The soldier who refused to surrender – that was the title associated with this Japanese lieutenant who spent three decades of his life hiding in the jungle.
In this episode, we'll talk about the incredible story of Hiroo Onoda, the war he fought, and his decision to surrender 29 years after the war ended.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are talking about a soldier who refused to surrender.
[00:00:27] But this man was no normal soldier. This was a man who spent three decades on high alert, a man who lived in the jungle, in his mind still “fighting” The Second World War for a good 29 years after it ended.
[00:00:44] The man’s name was Hiroo Onoda, and his story really is incredible. So let’s get right into it.
[00:00:52] It was the 9th of March, 1974, in the mountainous jungle on Lubang, an island in the Philippines around 150 kilometres southwest of Manila, the East Asian archipelago's capital.
[00:01:06] The heat and humidity were torturous, and the air was filled with the buzzing of mosquitoes, the ground covered in rats.
[00:01:16] Slowly, a pair of boots shuffled forward in the undergrowth.
[00:01:21] A weathered man, who looked to be in his fifties or so, peered nervously from behind a tree, a rifle in his hands.
[00:01:31] His military uniform was tattered and worn, and he had a wispy moustache, grey hairs sprouting from his chin.
[00:01:41] He was listening carefully, trying not to make any noise or give himself away.
[00:01:47] It sounded as though a group of people were making their way through the trees, approaching his position.
[00:01:54] Probably another American patrol, he thought.
[00:01:57] But as they got closer, he realised they were speaking Japanese, his mother tongue and something he hadn’t heard in a very, very long time.
[00:02:08] Paranoid, scared, the man stayed silent.
[00:02:12] This was war, after all. It could be another trick to lure him out of his position and capture, even kill, him.
[00:02:21] Then a voice called out, a voice he recognised, but one he hadn’t heard for a very long time.
[00:02:28] “Hiroo Onoda?” it said. “Hiroo Onoda?”
[00:02:33] This man was calling out his name.
[00:02:36] Carefully, quietly, the man stepped out from behind the tree.
[00:02:41] Peering through the overgrowth, he saw who it was: his old major, his old military commander.
[00:02:49] The war is over, the major told him. We have surrendered, you can go home.
[00:02:56] Breaking down, Onoda handed over his Samurai sword, his rifle, ammunition and a dagger his mother had given him in case he was captured and he needed to commit suicide.
[00:03:10] Weeping, he saluted the Japanese flag and officially surrendered, three decades after the war had ended for everyone else in the world.
[00:03:22] So, who was Hiroo Onoda?
[00:03:24] Why did he still believe that the war was going on, when the rest of the world had moved on?
[00:03:32] The year was 1974, man had already travelled to the moon, Beatlemania had come and gone, even The Cold War was cooling down. The Second World War was ancient history, but for this one man, it had permeated every inch of his life for over thirty years.
[00:03:53] As some brief background, Onoda had joined the Japanese army in 1942, at the age of twenty.
[00:04:00] He was selected for specialist training and sent to the Nakano school, which was like a finishing school for intelligence officers, effectively.
[00:04:10] He studied the arts of covert operations and guerilla warfare, as well as martial arts and propaganda.
[00:04:18] Keep this in mind, because these skills become crucial further down the line.
[00:04:24] In December 1944, Onoda was sent to Lubang, a strategically significant island southwest of Manila Bay.
[00:04:33] As a quick reminder of what was going on in the Western Pacific, Japan had invaded the Philippines back in December 1941, just hours after the attack on Pearl Harbour.
[00:04:46] The Philippines at the time was a semi-independent state under the control of the Americans.
[00:04:52] The Japanese forces occupied the Philippines from 1942 to 1944, but they met fierce resistance from Filipino and American forces. The Philippines, as you may know, is a collection of more than 7,000 islands, which makes life tricky for any unwelcome occupier.
[00:05:12] In October of 1944, American, Filipino, Mexican and Australian forces landed on the Philippine island of Leyte, and started to push the Japanese out of the island.
[00:05:26] The idea was to use the Philippines as a base, or at least a stepping stone, for a further attack on Japan.
[00:05:35] Now, back to Hiroo Onoda.
[00:05:38] He was sent to the Filipino island of Lubang in 1944 to resist the American invasion.
[00:05:46] Onoda’s superiors had instructed him and his fellow soldiers to destroy airstrips in the hope of disrupting the American forces.
[00:05:57] When the American forces landed on Lubang a couple of months later, on the 28th of February, 1945, there was a brief battle but the small Japanese forces were no match for the invaders, and they were quickly overpowered.
[00:06:13] The Japanese soldiers that weren’t killed began to surrender or evacuate the island, fearing for their lives.
[00:06:20] But as Onoda planned his own escape, his superior, a Major named Yoshimi Taniguchi, said something that would change the course of Onoda’s life.
[00:06:34] He told Onoda that he shouldn’t evacuate, like the rest of the men, but hold his position and conduct guerrilla warfare, which was one of his specialties, it was something that he was trained to do. So, Onoda and three other Japanese soldiers stayed on Lubang.
[00:06:55] “It may take three years, it may take five,” the major told them, “but whatever happens we’ll come back for you.”
[00:07:04] Little did Taniguchi realise, but this young, loyal soldier was to take this order very literally indeed, and that Taniguchi would have to personally return almost 30 years later to keep his word.
[00:07:21] Now, when Japan officially surrendered in September of 1945, there were thousands of Japanese soldiers spread out across Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific.
[00:07:33] Lots of them simply went home, others were captured or killed, but many of them went into hiding and continued fighting, preferring to die with honour than to be captured.
[00:07:47] As you may know, dying with honour during battle is deeply entrenched in Japanese culture.
[00:07:54] Samurais would often kill themselves instead of being captured, a process called seppuku or hara-kiri, where they would thrust a sword into their stomach and then turn the blade upwards.
