of the special forces, but quite by accident the Japanese tourist Suzuki stumbled upon him, collecting butterflies in the jungle. He confirmed to the stunned Hiro - Japan surrendered, the war is long gone. After thinking, he said: “I don’t believe. Until the major cancels the order, I will fight. " Returning home, Suzuki threw all his strength into the search for Major Taniguchi. I found it with difficulty - the head of the "last samurai" changed his name and became a bookseller. Together they arrived in the Lubang jungle at the appointed place. There Taniguchi, dressed in a military uniform, read out the order to Onoda, who was standing at attention, to surrender. Having listened, the second lieutenant threw a rifle over his shoulder and staggered towards the police station, tearing off the half-rotten stripes from his uniform
“There were demonstrations in the country demanding to put Hiro in prison,” explains the widow of the then President of the Philippines. “Indeed, as a result of his“ Thirty Years War ”130 soldiers and policemen were killed and wounded. But her husband decided to pardon 52-year-old Onoda and allow him to go home.
Back in the woods
However, the second lieutenant himself, who was looking at Japan overgrown with skyscrapers with fear and surprise, was not pleased with the return. At night he dreamed of the jungle where he had spent so many decades. He was frightened by washing machines and electric trains, jet planes and televisions. A few years later, Hiro bought a ranch in the thickest forests of Brazil and went to live there.
- Hiro Onoda unexpectedly came to us from Brazil in 1996, - says the vice-governor of Lubanga Jim Molina. - Didn't want to stay at the hotel and asked permission to settle in a dugout in the jungle. When he came to the village, no one shook hands with him.
"The Last Samurai" of World War II released the book "Don't Give Up: My 30 Years War", where it has already answered all the questions. “What would have happened if Major Taniguchi had not come for me? Everything is very simple - I would have continued to fight until now ... ”- told reporters the elderly second lieutenant Onoda. Here's what he said.
"I was sick only once"
- I can't imagine how you can hide in the jungle for 30 years
- Man in megalopolises has become too detached from nature. In fact, the forest has everything to survive. A lot of medicinal plants that increase immunity, serve as an antibiotic, disinfect wounds. It is also impossible to die of hunger, the main thing for health is to follow a normal diet. For example, from the frequent consumption of meat, the body temperature rises, and from drinking coconut milk, on the contrary, it goes down. In all my time in the jungle, I was sick only once. We should not forget about the elementary things - in the morning and in the evening I brushed my teeth with crushed palm bark. When the dentist examined me later, he was amazed: for 30 years I have not had a single case of caries.
- What is the first thing to learn to do in the forest?
- Extract fire. At first I set fire to gunpowder from cartridges with glass, but the ammunition had to be protected. So I tried to get a flame by rubbing two pieces of bamboo. Let not immediately, but in the end I did it. Fire is needed to boil river and rain water - this is a must, it contains harmful bacilli.
- When you surrendered, together with the rifle, you gave the police 500 rounds of ammunition in excellent condition. How did so many survive?
- I saved. The cartridges went strictly to shootouts with the military and to get fresh meat. From time to time we went to the outskirts of villages, caught a cow strayed from the herd. The animal was killed with one shot in the head and only during a heavy downpour: so the villagers did not hear the sounds of shooting. The beef was dried in the sun, dividing it so that the carcass of a cow could be eaten in 250 days. The rifle with cartridges was regularly greased with beef fat, disassembled, cleaned. He took care of her like a child - wrapped her in rags when it was cold, covered her with my body when it rained.
- What else did you eat besides jerky beef?
- They cooked porridge from green bananas in coconut milk. They fished in a stream, raided a store in the village a couple of times, took away rice and canned food. We set traps for rats. In principle, in any tropical forest there is nothing dangerous for humans.
- What about poisonous snakes and insects?
- When you are in the jungle for years, then become a part of it. And you understand that a snake will never just attack - it itself is afraid of you to death. The same is with spiders - they do not aim to hunt people. It is enough not to step on them - and everything will be fine. Of course, at first the forest is very scary. But in a month you will get used to everything. We were not afraid of predators or snakes at all, but people - even banana soup was cooked exclusively at night so that they would not see the smoke in the village.
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"Soap was missing the most."
- Do you regret that you spent the best years of your life waging a senseless guerrilla war alone, although Japan gave up long ago?
