Quotes from Hiroo Onoda

If I get killed," I thought, "I'll be enshrined as a god at Yasukuni Shrine, and people will worship me. That isn't so bad.

No matter how I tried, I could convince no one of the necessity for guerrilla warfare. They all talked big about committing suicide and giving up their lives for the emperor. Deep down they were hoping and praying that Lubang would not be attacked. I was sure of this, but there was nothing I could do about it. I had so little real authority that they did not even take me seriously.

As it was, I had to listen to these men babbling at the mouth about dying for the cause, and listen silently with the knowledge that I was not permitted that out. I could not even hint to anyone that I had orders not to die. It was frustrating in the extreme.

Acting on my own, I ordered the mayor of the town of Lubang to supply us with fifty sacks of polished rice. When the Suehiro and Ã…Å'saki outfits found out about this, without saying anything to me they ordered the mayor to supply them with rice too. The mayor came weeping and said that if the islanders supplied all our demands, they would starve.

I had been sent to this island to fight, only to find that the troops I was supposed to lead were a bunch of good-for-nothings, quick to profess their willingness to die, but actually concerned only with their immediate wants. As if this were not enough, I had no authority to issue orders to them. I could only deploy them with the consent of their commander.

On the west side of the island was a village called Tomibo, where a force of about fifty American soldiers landed on February 28.

I decided on a retreat. If we dug in and made a stand where we were, we did not have the remotest chance of winning. I figured that the only chance left was to go up into the mountains and carry on a guerrilla campaign. The intelligence squad and the coastal attack squads did not agree. They said they would hold out to the end where they were. I tried to tell them that with no more armaments than they had, they would be sitting ducks for the enemy, but they would not listen.

The only way I could see now to discharge my duty to those who had died so tragically was to carry out this desperate night attack on the enemy. I would lead the way into the enemy camp and slaughter as many Americans as I could.

We calculated that Japan would have found it advantageous to set Mao Tse-tung up as the leader of the New China, because this would make the vast sums of money held by wealthy Chinese financiers available to Japan. We assumed that to secure Japan's support, Mao had agreed to drive the Americans and English out of China and to cooperate with the new Japanese army.

Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda was officially declared dead in December, 1959. At the time it was thought that he and his comrade Kinshichi Kozuka had died of wounds sustained five years earlier in a skirmish with Philippine troops. A six-month search organized by the Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare in early 1959 had uncovered no trace of the two men.

Then, in 1972 Onoda and Kozuka surfaced, and Kozuka was killed in an encounter with Philippine police. In the following half year, three Japanese search parties attempted to persuade Onoda to come out of the jungle, but the only response they received was a thank-you note for some gifts they left. This at least established that he was alive. Owing partly to his reluctance to appear, he became something of a legend in Japan.

When he left Japan, he told his friends that he was going to look for Lieutenant Onoda, a panda and the Abominable Snowman, in that order. Presumably the panda and the Snowman are still waiting, because after only four days on Lubang, Suzuki found Onoda and persuaded him to meet with a delegation from Japan, which Suzuki undertook to summon.

There are several theories as to why the reappearance of Onoda created such a stir. Mine is that Onoda showed signs of being something that defeat in World War II had deprived Japan of: a genuine war hero.

And when I saw this small, dignified man emerge from the plane, bow, and then stand rigidly at attention for his ovation, I suddenly realized that he was something I had not seen—a man who was still living in 1944! Or at least only a few days out of it. A man who for the past thirty years must have been carrying around in his head the forgotten wartime propaganda of those times.

How would he react to a Japan that is so radically different, on the surface at least, from what it was in 1944?

Onoda kept neither diary nor journal, but his memory is phenomenal. Within three months of his return, he had dictated two thousand pages of recollections ranging from the most important events to the tiniest details of jungle life.