[00:08:08] And in the Second World War, this cultural idea of dying with honour manifested itself as Kamikaze, which was the act of Japanese pilots flying their planes into military targets, killing themselves in the process but inflicting heavy damage on the enemy.
[00:08:28] The point is that honour and integrity are of the utmost importance in Japanese culture.
[00:08:35] And for Hiroo Onoda, his word, his promise, was clearly unbreakable.
[00:08:42] His major had told him to stay, and that he would come back for him.
[00:08:47] An order was an order.
[00:08:49] So, he and his three colleagues withdrew to the high ground, into the thick jungle forest in the foothills of the mountains, in early 1945.
[00:09:01] Later that year, as you’ll know, the war ended. The Japanese emperor announced the country’s surrender on August 15th 1945, and it was officially signed on September 2nd.
[00:09:13] The war was over, finally.
[00:09:16] But not for Hiroo Onoda, who, let’s remember, had retreated into the thick jungle, away from any other signs of humanity, cut off from the world.
[00:09:28] But not completely cut off, in fact.
[00:09:31] In October 1945, the men found some leaflets that had been dropped into the jungle claiming that the war was over.
[00:09:40] But they thought that the leaflets were enemy propaganda trying to trick them out of their positions.
[00:09:46] These men had studied propaganda techniques at the Nakano school, let's remember.
[00:09:51] Onoda would later talk about this, explaining that, and I’m quoting directly, "The leaflets they dropped were filled with mistakes so I judged it was a plot by the Americans.”
[00:10:04] Slowly time went on, but there was no sign of the reinforcements the major had promised.
[00:10:12] Weeks became months which slowly became years, and the men lived off the land, staying deep in the Lubang jungle and constantly on the move.
[00:10:23] They built shacks from bamboo, basic houses made out of bamboo. They lived on bananas and coconuts and killed cows and other animals for food. They even stole rice and other food from local villages.
[00:10:38] The tropical heat was suffocating, and the jungle filled with mosquitoes and rats, but they maintained their discipline, taking care of their rifles and uniforms as though they were active soldiers.
[00:10:53] In their minds, they were active soldiers.
[00:10:56] In an interview given many years later, Onoda described what he saw as his role: "Every Japanese soldier was prepared for death,” he said, “but as an intelligence officer I was ordered to conduct guerrilla warfare and not to die.”
[00:11:15] Incredibly, Onoda didn’t die and managed to live this way for almost 30 years, holding his position and refusing to surrender until 1974.
[00:11:27] And I really must emphasise here that Onoda wasn’t just hanging out in the jungle on a camping trip.
[00:11:34] He and his fellow soldiers regularly had to hide or even attack what they thought to be American or Filipino soldiers searching for the last Japanese soldiers said to be holding out in the jungle, and they had several shootouts with Filipino police.
[00:11:51] They also attacked locals they mistook for enemies, and it is said that around 30 local villagers were killed by the Japanese soldiers who continued fighting the war in the Lubang jungle.
[00:12:04] After five years of this fairly miserable existence, however, one of Onoda’s fellow soldiers gave in and surrendered in 1950.
[00:12:14] When he finally returned to Japan, he told people about the three soldiers left in the jungle of Lubang, but there was no great plan or interest in going back to look for them, not at that point anyway.
[00:12:27] A couple of years later another of Onoda's colleagues was shot while attacking a fishing village.
[00:12:34] Onoda cared for him and helped him recover from his leg wound - no mean feat given that they were in the sweltering jungle without access to any kind of medical support.
[00:12:46] But in the end it proved futile, pointless, because the same man was shot dead in 1954 by a search party.
[00:12:55] Now they were down to two: Onoda and a man named Kozuka.
[00:13:02] In 1959 the pair were officially declared dead, the Japanese military simply assuming that they must have died by now.
[00:13:10] It would be impossible to survive that long, right?
[00:13:14] But the men continued to hide out, hunting and stealing food, cleaning their rifles and samurai swords, waiting for the promised reinforcements to arrive.
[00:13:25] In October 1972, Filipino police again set off into the jungle to look for the men, and stumbled across them stealing rice.
[00:13:36] In the gun battle that followed, Kozuka was shot and killed.
[00:13:41] Now they were down to one; Hiroo Onoda was alone.
[00:13:47] I think it’s safe to say that many people would give up in that situation, but Onoda had his orders and intended to keep them.
[00:13:57] Though most people in Japan assumed Onoda had perished in the jungle, others were becoming intrigued by the legend of this last soldier refusing to surrender.
[00:14:07] After Kozuka’s body was flown back to Japan and it became clear that he had indeed survived all that time, it became a pretty big deal in the Japanese media.
[00:14:19] Stories of a mysterious Japanese soldier hiding out in the jungle filled the media and fascinated the public, and in February of 1974, a Japanese explorer named Norio Suzuki arrived in Lubang determined to try and find this mystery man, this urban legend.
[00:14:40] After four days of trekking through the jungle, Suzuki eventually found Onoda.
[00:14:46] Of course, Suzuki told him that the war was over, and had ended decades ago, but still Onoda refused to leave his post.
[00:14:56] He wouldn’t go anywhere until he had received orders from a military superior, he said.
[00:15:03] When Suzuki went back to Japan, he showed the Japanese government photos of him and Onoda together in the jungle.
[00:15:11] Now, there was proof: Hiroo Onoda was alive.
[00:15:15] Clearly, something had to be done. His major, his superior, needed to be found.
[00:15:22] Fortunately, the government managed to find Major Taniguchi, the man who had told Onoda that he would come back for him all those years ago, who was by then long retired from the military and was now a bookseller.
[00:15:36] The following month, in March 1974, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, or rather, bookseller Yoshimi Taniguchi, travelled to Lubang and persuaded Onoda to finally give up his weapons and surrender.
[00:15:51] He travelled with one of Onoda’s brothers, as well as a delegation from the Japanese government.
[00:15:57] And after tracking him down in the jungle, Major Taniguchi was finally able to keep his word.
