Quotes from Hiroo Onoda

One day Corporal Fujita picked up a model 99 infantry rifle in the woods. I had earlier found a model 38, and I traded it to Fujita for the model 99, because I had about three hundred cartridges for a 99. I carried this model 99 for the remainder of my thirty years on Lubang.

My group at least was trying to stretch out its rice supply, and sometimes we were able to supplement the rice with bananas or meat from a cow we had killed.

But we could not believe that the war had really ended. We thought the enemy was simply forcing prisoners to go along with their trickery. Every time the searchers called out to us, we moved to a different location.

In the back of my mind I thought of General Yokoyama telling me that as long as I had one soldier, I was to lead him even if we had to live on coconuts.

And so the four of us vowed to each other to keep on fighting. It was early April, 1946, and by this time we four made up the only Japanese resistance left on Lubang.

Although I had a pencil that I had found, I kept all the reports I intended to make in my head. I firmly believed that when friendly troops eventually established contact with us, they would need my reports in planning a counterattack.

Akatsu finally deserted in September, 1949, four years after the four of us had come together.

When Akatsu disappeared the fourth time, Shimada started to go look for him, but this time Kozuka and I argued that it was a waste of effort. We did this with the knowledge that Akatsu would eventually tell the enemy everything he knew about our group.

Shimada spoke even more enthusiastically. "The three of us ought to secure this whole island before our troops land again.

One time I came to blows with Shimada. We were talking about Akatsu's defection, and Shimada took a sympathetic view toward Akatsu. I, for my part, had no sympathy at all for a soldier who had deserted before my very eyes. Before very long a fistfight started, and we rolled down the hill pounding each other.

My reaction was that the Yankees had outdone themselves this time. I wondered how on earth they had obtained the photographs. That there was something fishy about the whole thing was beyond doubt, but I could not figure out exactly how the trick had been carried out.

The beach at Gontin was unlucky for Shimada. On May 7, 1954, he was killed at a spot only about half a mile from the place where he had been wounded in the leg.

There were about thirty-five of them, clustered on the beach like a flock of seagulls, only about eight hundred yards away. I thought the best thing to do was open fire on them.

Don't shoot," I said. "We can always kill some of them whenever we want to. Let's let them live a little longer.

About ten days after Shimada died, a Philippine Air Force plane trailing a streamer behind it passed over several times. It dropped leaflets, and a loudspeaker kept saying, "Onoda, Kozuka, the war has ended." This infuriated us. We wanted to scream out to the obnoxious Americans to stop threatening and cajoling us. We wanted to tell them that if they did not stop treating us like scared rabbits, we would get back at them someday, one way or another.

Together, Kozuka and I vowed that somehow we would avenge Shimada's death.

There was also a photograph of "Kozuka-san's Family." Kozuka said, "How do they expect me to believe this? Why would my family be standing in front of a new house that doesn't belong to us?

Not long after that the large search party of 1959 arrived from Japan to look for us. "The Americans seem to be starting another one of their fake rescue operations," I said. "What a nuisance!" growled Kozuka. "Let's move somewhere where it's quiet.

Then, with his eyes directly on me, he said, "You are absolutely forbidden to die by your own hand. It may take three years, it may take five, but whatever happens, we'll come back for you. Until then, so long as you have one soldier, you are to continue to lead him. You may have to live on coconuts. If that's the case, live on coconuts! Under no circumstances are you give up your life voluntarily.

If there should indeed be a full-scale search, we had a plan for escaping from the island, but in the event that we were found before we could carry this into effect, we had resolved to inflict as much damage as we could. If we had to die, it would be easier knowing that we had killed ten or twenty or thirty enemy troops.

If I could kill one more enemy with the last bullet, so much the better. That, rather than commit suicide, seemed to me to be what a soldier ought to do.

I was doubly impressed with the responsibility I bore. I said to myself, "I'll do it! Even if I don't have coconuts, even if I have to eat grass and weeds, I'll do it! These are my orders, and I will carry them out." It may sound strange today, but I meant it.

When I returned to Japan, I learned that it really had been my brother.

At this point Squadron Leader Yamaguchi suddenly smiled. "Anyway," he said, "Lubang is a very good island. There aren't many like it anymore. There's always plenty to eat there, Onoda. At least you don't have to worry about that.