Quotes from Hiroo Onoda

Life is not fair and people are not equal.

Men should never give up. I never do. I would hate to lose.

Lieutenant Onada, sir, reporting for orders

It was a little before noon on March 9, 1974, and I was on a slope about two hours away from Wakayama Point.

Too much light would mean danger, but if it were too dark, I would not be able to make sure that the person I was meeting was really Major Taniguchi.

I crossed the Agcawayan River and reached a position about three hundred yards from the appointed spot. It was only about four o'clock, so I still had plenty of time. I changed to a camouflage of fresh leaves.

This was the place where I had met and talked with Norio Suzuki two weeks before. Just two days earlier a message from Suzuki asking me to meet him here again had been left in the message box we had agreed on, and I had come. I was still afraid it might be a trap. If it was, the enemy might be waiting for me on the hill.

The sun began to sink. I inspected my rifle and retied my boots.

Suzuki was standing with his back to me, between the tent and a fireplace they had rigged up by the riverbank. Slowly he turned around, and when he saw me, he came toward me with arms outstretched. "It's Onoda!" he shouted. "Major Taniguchi, it's Onoda!

Is it really you, Onoda? I'll be with you in a minute." I could tell from the voice that it was Major Taniguchi.

The head disappeared, but in a few moments Major Taniguchi emerged from the tent fully clothed and with an army cap on his head. Taut down to my fingertips, I barked out, "Lieutenant Onoda, Sir, reporting for orders.

I held my breath as he began to read from a document that he held up formally with both hands. In rather low tones, he read, "Command from Headquarters, Fourteenth Area Army" and then continued more firmly and in a louder voice: "Orders from the Special Squadron, Chief of Staff's Headquarters, Bekabak, September 19, 1900 hours.

I stood quite still, waiting for what was to follow. I felt sure Major Taniguchi would come up to me and whisper, "That was so much talk. I will tell you your real orders later." After all, Suzuki was present, and the major could not talk to me confidentially in front of him.

Major Taniguchi slowly folded up the order, and for the first time I realized that no subterfuge was involved. This was no trick—everything I had heard was real. There was no secret message. The pack became still heavier. We really lost the war! How could they have been so sloppy?

Suddenly everything went black. A storm raged inside me. I felt like a fool for having been so tense and cautious on the way here. Worse that that, what had I been doing for all these years? Gradually the storm subsided, and for the first time I really understood: my thirty years as a guerrilla fighter for the Japanese army were abruptly finished. This was the end.

Had the war really ended thirty years ago? If it had, what had Shimada and Kozuka died for? If what was happening was true, wouldn't it have been better if I had died with them?

That night I did not sleep at all. Once inside the tent, I began giving a report of my reconnaissance and military activity during thirty years on Lubang—a detailed field report. Occasionally Major Taniguchi put in a word or two, but for the most part he listened attentively, nodding now and then in agreement or sympathy.

I was born in 1922 in the town of Kainan, Wakayama Prefecture. When I was at the Kainan Middle School, I was crazy about Japanese fencing (kend?). Although I was not exceptionally good at my studies, I liked going to school, because when classes were over, I could to go the kend? gym and practice with my bamboo "sword" until I was worn out.

I was the fifth of seven children, five boys and two girls.

Although I drank little, I smoked about twenty cigarettes a day, and when I played mahjong all night long, as I sometimes did, I smoked fifty or more. I did not have much to do with the other Japanese in Hankow, and for that reason I was soon able to speak Chinese pretty well.

I was determined to do the best I could at my job and at the same time to have as much fun as possible at that splendid dance hall. If I was lucky, I thought, maybe the war would end; then I would be able to make a lot of money in business. I dreamed of having my own company in China, and to some extent I regarded the evenings at the dance hall as an investment in the future, albeit one that had been financed to a considerable extent by my brother.

On the eighth of December in that year, the war between Japan and the United States began.

They said they understood and would do as I requested. Then they all thanked me for making it possible for them to destroy themselves. I prepared the explosives and the cannister and left the tent. The feeble voices followed me, "Take care of yourself, Commander!

On the way I saw American chewing gum wrappers by the side of the road. In one place a wad of chewing gum was sticking to the leaf of a weed. Here we were holding on for dear life, and these characters were chewing gum while they fought! I was more sad than angry. The chewing gum tinfoil told me just how miserably we had been beaten.