[00:16:05] Stand down, Lieutenant Onoda.
[00:16:08] But it hadn’t taken three years, or five, like he had promised on that day in 1945, it had taken 29 years.
[00:16:17] When he was asked what he thought about when spending all those years in the jungle, Onoda simply replied, “Nothing but accomplishing my duty.”
[00:16:27] So, with Onoda’s war finally now over, what did he do next?
[00:16:32] What would you do after spending almost 30 years in the jungle?
[00:16:36] To have missed such a huge period of time, and then be dropped into 1974, must have been quite the culture shock.
[00:16:44] When Onoda left Japan in the 1940s, he left a relatively undeveloped country of wooden houses; when he returned in 1974 it was a place of television and skyscrapers and technology.
[00:17:00] Of these changes, Onoda said: “There are so many tall buildings and automobiles in Tokyo… Television might be convenient, but it has no influence on my life here.”
[00:17:11] Clearly, adapting to modern Japan, to the modern world, was going to take some work.
[00:17:18] So, what did he do?
[00:17:20] Well, as you can imagine, people were keen to see and meet this mystery man; the soldier who had spent almost three decades in the jungle.
[00:17:30] When he finally made it back to his homeland, Onoda was given a hero’s welcome and offered a generous military pension in thanks for his service, which he in fact refused.
[00:17:42] He wrote a memoir, called “No Surrender: My Thirty Year War, and was the subject of countless films, documentaries, books and articles.
[00:17:52] But more than anything, Onoda wanted to live a quiet life. After all, he had been pretty much alone for thirty years.
[00:18:02] He took driving lessons and travelled the length and breadth of the Japanese islands, making up for lost time, and even went dancing, trying to enjoy Japan’s bustling new nightlife scene.
[00:18:14] But he found it all a bit overwhelming, and he didn’t stay in Japan for long.
[00:18:21] Just a year after returning home, in 1975 Onoda moved to a Japanese colony in São Paulo, in Brazil, to raise animals.
[00:18:31] In 1976 he got married and the couple stayed in Brazil until 1984, when they returned to Japan and opened the Onoda Nature School, a survival-skills youth camp.
[00:18:44] Clearly, this was an area in which Onoda had more experience the most.
[00:18:50] In 1996, he returned to Lubang and donated $10,000 to a school, but he wasn’t welcomed by the locals who somewhat understandably never really forgave him for the 30 or so people he had killed there while hiding out.
[00:19:06] Indeed, there is a documentary being made about him at the moment that questions this idea of him being a war hero, and instead portrays him as a cold-hearted murderer of innocent Filipinos.
[00:19:21] He would eventually be pardoned by the Philippine government, although not forgiven by all of its citizens, and he would live to the ripe old age of 91, before dying in Tokyo in January of 2014.
[00:19:34] So, how did he do it, you might be asking yourself?
[00:19:38] How does one manage to survive practically alone in the jungle, trapped in a time warp?
[00:19:44] And how does it affect you to find that thirty years of your life were a lie, or at least, you believed something that wasn’t true?
[00:19:54] Did he go completely mad, was he insane, or was he simply a devoted soldier?
[00:20:01] Interestingly enough, when he did return to Japan and was examined by medical professionals they didn’t find that he was suffering from any kind of mental condition.
[00:20:12] It seemed that he was just the epitome of the devoted, loyal soldier, a man who was, in his mind, simply doing his duty, following his orders.
[00:20:24] He was reported to have said later on in life, “men should never give up. I never do”.
[00:20:31] Now, you might agree with this, you might not, but you can’t deny it’s a motto that Hiroo Onoda lived by, even if it resulted in spending three decades in the jungle.
[00:20:45] Ok then, that is it for today’s episode on Hiroo Onoda, the soldier who refused to surrender.
[00:20:52] I hope it was an interesting one, and whether you knew a lot about him or this was the first time you’d ever heard anything about his incredible story, well I hope you learned something new.
[00:21:03] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:21:06] How long do you think you would last out in the jungle?
[00:21:09] Have you heard of any stories similar to Hiroo Onoda’s, whether in World War Two or in another war?
[00:21:15] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:21:19] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:21:28] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:21:33] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are talking about a soldier who refused to surrender.
[00:00:27] But this man was no normal soldier. This was a man who spent three decades on high alert, a man who lived in the jungle, in his mind still “fighting” The Second World War for a good 29 years after it ended.
[00:00:44] The man’s name was Hiroo Onoda, and his story really is incredible. So let’s get right into it.
[00:00:52] It was the 9th of March, 1974, in the mountainous jungle on Lubang, an island in the Philippines around 150 kilometres southwest of Manila, the East Asian archipelago's capital.
[00:01:06] The heat and humidity were torturous, and the air was filled with the buzzing of mosquitoes, the ground covered in rats.
[00:01:16] Slowly, a pair of boots shuffled forward in the undergrowth.
[00:01:21] A weathered man, who looked to be in his fifties or so, peered nervously from behind a tree, a rifle in his hands.
[00:01:31] His military uniform was tattered and worn, and he had a wispy moustache, grey hairs sprouting from his chin.
[00:01:41] He was listening carefully, trying not to make any noise or give himself away.
[00:01:47] It sounded as though a group of people were making their way through the trees, approaching his position.
[00:01:54] Probably another American patrol, he thought.
[00:01:57] But as they got closer, he realised they were speaking Japanese, his mother tongue and something he hadn’t heard in a very, very long time.
[00:02:08] Paranoid, scared, the man stayed silent.
[00:02:12] This was war, after all. It could be another trick to lure him out of his position and capture, even kill, him.
[00:02:21] Then a voice called out, a voice he recognised, but one he hadn’t heard for a very long time.
[00:02:28] “Hiroo Onoda?” it said. “Hiroo Onoda?”
[00:02:33] This man was calling out his name.
[00:02:36] Carefully, quietly, the man stepped out from behind the tree.
[00:02:41] Peering through the overgrowth, he saw who it was: his old major, his old military commander.
