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John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

The stragglers





 “To this soldier, duty took precedence over personal sentiments. Onoda has shown us that there is much more in life than just material affluence and selfish pursuits. There is the spiritual aspect, something we may have forgotten.” The Mainichi Shimbun, a Tokyo newspaper.

Hirō "Hiroo" Onoda was an Imperial Japanese Army intelligence officer who remained at his jungle post on an island in the Philippines for 29 years, refusing to believe that World War II was over. Onoda spent 29 years hiding out in the Philippines until his former commander traveled from Japan to formally relieve him from duty by order of Emperor Shōwa in 1974. (Another holdout,  Teruo Nakamura, surrendered later in 1974.)
Lieutenant Onoda, an intelligence officer trained in guerrilla tactics, and three enlisted men with him found leaflets proclaiming the war’s end, but believed they were enemy propaganda.

Onoda trained as an intelligence officer in the commando class "Futamata, was sent to Lubang Island and was ordered to do all he could to hamper enemy attacks on the island, including destroying the airstrip and the pier at the harbor. Onoda's orders also stated that under no circumstances was he to surrender or take his own life.
Onoda’s last order in early 1945 was to stay and fight. Loyal to a military code that taught that death was preferable to surrender, he remained behind on Lubang Island, 93 miles southwest of Manila, when Japanese forces withdrew in the face of an American invasion.
Onoda, who had been promoted to lieutenant, ordered the men to take to the hills. They command built bamboo huts, pilfered rice and other food from a village and killed cows for meat; they were tormented by tropical heat, rats and mosquitoes, and they patched their uniforms and kept their rifles in working order.
Considering themselves to be at war, they evaded American and Filipino search parties and attacked islanders they took to be enemy guerrillas.  One of the enlisted men, Yuichi Akatsu, left the others in 1949, and surrendered to Filipino forces  in 1950 after six months on his own.
This seemed like a security problem to the others and they became even more cautious. In 1952 letters and family pictures were dropped from aircraft urging them to surrender, but the three soldiers concluded that this was a trick.
Hirō "Hiroo" Onoda (小野田 寛郎 Onoda Hirō,... - A Glance into the ...

Another man, Shimada, was shot in the leg during a shoot-out with local fishermen in June 1953, after which Onoda nursed him back to health. On 7 May 1954, Shimada was killed by a shot fired by a search party looking for the men. Enlisted man Kozuka was killed by two shots fired by local police on 19 October 1972, when he and Onoda, as part of their guerrilla activities, were burning rice that had been collected by farmers. Onoda was now alone. He was officially declared dead in 1959.
In 1974, Onoda was found by Norio Suzuki, a student  who was traveling around the world, looking for "Lieutenant Onoda, a panda, and the Abominable Snowman, in that order"
Suzuki found Onoda after four days of searching. Onoda recalled "This hippie boy Suzuki came to the island to listen to the feelings of a Japanese soldier. Suzuki asked me why I would not come out ..."
Onoda with Norio Suzuki, 1974

 However the lieutenant rejected Suzuki’s pleas to go home, insisting he was still awaiting orders.  Suzuki returned with photographs, and the Japanese government sent a delegation, including  lieutenant Onoda’s brother and his former commander, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, who had since become a bookseller, to formally relieve him of duty. Taniguchi met with Onoda and fulfilled a promise he had made back in 1944: "Whatever happens, we'll come back for you".

Onoda turned over Arisaka Type 99 rifle, 500 rounds of ammunition and several hand grenades, as well as the dagger his mother had given him in 1944 to kill himself with if he was captured.


In Manila, lieutenant Onoda, wearing his tattered uniform, presented his sword to President Marcos, who pardoned him for crimes (Murder and shoot outs with national police. Onoda he and his comrades had killed about 30 Filipinos after World War II ended) committed while he thought he was at war.


Onoda was already a national hero when he arrived in Tokyo, for his patriotism and admiration for his grit. He was met by his aging parents and huge flag-waving crowds. “I am sorry I have disturbed you for so long a time,” Onoda told his brother, Toshiro.