- In the imperial army, it is not customary to discuss orders. The major said, “You must stay until I come back for you. This order can only be canceled by me. " I am a soldier and obeyed orders - what's so surprising? I am offended by the suggestion that my struggle was pointless. I fought to make my country powerful and prosperous. When he returned to Tokyo, he saw that Japan was strong and rich - even richer than before. It comforted my heart. As for the rest ... How could I have known that Japan had surrendered? And in a terrible dream I could not imagine it. All the time that we fought in the forest, we were sure that the war continues.
- Newspapers were thrown off the plane for you to learn about the surrender of Japan.
- Modern printing equipment can print everything that special services need. I decided that these newspapers were fake - they were made by the enemies specifically in order to deceive me and lure me out of the jungle. For the last 2 years, letters from my relatives from Japan have been thrown from the sky, persuading them to surrender - I recognized the handwriting, but I thought that the Americans had taken them prisoner and forced them to write such things.
- For 30 years you fought in the jungle with a whole army - a battalion of soldiers, special forces units, helicopters were involved at different times against you. Straight the plot of a Hollywood action movie. Don't you feel like you're a superman?
- No. It is always difficult to fight with partisans - in many countries they cannot suppress armed resistance for decades, especially in difficult terrain. If you feel like a fish in water in the forest, the enemy is simply doomed. I clearly knew - in one open area you should move in camouflage from dry leaves, on the other - only from fresh ones. Filipino soldiers were not aware of such subtleties.
- What did you miss most of all the amenities?
- Soap, I guess. I washed my clothes in running water, using the ash from the fire as a cleaning agent, and washed my face every day ... but I really wanted to soap myself. The problem was that the form began to creep apart. I made a needle from a piece of barbed wire and darned clothes with threads I made from palm shoots. In the rainy season he lived in a cave, in the dry season he built an “apartment” from bamboo trunks and covered the roof with palm “straw”: in one room there was a kitchen, in the other - a bedroom.
- How did you go back to Japan?
- With difficulties. As if from one time immediately transported to another: skyscrapers, girls, neon advertisements, incomprehensible music. I realized that I would have a nervous breakdown, everything is too accessible - drinking water flowed from the tap, food was sold in stores. I could not sleep on the bed, I lay down on the bare floor all the time. On the advice of a psychotherapist, he emigrated to Brazil, where he raised cows on a farm. Only after that I was able to return home. In the mountainous regions of Hokkaido, I founded a school for boys, teaching them the art of survival.
- What do you suppose: can any of the Japanese soldiers still hide in the depths of the jungle, not knowing that the war is over?
- Perhaps, because my case was not the last. In April 1980, captain Fumio Nakahira, who had been hiding for 36 years in the mountains of the Philippine island of Mindoro, surrendered. It is possible that someone else remained in the forests.
by the way
In 1972, Sergeant Seichi Yokoi was found in the Philippines, who all this time did not know about the end of World War II and the surrender of Japan. In May 2005, Kyodo News reported that two Japanese soldiers, 87-year-old Lieutenant Yoshio Yamakawa and 83-year-old corporal Suzuki Nakauchi, were found in the jungle of Mindanao Island (Philippines), their photos were published. The Japanese Embassy in Manila issued a statement: "We do not exclude the possibility that dozens (!) Of Japanese soldiers are still hiding in the Philippine forests, who do not know that the war is over long ago." 3 employees of the Japanese Embassy urgently left for Mindanao, but for some reason they did not manage to meet with Yamakawa and Nakauchi.
In February 1942, Marshal Zhukov wrote that the partisans of Belarus and Ukraine continued to stumble across the woods at weapons depots guarded by lonely Soviet soldiers. “They were put on guard by the commanders the day before the start of the war or a week after it started - at the end of June. Then they were forgotten, but they did not leave their posts, waiting for the guard or the head of the guard. One of these sentries had to be wounded in the shoulder - otherwise he would not allow people to approach the warehouse. " In the summer of 1943, Captain Johann Westman wrote in his diary in the Brest Fortress: “Sometimes at night we are fired upon by the Russians who are hiding in the casemates of the fortress. They say there are no more than five of them, but we cannot find them. How do they manage to live there for two years without water and drink? I do not know that".
“The war is not over for him,” they sometimes say about former soldiers and officers. But this is rather an allegory. But the Japanese Hiroo Onoda was sure that the war was still going on several decades after the end of World War II. How did it happen?