[00:02:49] The war is over, the major told him. We have surrendered, you can go home.
[00:02:56] Breaking down, Onoda handed over his Samurai sword, his rifle, ammunition and a dagger his mother had given him in case he was captured and he needed to commit suicide.
[00:03:10] Weeping, he saluted the Japanese flag and officially surrendered, three decades after the war had ended for everyone else in the world.
[00:03:22] So, who was Hiroo Onoda?
[00:03:24] Why did he still believe that the war was going on, when the rest of the world had moved on?
[00:03:32] The year was 1974, man had already travelled to the moon, Beatlemania had come and gone, even The Cold War was cooling down. The Second World War was ancient history, but for this one man, it had permeated every inch of his life for over thirty years.
[00:03:53] As some brief background, Onoda had joined the Japanese army in 1942, at the age of twenty.
[00:04:00] He was selected for specialist training and sent to the Nakano school, which was like a finishing school for intelligence officers, effectively.
[00:04:10] He studied the arts of covert operations and guerilla warfare, as well as martial arts and propaganda.
[00:04:18] Keep this in mind, because these skills become crucial further down the line.
[00:04:24] In December 1944, Onoda was sent to Lubang, a strategically significant island southwest of Manila Bay.
[00:04:33] As a quick reminder of what was going on in the Western Pacific, Japan had invaded the Philippines back in December 1941, just hours after the attack on Pearl Harbour.
[00:04:46] The Philippines at the time was a semi-independent state under the control of the Americans.
[00:04:52] The Japanese forces occupied the Philippines from 1942 to 1944, but they met fierce resistance from Filipino and American forces. The Philippines, as you may know, is a collection of more than 7,000 islands, which makes life tricky for any unwelcome occupier.
[00:05:12] In October of 1944, American, Filipino, Mexican and Australian forces landed on the Philippine island of Leyte, and started to push the Japanese out of the island.
[00:05:26] The idea was to use the Philippines as a base, or at least a stepping stone, for a further attack on Japan.
[00:05:35] Now, back to Hiroo Onoda.
[00:05:38] He was sent to the Filipino island of Lubang in 1944 to resist the American invasion.
[00:05:46] Onoda’s superiors had instructed him and his fellow soldiers to destroy airstrips in the hope of disrupting the American forces.
[00:05:57] When the American forces landed on Lubang a couple of months later, on the 28th of February, 1945, there was a brief battle but the small Japanese forces were no match for the invaders, and they were quickly overpowered.
[00:06:13] The Japanese soldiers that weren’t killed began to surrender or evacuate the island, fearing for their lives.
[00:06:20] But as Onoda planned his own escape, his superior, a Major named Yoshimi Taniguchi, said something that would change the course of Onoda’s life.
[00:06:34] He told Onoda that he shouldn’t evacuate, like the rest of the men, but hold his position and conduct guerrilla warfare, which was one of his specialties, it was something that he was trained to do. So, Onoda and three other Japanese soldiers stayed on Lubang.
[00:06:55] “It may take three years, it may take five,” the major told them, “but whatever happens we’ll come back for you.”
[00:07:04] Little did Taniguchi realise, but this young, loyal soldier was to take this order very literally indeed, and that Taniguchi would have to personally return almost 30 years later to keep his word.
[00:07:21] Now, when Japan officially surrendered in September of 1945, there were thousands of Japanese soldiers spread out across Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific.
[00:07:33] Lots of them simply went home, others were captured or killed, but many of them went into hiding and continued fighting, preferring to die with honour than to be captured.
[00:07:47] As you may know, dying with honour during battle is deeply entrenched in Japanese culture.
[00:07:54] Samurais would often kill themselves instead of being captured, a process called seppuku or hara-kiri, where they would thrust a sword into their stomach and then turn the blade upwards.
[00:08:08] And in the Second World War, this cultural idea of dying with honour manifested itself as Kamikaze, which was the act of Japanese pilots flying their planes into military targets, killing themselves in the process but inflicting heavy damage on the enemy.
[00:08:28] The point is that honour and integrity are of the utmost importance in Japanese culture.
[00:08:35] And for Hiroo Onoda, his word, his promise, was clearly unbreakable.
[00:08:42] His major had told him to stay, and that he would come back for him.
[00:08:47] An order was an order.
[00:08:49] So, he and his three colleagues withdrew to the high ground, into the thick jungle forest in the foothills of the mountains, in early 1945.
[00:09:01] Later that year, as you’ll know, the war ended. The Japanese emperor announced the country’s surrender on August 15th 1945, and it was officially signed on September 2nd.
[00:09:13] The war was over, finally.
[00:09:16] But not for Hiroo Onoda, who, let’s remember, had retreated into the thick jungle, away from any other signs of humanity, cut off from the world.
[00:09:28] But not completely cut off, in fact.
[00:09:31] In October 1945, the men found some leaflets that had been dropped into the jungle claiming that the war was over.
[00:09:40] But they thought that the leaflets were enemy propaganda trying to trick them out of their positions.
[00:09:46] These men had studied propaganda techniques at the Nakano school, let's remember.
[00:09:51] Onoda would later talk about this, explaining that, and I’m quoting directly, "The leaflets they dropped were filled with mistakes so I judged it was a plot by the Americans.”
[00:10:04] Slowly time went on, but there was no sign of the reinforcements the major had promised.
[00:10:12] Weeks became months which slowly became years, and the men lived off the land, staying deep in the Lubang jungle and constantly on the move.
[00:10:23] They built shacks from bamboo, basic houses made out of bamboo. They lived on bananas and coconuts and killed cows and other animals for food. They even stole rice and other food from local villages.
[00:10:38] The tropical heat was suffocating, and the jungle filled with mosquitoes and rats, but they maintained their discipline, taking care of their rifles and uniforms as though they were active soldiers.
[00:10:53] In their minds, they were active soldiers.
