What can we learn from a WWII Japanese soldier's tragic/heroic story?

 

How can the life of a short, wiry, second lieutenant Japanese soldier, who refused to recognize that Japan had surrendered in 1945, provide insight into how to live and not live an excellent life for you and me? He fought a guerrilla war for 29 years in the Philippines' rural areas, terrorizing and killing people before giving up in 1979, finally acknowledging that war was over.

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I see this autobiographical book as a chance for us to gain insight into our own life from a man whose experience is so vastly different from our own that it seems impossible to draw any comparisons. I contend that sometimes it is simpler to draw important conclusions from extreme cases than from more typical ones (this man's life was extreme, especially as seen from the eyes of non-Japanese).

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If you want to look over the clippings first (to get a better idea of Hiroo's story) before we begin to examine how his story could inform us in how to live a better life, then go to the section below titled "Here are my clippings."

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A lot to admire and emulate

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​Hiroo was smart and had an amazing memory. He was inventive. He was watchful, staying mindful of his environment and responding resourcefully as a guerilla leader and soldier.

He looked ahead and was willing and able to accept short term costs in exchange for longer term benefits. For instance, to ration their available rice supplies.

Despite setbacks, like the death or even desertion of some of his fellow soldiers, he managed to continue without significant discouragement.

 

Viewing Hiroo's story as a cautionary tale (in his own words)

 

"The Nakano Military School answered this question with a simple sentence: 'In secret warfare, there is integrity.' And this is right, for integrity is the greatest necessity when a man must deceive not only his enemies but his friends. With integrity—and I include in this sincerity, loyalty, devotion to duty and a sense of morality—one can withstand all hardships and ultimately turn hardship itself into victory. This was the lesson that the instructors at Futamata were constantly trying to instill in us."...

 

"We were sure that even if the enemy did land in Japan, in the end Japan would win. Like nearly all of our countrymen, we considered Japan to be the invincible land of the gods."...

 

"I was confident that those three months had done wonders for my spirit, as well as for my capability as a soldier. I felt that I would be able to conduct myself as cleverly and as coolly as the captured lookout who had been my fellow trainee. I told myself that whatever happened, I would be able to carry out my duties creditably."...

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"After I read this paper, Major Takahashi said, 'Our objective is to hamper the enemy attack on Luzon. The first thing for you to do is destroy the Lubang airfield and the pier at the harbor. Should the enemy land and try to use the airfield, destroy their planes and kill the crews.'"...

 

"General Mutō being the senior officer present, we reported first to him. Looking us over carefully, he said, 'I knew you were coming, but I thought I’d be too busy to see you. I’m glad we happened to meet here. The war is not going well at the moment. It is urgent that you exert every effort to carry out your orders. Understand? I mean it!' It was a strange feeling to receive a pep talk from a famous general. We were honored and impressed."...

 

"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.'”...

 

"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.'"

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What is this "integrity" that guided Hiroo's life?

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What is this "integrity" that supported and allowed Hiroo to eagerly enter into the war with the United States, to endure the hardships both for himself and his fellow soldiers for over 30 years, as well as to enjoy wrecking havoc and death upon the enemy soldiers as well as the Filipino villagers?

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This is the integrity of a tribalist. This is the integrity of somebody who has fully given over their sense of identity to the tribe, guiding their whole life according to what they believe the tribe and the leaders of that tribe consider to be their duty.

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This is the integrity that abnegates any personal responsibility to question the judgment or decisions of those tribal leaders. This allowed Hiroo to feel confident that he was always doing the right thing as long as he just followed their orders.

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This is the integrity that allowed Hiroo to dispassionately steal from and kill those whom he saw as his enemy or who might be in support of the enemy, in accordance with the orders of his leaders. 

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What we can learn

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Are you a tribalist? Do you identify with or are you protective of any particular group, be it a country, a religion, a political party, a movement (like feminism or pacifism), where you see non members of that group as either bad guys or less than, or, most charitably "uniformed"?

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To what extent do you give up being 100% responsible in making your own personal life choices? Who do you give away the responsibility of those choices to: your parents? your church? your country? your doctor? your boss? your friends?