Scout on Lubang
Hiroo Onoda was born on March 19, 1922 in the village of Kamekawa, Wakayama Prefecture. After graduating from high school, in April 1939 he got a job at the Tajima trading company, located in the Chinese city of Hankou. There, the young man mastered not only Chinese, but also English. But in December 1942 he had to return to Japan - he was called up for military service. In August 1944, Onoda entered the Nakano Army School, which trained intelligence officers. But the young man did not succeed in completing his studies - he was urgently sent to the front. In January 1945, Hiroo Onoda, already in the rank of junior lieutenant, was transferred to the Philippine island of Lubang. He received the order to hold on to the last. Arriving at Lubang, Onoda invited the local command to begin preparations for a long-term defense of the island. But his appeal was ignored. American troops easily defeated the Japanese, and the reconnaissance detachment led by Onoda was forced to flee to the mountains. In the jungle, the military set up a base and began a guerrilla war behind enemy lines. The squad consisted of only four people: Hiroo Onoda himself, Private First Class Yuichi Akatsu, Private High Class Kinsichi Kozuki, and Corporal Shoichi Shimada. In September 1945, shortly after Japan signed the act of surrender, an order from the commander of the 14th Army was dropped from planes into the jungle, ordering to surrender weapons and surrender. However, Onoda considered it a provocation by the Americans. His detachment continued to fight, hoping that the island was about to return to Japanese control. Since the guerrilla group had no connection with the Japanese command, the Japanese authorities soon declared them dead.
The "war" continues
In 1950, Yuichi Akatsu surrendered to the Philippine police. In 1951, he returned to his homeland, thanks to which it became known that the members of Onoda's detachment were still alive. On May 7, 1954, Onoda's group clashed with the Philippine police in the Lubanga mountains. Shoichi Shimada was killed. In Japan, by that time, a special commission was created to search for Japanese soldiers who remained abroad. For several years, the members of the commission were looking for Onoda and Kozuki, but to no avail. On May 31, 1969, the Japanese government declared Onoda and Kozuku dead for the second time and posthumously awarded them the Order of the Rising Sun, 6th degree. On September 19, 1972, in the Philippines, police shot and killed a Japanese soldier who was trying to requisition rice from peasants. This soldier turned out to be Kinsichi Kozuka. Onoda was left alone, without comrades, but, obviously, was not going to give up. In the course of "operations", which he carried out first with subordinates, and then alone, about 30 were killed and about 100 seriously injured military and civilians.
Loyalty to the officer's honor
On February 20, 1974, Japanese travel student Norio Suzuki stumbled upon Onoda in the jungle. He told the officer about the end of the war and the current situation in Japan and tried to persuade him to return to his homeland, but he refused, arguing that he had not received such an order from his immediate superiors. Suzuki returned to Japan with photographs of Onoda and stories about him. The Japanese government was able to contact one of Onoda's former commanders, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, who has now retired and worked in a bookstore. On March 9, 1974, Taniguchi in military uniform flew to Lubang, contacted his former subordinate and gave him the order to stop all military operations on the island. On March 10, 1974, Onoda surrendered to the Filipino military. He faced the death penalty for "military operations", which were qualified by the local authorities as robbery and murder. However, thanks to the intervention of the Japanese Foreign Ministry, he was pardoned and on March 12, 1974, he solemnly returned to his homeland. In April 1975, Hiroo Onoda moved to Brazil, got married and took up cattle breeding. But in 1984 he returned to Japan. The former military man was actively involved in social work, especially with young people. On November 3, 2005, the Japanese government presented him with the Medal of Honor with a blue ribbon "For Service to Society." Already in old age, he wrote a memoir entitled "My Thirty Years War in Lubanga." Hiroo Onoda died on January 16, 2014 in Tokyo at the age of almost 92.
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That the Second World War ended in 1945, some Japanese soldiers never found out. Fanatically loyal to their emperor, they continued to hide in the jungle for decades, trying to escape the shame of captivity
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In the jungle in the south of the Philippine island of Mindanao, a lieutenant and corporal of the Imperial Japanese Army have been found hiding there since the end of World War II in fear of punishment for withdrawing from a combat position.
The soldiers found did not know that World War II was already over.
Now these "elderly deserters" over the age of 80 are in the hands of local authorities. In the near future, he will have a meeting with representatives of the Japanese embassy in the Philippines, the Tokyo press reports today. Several more former Japanese soldiers may be hiding in this remote area of the island of Mindanao, ITAR-TASS reports.