[00:10:56] In an interview given many years later, Onoda described what he saw as his role: "Every Japanese soldier was prepared for death,” he said, “but as an intelligence officer I was ordered to conduct guerrilla warfare and not to die.”
[00:11:15] Incredibly, Onoda didn’t die and managed to live this way for almost 30 years, holding his position and refusing to surrender until 1974.
[00:11:27] And I really must emphasise here that Onoda wasn’t just hanging out in the jungle on a camping trip.
[00:11:34] He and his fellow soldiers regularly had to hide or even attack what they thought to be American or Filipino soldiers searching for the last Japanese soldiers said to be holding out in the jungle, and they had several shootouts with Filipino police.
[00:11:51] They also attacked locals they mistook for enemies, and it is said that around 30 local villagers were killed by the Japanese soldiers who continued fighting the war in the Lubang jungle.
[00:12:04] After five years of this fairly miserable existence, however, one of Onoda’s fellow soldiers gave in and surrendered in 1950.
[00:12:14] When he finally returned to Japan, he told people about the three soldiers left in the jungle of Lubang, but there was no great plan or interest in going back to look for them, not at that point anyway.
[00:12:27] A couple of years later another of Onoda's colleagues was shot while attacking a fishing village.
[00:12:34] Onoda cared for him and helped him recover from his leg wound - no mean feat given that they were in the sweltering jungle without access to any kind of medical support.
[00:12:46] But in the end it proved futile, pointless, because the same man was shot dead in 1954 by a search party.
[00:12:55] Now they were down to two: Onoda and a man named Kozuka.
[00:13:02] In 1959 the pair were officially declared dead, the Japanese military simply assuming that they must have died by now.
[00:13:10] It would be impossible to survive that long, right?
[00:13:14] But the men continued to hide out, hunting and stealing food, cleaning their rifles and samurai swords, waiting for the promised reinforcements to arrive.
[00:13:25] In October 1972, Filipino police again set off into the jungle to look for the men, and stumbled across them stealing rice.
[00:13:36] In the gun battle that followed, Kozuka was shot and killed.
[00:13:41] Now they were down to one; Hiroo Onoda was alone.
[00:13:47] I think it’s safe to say that many people would give up in that situation, but Onoda had his orders and intended to keep them.
[00:13:57] Though most people in Japan assumed Onoda had perished in the jungle, others were becoming intrigued by the legend of this last soldier refusing to surrender.
[00:14:07] After Kozuka’s body was flown back to Japan and it became clear that he had indeed survived all that time, it became a pretty big deal in the Japanese media.
[00:14:19] Stories of a mysterious Japanese soldier hiding out in the jungle filled the media and fascinated the public, and in February of 1974, a Japanese explorer named Norio Suzuki arrived in Lubang determined to try and find this mystery man, this urban legend.
[00:14:40] After four days of trekking through the jungle, Suzuki eventually found Onoda.
[00:14:46] Of course, Suzuki told him that the war was over, and had ended decades ago, but still Onoda refused to leave his post.
[00:14:56] He wouldn’t go anywhere until he had received orders from a military superior, he said.
[00:15:03] When Suzuki went back to Japan, he showed the Japanese government photos of him and Onoda together in the jungle.
[00:15:11] Now, there was proof: Hiroo Onoda was alive.
[00:15:15] Clearly, something had to be done. His major, his superior, needed to be found.
[00:15:22] Fortunately, the government managed to find Major Taniguchi, the man who had told Onoda that he would come back for him all those years ago, who was by then long retired from the military and was now a bookseller.
[00:15:36] The following month, in March 1974, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, or rather, bookseller Yoshimi Taniguchi, travelled to Lubang and persuaded Onoda to finally give up his weapons and surrender.
[00:15:51] He travelled with one of Onoda’s brothers, as well as a delegation from the Japanese government.
[00:15:57] And after tracking him down in the jungle, Major Taniguchi was finally able to keep his word.
[00:16:05] Stand down, Lieutenant Onoda.
[00:16:08] But it hadn’t taken three years, or five, like he had promised on that day in 1945, it had taken 29 years.
[00:16:17] When he was asked what he thought about when spending all those years in the jungle, Onoda simply replied, “Nothing but accomplishing my duty.”
[00:16:27] So, with Onoda’s war finally now over, what did he do next?
[00:16:32] What would you do after spending almost 30 years in the jungle?
[00:16:36] To have missed such a huge period of time, and then be dropped into 1974, must have been quite the culture shock.
[00:16:44] When Onoda left Japan in the 1940s, he left a relatively undeveloped country of wooden houses; when he returned in 1974 it was a place of television and skyscrapers and technology.
[00:17:00] Of these changes, Onoda said: “There are so many tall buildings and automobiles in Tokyo… Television might be convenient, but it has no influence on my life here.”
[00:17:11] Clearly, adapting to modern Japan, to the modern world, was going to take some work.
[00:17:18] So, what did he do?
[00:17:20] Well, as you can imagine, people were keen to see and meet this mystery man; the soldier who had spent almost three decades in the jungle.
[00:17:30] When he finally made it back to his homeland, Onoda was given a hero’s welcome and offered a generous military pension in thanks for his service, which he in fact refused.
[00:17:42] He wrote a memoir, called “No Surrender: My Thirty Year War, and was the subject of countless films, documentaries, books and articles.
[00:17:52] But more than anything, Onoda wanted to live a quiet life. After all, he had been pretty much alone for thirty years.
[00:18:02] He took driving lessons and travelled the length and breadth of the Japanese islands, making up for lost time, and even went dancing, trying to enjoy Japan’s bustling new nightlife scene.
[00:18:14] But he found it all a bit overwhelming, and he didn’t stay in Japan for long.
[00:18:21] Just a year after returning home, in 1975 Onoda moved to a Japanese colony in São Paulo, in Brazil, to raise animals.
[00:18:31] In 1976 he got married and the couple stayed in Brazil until 1984, when they returned to Japan and opened the Onoda Nature School, a survival-skills youth camp.