 

Except for the day-to-day choices involved in implementing the life choices made for him by his culture and military leaders, Hiroo did not think for himself.

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Let Hiroo tell more of his story.

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"We saw our second surrender leaflet around the end of the year. A Boeing B-17 flew over our hideout and dropped a lot of big, thick pieces of paper. On the front were printed the surrender order from General Yamashita of the Fourteenth Area Army and a directive from the chief of staff. On the back was a map of Lubang on which the place where the leaflets were dropped was marked with a circle. We gathered together and considered whether the orders printed on the leaflet were genuine. I had my doubts about a sentence saying that those who surrendered would be given “hygienic succor” and “hauled” to Japan. 

 

"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 [the war had ended with Japan on September 2nd of 1945], and by this time we four made up the only Japanese resistance left on Lubang."

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[Skip ahead 27 years to 1973 during which time, in prosecuting their guerrilla warfare they had killed about 30 Filipino villagers and policemen and after one of Hiroo's comrades has 'deserted' and the other two have been killed, leaving Hiroo alone to hold out against the American enemy and the collusive Filipino villagers so as to make ready for the Japanese re-occupation of Lubang.]

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"Unlike the search party of 1959, the new expedition was actually sent by the Japanese government. The search, however, was only a pretext, the real purpose being to send a team of Japanese reconnaissance experts to conduct a detailed survey of Lubang. According to the news on the radio, Japan had become a large economic power, and it might well be that one aim of the search party was to spread a lot of money around Lubang and win the islanders over to the Japanese side. The appeals to me to come out, then, were intended to throw American intelligence off the track. Under cover of the ostensible search for me, Japanese agents would photograph every strategic point on the island and prepare detailed reports on the terrain and conditions among the people.

 

"Looked at from this viewpoint, the pleas urging me to come out really meant that I should not come out, because if I came out, the game would have to end. I knew from the radio that the Americans had failed badly in Vietnam, and it occurred to me that Japan might have seen that debacle as an opportunity to woo the Philippines over to the Japanese side. The Philippine government, for its part, might well be in the mood to switch its support from America to Japan. It stood to reason that the Japanese strategic command might have selected Lubang, where I was still holding out, as the place to establish a foothold in the Philippines. Hence the phony search party. If I were to accept the search at face value and give myself up, the 'search party' would have to go back to Japan without having accomplished its real objective.

 

"I had felt tempted by my brother’s appeal, but it would not do for me to spoil the larger plan by giving in. Mentally, I addressed words of encouragement to the 'search party': 'I will keep hidden where you won’t find me, so survey the island as closely as you can. Working in a large group, you can find out much more about the mountains and the towns and the airfield than I could ever learn alone. If you win the support of the islanders and render the island harmless, my objectives will have been accomplished all the more quickly.'"

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What we can learn from Hiroo about cognitive biases

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Like all of us, the choices that Hiroo made were affected by his cognitive biases. Cognitive biases, unless we have trained ourselves to be vigilant for them, operate outside our awareness. Our thinking, though skewed, occurs as true and accurate. They operate like optical illusions where we have no counter evidence that our eyes are fooling us. And, even with awareness, they can still trip us up.

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The conspiracy of cognitive biases

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The conspiracy of cognitive biases that affected Hiroo's thinking and choices had ring leader: the Confirmation bias.

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Confirmation bias: the tendency to search for or interpret information that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs.

 

Again and again, just in the few clippings that I highlighted above, you can see how Hiroo favors interpreting new information or data so as to confirm his already existing belief that he and his comrades are still at war with the United States and they should continue with their assignment to provide guerrilla warfare support.

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The co-conspirators

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There are a dozen or more co-conspirators that worked together to lead Hiroo astray. You can assess yourself which ones could have played a role in making him blind by checking out cognitive biases.

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I will list a few here that played a major role.

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• Commitment bias: the tendency to be consistent with what we have already done or said we will do in the past, particularly if this is in public.

• Hostile attribution bias​​: the tendency to interpret others' behaviors as having hostile intent, even when the behavior is ambiguous or benign.

• In-group favoritism​: the tendency to favor people who exist in similar groups as themselves. These groups could be formed by gender, race, ethnicity, countrymen, or a favorite sports team. We tend to overwhelmingly favor people who are similar to us and who belong to these similar groups.