The 87-year-old former lieutenant and the 83-year-old former corporal were accidentally discovered by members of the Philippine counterintelligence, which is conducting operations in the area.
Lieutenant Yoshio Yamakawa, 87, and Lance corporal Tsuzuki Nakauchi, 83, served in the Imperial Army's 30th Infantry Division, which landed on the Philippine island of Mindanao in 1944. This unit suffered heavy losses as a result of massive American bombing and was ordered to begin guerrilla operations in the jungle. The remnants of the division were then evacuated to Japan, but some of its fighters did not make it to the gathering place and inevitably became deserters.
According to reports, the lieutenant and corporal are very afraid of a military tribunal if they return to their homeland. Last year, they accidentally met a Japanese man who was looking for the remains of dead soldiers in southern Mindanao. According to this person, Yamakawa and Nakauchi have documents confirming their identities.
Japanese soldiers who did not know about the end of the war were previously found in hard-to-reach areas on the islands of the Pacific Ocean. In 1974, for example, Lt. Hiroo Onoda was discovered in the jungle of the Philippine island of Lubang. Earlier in 1972, a private from one of the infantry units was found on the island of Guam, which is now owned by the United States.
Dozens of "lost" soldiers still roam the Philippine jungle
That the Second World War ended in 1945, some Japanese soldiers never found out. Fanatically loyal to their emperor, they continued to hide in the jungle for decades, seeking to escape the shame of captivity.
Japanese soldiers were the descendants of brave warriors who knew no other life but war. Their motto was absolute obedience to their commanders, their earthly mission was service to the emperor and death in battle. They considered captivity a shame and humiliation, which would forever brand them in the eyes of those whom they respected - friends, family, soldiers, monks. This was the mindset of an ordinary Japanese soldier during World War II.
These soldiers died in the hundreds of thousands, and would rather rush on their own swords than raise the white flag of surrender to the enemy. Especially to the Americans, whose marines and naval pilots performed miracles of courage in freeing the Pacific islands from the Japanese invaders.
Many soldiers, scattered across countless islands, did not know about the surrender order and hid in the jungle for many years. These people did not know anything about the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or about the terrible raids on Tokyo, which turned this city into a heap of ruins.
In the jungle of tropical forests, the news of the act of surrender and the occupation of Japan signed aboard the American battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay did not reach. Cut off from the whole world, the soldiers lay down and got up with the belief that the war was still going on.
Rumors of a missing soldier's legion had been around for years. Hunters from remote Filipino villages talked about "devil people" living in the thickets like wild beasts. In Indonesia, they were called the "yellow people" who roam the forests.
The most famous lost soldier
In 1961, 16 years after Japan's surrender, a soldier named Ito Masashi came out of the tropical jungles of Guam to surrender.
Masashi could not believe that the world that he knew and believed in before 1945 is now completely different, that that world no longer exists.
Private Masashi got lost in the jungle on October 14, 1944. Ito Masashi bent down to tie a lace on his boot. He lagged behind the column, and this saved him - part of Masashi was ambushed by Australian soldiers. Hearing the shooting, Masashi and his comrade, Corporal Iroki Minakawa, also lagging behind, threw themselves to the ground. While shooting could be heard beyond the copse, they crawled farther and farther. Thus began their incredible sixteen-year hide-and-seek game with the rest of the world.
For the first two months the private and the corporal ate the remains of the NZ and the larvae of insects, which they looked for under the bark of trees. They drank rainwater collected in banana leaves, chewed edible roots. Sometimes they dined with snakes, which happened to be caught in a snake.
At first, they were hunted by the soldiers of the allied army, and then by the inhabitants of the island with their dogs. But they managed to leave. Masashi and Minakawa invented their own language for safe communication with each other - clicking, hand signals.
They built several shelters by digging them in the ground and covering them with branches. The floor was covered with dry leaves. Several holes were dug nearby with sharp stakes at the bottom - game traps.