[00:18:44] Clearly, this was an area in which Onoda had more experience the most.
[00:18:50] In 1996, he returned to Lubang and donated $10,000 to a school, but he wasn’t welcomed by the locals who somewhat understandably never really forgave him for the 30 or so people he had killed there while hiding out.
[00:19:06] Indeed, there is a documentary being made about him at the moment that questions this idea of him being a war hero, and instead portrays him as a cold-hearted murderer of innocent Filipinos.
[00:19:21] He would eventually be pardoned by the Philippine government, although not forgiven by all of its citizens, and he would live to the ripe old age of 91, before dying in Tokyo in January of 2014.
[00:19:34] So, how did he do it, you might be asking yourself?
[00:19:38] How does one manage to survive practically alone in the jungle, trapped in a time warp?
[00:19:44] And how does it affect you to find that thirty years of your life were a lie, or at least, you believed something that wasn’t true?
[00:19:54] Did he go completely mad, was he insane, or was he simply a devoted soldier?
[00:20:01] Interestingly enough, when he did return to Japan and was examined by medical professionals they didn’t find that he was suffering from any kind of mental condition.
[00:20:12] It seemed that he was just the epitome of the devoted, loyal soldier, a man who was, in his mind, simply doing his duty, following his orders.
[00:20:24] He was reported to have said later on in life, “men should never give up. I never do”.
[00:20:31] Now, you might agree with this, you might not, but you can’t deny it’s a motto that Hiroo Onoda lived by, even if it resulted in spending three decades in the jungle.
[00:20:45] Ok then, that is it for today’s episode on Hiroo Onoda, the soldier who refused to surrender.
[00:20:52] I hope it was an interesting one, and whether you knew a lot about him or this was the first time you’d ever heard anything about his incredible story, well I hope you learned something new.
[00:21:03] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:21:06] How long do you think you would last out in the jungle?
[00:21:09] Have you heard of any stories similar to Hiroo Onoda’s, whether in World War Two or in another war?
[00:21:15] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:21:19] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:21:28] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:21:33] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:12] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are talking about a soldier who refused to surrender.
[00:00:27] But this man was no normal soldier. This was a man who spent three decades on high alert, a man who lived in the jungle, in his mind still “fighting” The Second World War for a good 29 years after it ended.
[00:00:44] The man’s name was Hiroo Onoda, and his story really is incredible. So let’s get right into it.
[00:00:52] It was the 9th of March, 1974, in the mountainous jungle on Lubang, an island in the Philippines around 150 kilometres southwest of Manila, the East Asian archipelago's capital.
[00:01:06] The heat and humidity were torturous, and the air was filled with the buzzing of mosquitoes, the ground covered in rats.
[00:01:16] Slowly, a pair of boots shuffled forward in the undergrowth.
[00:01:21] A weathered man, who looked to be in his fifties or so, peered nervously from behind a tree, a rifle in his hands.
[00:01:31] His military uniform was tattered and worn, and he had a wispy moustache, grey hairs sprouting from his chin.
[00:01:41] He was listening carefully, trying not to make any noise or give himself away.
[00:01:47] It sounded as though a group of people were making their way through the trees, approaching his position.
[00:01:54] Probably another American patrol, he thought.
[00:01:57] But as they got closer, he realised they were speaking Japanese, his mother tongue and something he hadn’t heard in a very, very long time.
[00:02:08] Paranoid, scared, the man stayed silent.
[00:02:12] This was war, after all. It could be another trick to lure him out of his position and capture, even kill, him.
[00:02:21] Then a voice called out, a voice he recognised, but one he hadn’t heard for a very long time.
[00:02:28] “Hiroo Onoda?” it said. “Hiroo Onoda?”
[00:02:33] This man was calling out his name.
[00:02:36] Carefully, quietly, the man stepped out from behind the tree.
[00:02:41] Peering through the overgrowth, he saw who it was: his old major, his old military commander.
[00:02:49] The war is over, the major told him. We have surrendered, you can go home.
[00:02:56] Breaking down, Onoda handed over his Samurai sword, his rifle, ammunition and a dagger his mother had given him in case he was captured and he needed to commit suicide.
[00:03:10] Weeping, he saluted the Japanese flag and officially surrendered, three decades after the war had ended for everyone else in the world.
[00:03:22] So, who was Hiroo Onoda?
[00:03:24] Why did he still believe that the war was going on, when the rest of the world had moved on?
[00:03:32] The year was 1974, man had already travelled to the moon, Beatlemania had come and gone, even The Cold War was cooling down. The Second World War was ancient history, but for this one man, it had permeated every inch of his life for over thirty years.
[00:03:53] As some brief background, Onoda had joined the Japanese army in 1942, at the age of twenty.
[00:04:00] He was selected for specialist training and sent to the Nakano school, which was like a finishing school for intelligence officers, effectively.
[00:04:10] He studied the arts of covert operations and guerilla warfare, as well as martial arts and propaganda.
[00:04:18] Keep this in mind, because these skills become crucial further down the line.
[00:04:24] In December 1944, Onoda was sent to Lubang, a strategically significant island southwest of Manila Bay.
[00:04:33] As a quick reminder of what was going on in the Western Pacific, Japan had invaded the Philippines back in December 1941, just hours after the attack on Pearl Harbour.
[00:04:46] The Philippines at the time was a semi-independent state under the control of the Americans.
[00:04:52] The Japanese forces occupied the Philippines from 1942 to 1944, but they met fierce resistance from Filipino and American forces. The Philippines, as you may know, is a collection of more than 7,000 islands, which makes life tricky for any unwelcome occupier.
[00:05:12] In October of 1944, American, Filipino, Mexican and Australian forces landed on the Philippine island of Leyte, and started to push the Japanese out of the island.
[00:05:26] The idea was to use the Philippines as a base, or at least a stepping stone, for a further attack on Japan.
[00:05:35] Now, back to Hiroo Onoda.
