Quotes About Loyalty

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I end up saving the world, just to save you

I will stay by your side, my friend. Know that I am here, and that I am sorry. I am sorry that... I failed you. After waiting 600 years I made a beginner's mistake. I underestimated my enemy.

The reason I'm keeping her secret for her, pretending that I don't know she's a girl is because I don't want to lose her. And that's exactly why I can't let her know that I know.