They roamed the jungle for eight long years. Later Masashi will say: “During our wanderings, we came across other similar groups of Japanese soldiers who, like us, continued to believe that the war was continuing. We were sure that our generals retreated for tactical reasons, but the day will come when they will return with reinforcements. Sometimes we lit fires, but it was dangerous, as they could find us. The soldiers died of hunger and disease, were attacked, sometimes they were killed by their own. I knew that I had to stay alive in order to fulfill my duty - to continue We survived only by chance because we stumbled into the junkyard of an American airbase. "
The landfill has become a source of life for soldiers lost in the jungle. The profligate Americans threw away many different foods. There, the Japanese picked up cans and adapted them for dishes. From the springs from the beds, they made sewing needles, the awnings were used for bed linen. The soldiers needed salt, and at night they crawled out to the coast, filled cans of sea water to evaporate white crystals from it.
The wanderers' worst enemy was the annual rainy season: for two months in a row, they sat sadly in shelters, feeding only on berries and frogs. Almost unbearable tension reigned in their relationship at that time, Masashi later said.
After ten years of such a life, they found leaflets on the island. They contained a message from a Japanese general that they had never heard of before. The general ordered them to surrender. Masashi said, "I was sure it was an American ploy to catch us. I told Minakawa," Who do they take us for ?! "
An incredible sense of duty among these people, unfamiliar to Europeans, is also reflected in another story by Masashi: “One day Minakawa and I were talking about how to get out of this island by sea. We walked along the coast, unsuccessfully trying to find a boat. But we came across only two American barracks with lighted windows. We crawled close enough to see the dancing men and women and hear the sounds of jazz. For the first time in all these years I saw women. I was desperate - I missed them! Returning to my hideout, I began to carve a figure out of wood. I could safely go to the American camp and surrender, but it was contrary to my convictions. After all, I swore an oath to my emperor, he would be disappointed in us. I did not know that the war was over long ago, and I thought that the soldier to some other place. "
One morning, after sixteen years of hermitage, Minakawa donned homemade wooden sandals and went hunting. A day passed, but he was not there. Masashi was seized with panic. “I knew I wouldn’t survive without him,” he said. “I searched the jungle in search of a friend. I stumbled upon Minakawa's backpack and sandals by accident. rushed back into the jungle, determined to die but not surrender. Climbing the mountain, I saw four Americans waiting for me. Among them was Minakawa, whom I did not immediately recognize - his face was clean-shaven. He said that when he walked through the forest, then bumped into people, and they persuaded him to surrender. From him I heard that the war was over long ago, but it took me several months to really believe it. I was shown a photograph of my grave in Japan, where it was written on the monument, that I died in battle. It was terribly difficult to understand. All my youth was wasted. That evening I went to a hot-heated bathhouse and for the first time in many years went to sleep on a clean bed. It was delightful! "
Sergeant Ikoi was found in January 1972.
As it turns out, there were Japanese soldiers who lived in the jungle much longer than Masashi. For example, Imperial Army Sergeant Shoichi Ikoi, who also served in Guam.
When the Americans took the island by storm, Shoichi escaped from his Marine regiment and found shelter at the foot of the mountains. He also found leaflets on the island urging Japanese soldiers to surrender as ordered by the emperor, but refused to believe it.
The sergeant lived as a complete hermit. Ate mainly frogs and rats. The form, which had fallen into disrepair, was replaced by clothes made of bark and bast. He shaved, scraping his face with a sharpened piece of flint.
Shoichi Ikoi said: “I was all alone for so many long days and nights! began to train his voice every day, singing songs or reading aloud prayers. "
The sergeant was accidentally discovered by hunters in January 1972. He was 58 years old. Ikoi did not know anything about the atomic bombings, about the surrender and defeat of his homeland. When it was explained to him that his hermitage was meaningless, he fell to the ground and sobbed. Hearing that he would soon be flying home to Japan on a jet plane, Ikoi asked in surprise, "What is a jet?"
Under pressure from the public, government organizations in Tokyo were forced to equip an expedition into the jungle in order to extract their old soldiers from their dens.
The expedition scattered tons of leaflets in the Philippines and other islands where Japanese soldiers might be. But the wandering warriors still saw it as enemy propaganda.
In 1974, Lieutenant Onoda surrendered.
Even later, in 1974, on the remote Philippine island of Lubang, 52-year-old Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda emerged from the jungle and surrendered to the local authorities. Six months earlier, Onoda and his comrade Kinshiki Kozuka had ambushed a Filipino patrol, mistaking it for an American one. Kozuka died, and attempts to track down Onoda did not lead to anything: he hid in the impassable thickets.
To convince Onoda that the war was over, he even had to call his former commander - he did not trust anyone else. Onoda asked permission to keep the sacred samurai sword, which he buried on the island in 1945.