[00:05:38] He was sent to the Filipino island of Lubang in 1944 to resist the American invasion.
[00:05:46] Onoda’s superiors had instructed him and his fellow soldiers to destroy airstrips in the hope of disrupting the American forces.
[00:05:57] When the American forces landed on Lubang a couple of months later, on the 28th of February, 1945, there was a brief battle but the small Japanese forces were no match for the invaders, and they were quickly overpowered.
[00:06:13] The Japanese soldiers that weren’t killed began to surrender or evacuate the island, fearing for their lives.
[00:06:20] But as Onoda planned his own escape, his superior, a Major named Yoshimi Taniguchi, said something that would change the course of Onoda’s life.
[00:06:34] He told Onoda that he shouldn’t evacuate, like the rest of the men, but hold his position and conduct guerrilla warfare, which was one of his specialties, it was something that he was trained to do. So, Onoda and three other Japanese soldiers stayed on Lubang.
[00:06:55] “It may take three years, it may take five,” the major told them, “but whatever happens we’ll come back for you.”
[00:07:04] Little did Taniguchi realise, but this young, loyal soldier was to take this order very literally indeed, and that Taniguchi would have to personally return almost 30 years later to keep his word.
[00:07:21] Now, when Japan officially surrendered in September of 1945, there were thousands of Japanese soldiers spread out across Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific.
[00:07:33] Lots of them simply went home, others were captured or killed, but many of them went into hiding and continued fighting, preferring to die with honour than to be captured.
[00:07:47] As you may know, dying with honour during battle is deeply entrenched in Japanese culture.
[00:07:54] Samurais would often kill themselves instead of being captured, a process called seppuku or hara-kiri, where they would thrust a sword into their stomach and then turn the blade upwards.
[00:08:08] And in the Second World War, this cultural idea of dying with honour manifested itself as Kamikaze, which was the act of Japanese pilots flying their planes into military targets, killing themselves in the process but inflicting heavy damage on the enemy.
[00:08:28] The point is that honour and integrity are of the utmost importance in Japanese culture.
[00:08:35] And for Hiroo Onoda, his word, his promise, was clearly unbreakable.
[00:08:42] His major had told him to stay, and that he would come back for him.
[00:08:47] An order was an order.
[00:08:49] So, he and his three colleagues withdrew to the high ground, into the thick jungle forest in the foothills of the mountains, in early 1945.
[00:09:01] Later that year, as you’ll know, the war ended. The Japanese emperor announced the country’s surrender on August 15th 1945, and it was officially signed on September 2nd.
[00:09:13] The war was over, finally.
[00:09:16] But not for Hiroo Onoda, who, let’s remember, had retreated into the thick jungle, away from any other signs of humanity, cut off from the world.
[00:09:28] But not completely cut off, in fact.
[00:09:31] In October 1945, the men found some leaflets that had been dropped into the jungle claiming that the war was over.
[00:09:40] But they thought that the leaflets were enemy propaganda trying to trick them out of their positions.
[00:09:46] These men had studied propaganda techniques at the Nakano school, let's remember.
[00:09:51] Onoda would later talk about this, explaining that, and I’m quoting directly, "The leaflets they dropped were filled with mistakes so I judged it was a plot by the Americans.”
[00:10:04] Slowly time went on, but there was no sign of the reinforcements the major had promised.
[00:10:12] Weeks became months which slowly became years, and the men lived off the land, staying deep in the Lubang jungle and constantly on the move.
[00:10:23] They built shacks from bamboo, basic houses made out of bamboo. They lived on bananas and coconuts and killed cows and other animals for food. They even stole rice and other food from local villages.
[00:10:38] The tropical heat was suffocating, and the jungle filled with mosquitoes and rats, but they maintained their discipline, taking care of their rifles and uniforms as though they were active soldiers.
[00:10:53] In their minds, they were active soldiers.
[00:10:56] In an interview given many years later, Onoda described what he saw as his role: "Every Japanese soldier was prepared for death,” he said, “but as an intelligence officer I was ordered to conduct guerrilla warfare and not to die.”
[00:11:15] Incredibly, Onoda didn’t die and managed to live this way for almost 30 years, holding his position and refusing to surrender until 1974.
[00:11:27] And I really must emphasise here that Onoda wasn’t just hanging out in the jungle on a camping trip.
[00:11:34] He and his fellow soldiers regularly had to hide or even attack what they thought to be American or Filipino soldiers searching for the last Japanese soldiers said to be holding out in the jungle, and they had several shootouts with Filipino police.
[00:11:51] They also attacked locals they mistook for enemies, and it is said that around 30 local villagers were killed by the Japanese soldiers who continued fighting the war in the Lubang jungle.
[00:12:04] After five years of this fairly miserable existence, however, one of Onoda’s fellow soldiers gave in and surrendered in 1950.
[00:12:14] When he finally returned to Japan, he told people about the three soldiers left in the jungle of Lubang, but there was no great plan or interest in going back to look for them, not at that point anyway.
[00:12:27] A couple of years later another of Onoda's colleagues was shot while attacking a fishing village.
[00:12:34] Onoda cared for him and helped him recover from his leg wound - no mean feat given that they were in the sweltering jungle without access to any kind of medical support.
[00:12:46] But in the end it proved futile, pointless, because the same man was shot dead in 1954 by a search party.
[00:12:55] Now they were down to two: Onoda and a man named Kozuka.
[00:13:02] In 1959 the pair were officially declared dead, the Japanese military simply assuming that they must have died by now.
[00:13:10] It would be impossible to survive that long, right?
[00:13:14] But the men continued to hide out, hunting and stealing food, cleaning their rifles and samurai swords, waiting for the promised reinforcements to arrive.
[00:13:25] In October 1972, Filipino police again set off into the jungle to look for the men, and stumbled across them stealing rice.
[00:13:36] In the gun battle that followed, Kozuka was shot and killed.
[00:13:41] Now they were down to one; Hiroo Onoda was alone.