His story dominated the news in Japan for days, evoked waves of nostalgia and melancholy. Japan fell further in love with the 52-year-old soldier when he spoke earnestly of duty and seemed to personify a devotion to traditional values that many Japanese thought had been lost. “I was fortunate that I could devote myself to my duty in my young and vigorous years,” he said. Asked what had been on his mind all that time in the jungle, he said, “Nothing but accomplishing my duty.”
 

After his national welcome in Japan, Onoda was examined by doctors, who found him in amazingly good condition. He was given a military pension and signed a $160,000 contract for a ghostwritten memoir, “No Surrender: My-Thirty Year War.”

They New York Times described his return perfectly when it wrote “Caught in a time warp, Mr. Onoda, a second lieutenant, was one of the war’s last holdouts: a soldier who believed that the emperor was a deity and the war a sacred mission; who survived on bananas and coconuts and sometimes killed villagers he assumed were enemies; who finally went home to the lotus land of paper and wood which turned out to be a futuristic world of skyscrapers, television, jet planes and pollution and atomic destruction.”


The Japanese government offered him a large sum of money in back pay, which he refused. When money was pressed on him by well-wishers, he donated it to Yasukuni Shrine.

Onoda was overwhelmed with all the attention and was troubled by what he saw as the withering of traditional Japanese values. In April 1975, he followed his elder brother Tadao and left Japan for Brazil, where he raised cattle.

He married in 1976 and assumed a leading role in Colônia Jamic (Jamic Colony), the Japanese community in Terenos, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. Onoda also allowed the Brazilian Air Force to conduct trainings in the land that he owned.


After reading about a Japanese teenager who had murdered his parents in 1980, Onoda returned to Japan in 1984 and established the Onoda Shizen Juku ("Onoda Nature School") educational camp for young people, held at various locations in Japan.

Onoda revisited Lubang Island, where he had held out, in 1996, donating $10,000 (US) to the local school there.  For many years, he spent three months of the year in Brazil where he was awarded the Merit medal of Santos-Dumont by the Brazilian Air Force on 6 December 2004. On February 21, 2010, the Legislative Assembly of Mato Grosso do Sul awarded him the title of Cidadão ("Citizen").

Onoda died of heart failure on January 16, 2014, at St. Luke's International Hospital in Tokyo, due to complications from pneumonia

Hiroo Onoda - Bio, Facts, Family Life of Imperial Japanese Army ...

A few months after Lt. Onoda came in from the jungle, Japanese Private Teruo Nakamura was found  on December 18, 1974 in Indonesia, but his story was much different from Onoda’s. Nakamura, an Amis aborigine, was a Taiwanese soldier from the Imperial Japanese Army who fought for Japan in World War II.

Nakamura was enlisted into a Takasago Volunteer Unit of the Imperial Japanese army in November 1943. He was stationed on Morotai Island in Indonesia shortly before the island was overrun by the Allies in September 1944 in the Battle of Morotai.

Nakamura was declared dead on November 13 1945 by the Imperial Japanese army. However, he was very much alive and lived with other stragglers on the island until well into the 1950s, while going off for extended periods of time on his own. In 1956, he apparently decided to cut himself off from the remaining holdouts on the island and built his own, fenced camp.
Photo] Attun Palalin returning to his home town, Taitung, Taiwan ...

Nakamura's hut was accidentally discovered by a pilot in mid-1974.  At the request of the Japanese Embassy in Jakarta the Indonesian government organizing a search mission, which was conducted by the Indonesian Air Force on Morotai. Nakamura was found and, unlike Onoda was arrested and handcuffed by Indonesian soldiers on  December 18, 1974.
He was flown to Jakarta and hospitalized and repatriated to Taiwan. 
The Taiwanese Kuomintang government downplayed his return because they considered Nakamura a Japanese loyalist.  A change in the Japanese law in 1953, essentially stripped him of his pension and back pay but did grant him about $1,200 a month to live on. His wife, assuming that Nakamura had died, had long since remarried. His son was a stranger to him.  


Teruo Nakamura Kisah Nakamura Prajurit Jepang yang Bersembunyi 30 Tahun


Private Nakamura died of lung cancer in Taiwan,  five years after he left the jungle,  on 15 June 1979.