Onoda was so stunned to find himself at a completely different time that he had to apply long-term psychotherapeutic treatment. He said: “I know that many more of my comrades are hiding in the forests, I know their callsigns and the places where they hide. But they will never come to my call. They will decide that I have not withstood the tests and broke down, surrendering to the enemies. Unfortunately, they will die there. "
In Japan, Onoda had a touching meeting with his elderly parents.
His father said: "I am proud of you! You acted like a real warrior, as your heart told you."
“The war is not over for him,” they sometimes say about former soldiers and officers. But this is rather an allegory. But the Japanese Hiroo Onoda was sure that the war was still going on several decades after the end of World War II. How did it happen?
Hiroo Onoda was born on March 19, 1922 in the village of Kamekawa, Wakayama Prefecture. After graduating from high school, in April 1939 he got a job at the Tajima trading company, located in the Chinese city of Hankou. There, the young man mastered not only Chinese, but also English. But in December 1942 he had to return to Japan - he was called up for military service.
In August 1944, Onoda entered the Nakano Army School, which trained intelligence officers. But the young man did not succeed in completing his studies - he was urgently sent to the front.
In January 1945, Hiroo Onoda, already in the rank of junior lieutenant, was transferred to the Philippine island of Lubang. He received the order to hold on to the last.
Arriving at Lubang, Onoda invited the local command to begin preparations for a long-term defense of the island. But his appeal was ignored. American troops easily defeated the Japanese, and the reconnaissance detachment led by Onoda was forced to flee to the mountains. In the jungle, the military set up a base and began a guerrilla war behind enemy lines. The squad consisted of only four people: Hiroo Onoda himself, Private First Class Yuichi Akatsu, Private High Class Kinsichi Kozuki, and Corporal Shoichi Shimada.
In September 1945, shortly after Japan signed the act of surrender, an order from the commander of the 14th Army was dropped from planes into the jungle, ordering to surrender weapons and surrender. However, Onoda considered it a provocation by the Americans. His detachment continued to fight, hoping that the island was about to return to Japanese control. Since the guerrilla group had no connection with the Japanese command, the Japanese authorities soon declared them dead.
In 1950, Yuichi Akatsu surrendered to the Philippine police. In 1951, he returned to his homeland, thanks to which it became known that the members of Onoda's detachment were still alive.
On May 7, 1954, Onoda's group clashed with the Philippine police in the Lubanga mountains. Shoichi Shimada was killed. In Japan, by that time, a special commission was created to search for Japanese soldiers who remained abroad. For several years, the members of the commission were looking for Onoda and Kozuki, but to no avail. On May 31, 1969, the Japanese government declared Onoda and Kozuku dead for the second time and posthumously awarded them the Order of the Rising Sun, 6th degree.
On September 19, 1972, in the Philippines, police shot and killed a Japanese soldier who was trying to requisition rice from peasants. This soldier turned out to be Kinsichi Kozuka. Onoda was left alone, without comrades, but, obviously, was not going to give up. In the course of "operations", which he carried out first with subordinates, and then alone, about 30 were killed and about 100 seriously injured military and civilians.
On February 20, 1974, Japanese travel student Norio Suzuki stumbled upon Onoda in the jungle. He told the officer about the end of the war and the current situation in Japan and tried to persuade him to return to his homeland, but he refused, arguing that he had not received such an order from his immediate superiors.
Suzuki returned to Japan with photographs of Onoda and stories about him. The Japanese government was able to contact one of Onoda's former commanders, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, who has now retired and worked in a bookstore. On March 9, 1974, Taniguchi in military uniform flew to Lubang, contacted his former subordinate and gave him the order to stop all military operations on the island. On March 10, 1974, Onoda surrendered to the Filipino military. He faced the death penalty for "military operations", which were qualified by the local authorities as robbery and murder. However, thanks to the intervention of the Japanese Foreign Ministry, he was pardoned and on March 12, 1974, he solemnly returned to his homeland.
In April 1975, Hiroo Onoda moved to Brazil, got married and took up cattle breeding. But in 1984 he returned to Japan. The former military man was actively involved in social work, especially with young people. On November 3, 2005, the Japanese government presented him with the Medal of Honor with a blue ribbon "For Service to Society." Already in old age, he wrote a memoir entitled "My Thirty Years War in Lubanga." Hiroo Onoda died on January 16, 2014 in Tokyo at the age of almost 92.