[00:13:47] I think it’s safe to say that many people would give up in that situation, but Onoda had his orders and intended to keep them.
[00:13:57] Though most people in Japan assumed Onoda had perished in the jungle, others were becoming intrigued by the legend of this last soldier refusing to surrender.
[00:14:07] After Kozuka’s body was flown back to Japan and it became clear that he had indeed survived all that time, it became a pretty big deal in the Japanese media.
[00:14:19] Stories of a mysterious Japanese soldier hiding out in the jungle filled the media and fascinated the public, and in February of 1974, a Japanese explorer named Norio Suzuki arrived in Lubang determined to try and find this mystery man, this urban legend.
[00:14:40] After four days of trekking through the jungle, Suzuki eventually found Onoda.
[00:14:46] Of course, Suzuki told him that the war was over, and had ended decades ago, but still Onoda refused to leave his post.
[00:14:56] He wouldn’t go anywhere until he had received orders from a military superior, he said.
[00:15:03] When Suzuki went back to Japan, he showed the Japanese government photos of him and Onoda together in the jungle.
[00:15:11] Now, there was proof: Hiroo Onoda was alive.
[00:15:15] Clearly, something had to be done. His major, his superior, needed to be found.
[00:15:22] Fortunately, the government managed to find Major Taniguchi, the man who had told Onoda that he would come back for him all those years ago, who was by then long retired from the military and was now a bookseller.
[00:15:36] The following month, in March 1974, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, or rather, bookseller Yoshimi Taniguchi, travelled to Lubang and persuaded Onoda to finally give up his weapons and surrender.
[00:15:51] He travelled with one of Onoda’s brothers, as well as a delegation from the Japanese government.
[00:15:57] And after tracking him down in the jungle, Major Taniguchi was finally able to keep his word.
[00:16:05] Stand down, Lieutenant Onoda.
[00:16:08] But it hadn’t taken three years, or five, like he had promised on that day in 1945, it had taken 29 years.
[00:16:17] When he was asked what he thought about when spending all those years in the jungle, Onoda simply replied, “Nothing but accomplishing my duty.”
[00:16:27] So, with Onoda’s war finally now over, what did he do next?
[00:16:32] What would you do after spending almost 30 years in the jungle?
[00:16:36] To have missed such a huge period of time, and then be dropped into 1974, must have been quite the culture shock.
[00:16:44] When Onoda left Japan in the 1940s, he left a relatively undeveloped country of wooden houses; when he returned in 1974 it was a place of television and skyscrapers and technology.
[00:17:00] Of these changes, Onoda said: “There are so many tall buildings and automobiles in Tokyo… Television might be convenient, but it has no influence on my life here.”
[00:17:11] Clearly, adapting to modern Japan, to the modern world, was going to take some work.
[00:17:18] So, what did he do?
[00:17:20] Well, as you can imagine, people were keen to see and meet this mystery man; the soldier who had spent almost three decades in the jungle.
[00:17:30] When he finally made it back to his homeland, Onoda was given a hero’s welcome and offered a generous military pension in thanks for his service, which he in fact refused.
[00:17:42] He wrote a memoir, called “No Surrender: My Thirty Year War, and was the subject of countless films, documentaries, books and articles.
[00:17:52] But more than anything, Onoda wanted to live a quiet life. After all, he had been pretty much alone for thirty years.
[00:18:02] He took driving lessons and travelled the length and breadth of the Japanese islands, making up for lost time, and even went dancing, trying to enjoy Japan’s bustling new nightlife scene.
[00:18:14] But he found it all a bit overwhelming, and he didn’t stay in Japan for long.
[00:18:21] Just a year after returning home, in 1975 Onoda moved to a Japanese colony in São Paulo, in Brazil, to raise animals.
[00:18:31] In 1976 he got married and the couple stayed in Brazil until 1984, when they returned to Japan and opened the Onoda Nature School, a survival-skills youth camp.
[00:18:44] Clearly, this was an area in which Onoda had more experience the most.
[00:18:50] In 1996, he returned to Lubang and donated $10,000 to a school, but he wasn’t welcomed by the locals who somewhat understandably never really forgave him for the 30 or so people he had killed there while hiding out.
[00:19:06] Indeed, there is a documentary being made about him at the moment that questions this idea of him being a war hero, and instead portrays him as a cold-hearted murderer of innocent Filipinos.
[00:19:21] He would eventually be pardoned by the Philippine government, although not forgiven by all of its citizens, and he would live to the ripe old age of 91, before dying in Tokyo in January of 2014.
[00:19:34] So, how did he do it, you might be asking yourself?
[00:19:38] How does one manage to survive practically alone in the jungle, trapped in a time warp?
[00:19:44] And how does it affect you to find that thirty years of your life were a lie, or at least, you believed something that wasn’t true?
[00:19:54] Did he go completely mad, was he insane, or was he simply a devoted soldier?
[00:20:01] Interestingly enough, when he did return to Japan and was examined by medical professionals they didn’t find that he was suffering from any kind of mental condition.
[00:20:12] It seemed that he was just the epitome of the devoted, loyal soldier, a man who was, in his mind, simply doing his duty, following his orders.
[00:20:24] He was reported to have said later on in life, “men should never give up. I never do”.
[00:20:31] Now, you might agree with this, you might not, but you can’t deny it’s a motto that Hiroo Onoda lived by, even if it resulted in spending three decades in the jungle.
[00:20:45] Ok then, that is it for today’s episode on Hiroo Onoda, the soldier who refused to surrender.
[00:20:52] I hope it was an interesting one, and whether you knew a lot about him or this was the first time you’d ever heard anything about his incredible story, well I hope you learned something new.
[00:21:03] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:21:06] How long do you think you would last out in the jungle?
[00:21:09] Have you heard of any stories similar to Hiroo Onoda’s, whether in World War Two or in another war?
[00:21:15] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:21:19] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:21:28] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:21:33] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