• Plan continuation bias​: failure to recognize that the original plan of action is no longer appropriate for a changing situation or for a situation that is different than anticipated.

• Sunk cost fallacy: the tendency to make a decision to continue with a certain course of action because of our past investment, instead of considering the decision freshly, as if we hadn’t already invested in it.

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Not a bad man

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Hiroo was not a bad man. He terrorized and killed people. He robbed people. He acted out of revenge. He insisted that he and his comrades endure hardships lasting decades, including loss of life, in order to "be honorable and stay true to the cause." But he did all these things because of his belief in "integrity" and his being duped by a perfect storm of cognitive biases. All of us, down our own path in life, usually with less dramatic costs, are prone to being blinded by the identical reasons. 

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Ask yourself, "What can I learn from Hiroo's mistakes so that I can have a better life?"

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See all my book recommendations.  

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Here are my clippings (I used up the allowed limit...so the outline of the story is not complete):

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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.

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Hiroo Onoda's account: 

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"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.

 

"1. In accordance with the Imperial Command, the Fourteenth Area Army has ceased all combat activity.

"2. In accordance with Military Headquarters Command No. A–2003, the Special Squadron in the Chief of Staff’s Headquarters is relieved of all military duties.

“3. Units and individuals under the command of the Special Squadron are to cease military activities and operations immediately and place themselves under the command of the nearest superior officer. When no officer can be found, they are to communicate with the American or Philippine forces and follow their directives.

“Special Squadron, Chief of Staff’s Headquarters, Fourteenth Area Army, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi.”

 

"After reading this, Major Taniguchi paused slightly, then added, 'That is all.'

 

"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 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.

 

"Finally I reached the end of the story, and the major said, 'Now let’s get some sleep. It will only be an hour or so before the sun is really up. We have a rough day in front of us, and even an hour will help.' He must have been relieved that the search was over, because he was snoring seconds after he lay down. I was not. After sleeping outdoors where best I could for all these years, I could not get used to the cot. I closed my eyes, but I was more awake than ever. Like it or not, I had to go over in my mind all the events that had brought me to this tent.

 

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 (kendō). Although I was not exceptionally good at my studies, I liked going to school, because when classes were over, I could to go the kendō 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.

 

After that the dance hall and just about everything else had to close shop on the eighth day of each month as a “contribution to the Asian war effort.” The Japanese newspapers in Hankow began to call those of us who frequented the French Concession the “vermin of Asia,” and anyone who was in the concession until ...

 

Shortly afterward I was notified that on December 10 I would be inducted into the Sixty-first Infantry Regiment in Wakayama.

 

When I went into the army, I promised my mother I would come back a private first class. Although I had some military courses in middle school and was eligible to take entrance examinations for officers’ training school, I did not think I I was cut out to be an officer, nor did I want to wear a uniform different from the others and stand up in front of people barking out orders. The two stars of a private first class were enough for me. At least I thought so at that time.

 

I had kept on growing; now I stood five foot four. When I had my physical after basic training, my weight had increased to 132 pounds. which was twice the weight of the full pack we had to carry.

 

Having said earlier that I wanted nothing grander than the rank of private first class, I must confess that after I went into the army, I changed my mind rather quickly. One reason was that I wanted to do something that would make the squad leader happy. The other was the idea that if I was going to go to war, I might just as well go in one of those flashy officer’s uniforms. The attire of a private first class is not inspiring.

 

Captain Shigeo Shigetomi, was considered to be one of the toughest officers there. His motto was “Better to sweat on the training ground than to bleed on the battleground,” and he drilled his fifty soldiers constantly in suicide-attack maneuvers. Shigetomi’s favorite expressions were, “You’re stupid” and “You’ve got everything backward.” These were usually bleated out to the accompaniment of a sharp slap on the mis-doer’s face.

 

In our school, the worst disgrace was to be caught unprepared or uninformed. Nothing should be handled in slipshod fashion, no matter how trivial it might seem.

 

Captain Shigetomi made me into an officer, and it was my pride as an officer that sustained me during my thirty years on Lubang.

 

he looked me straight in the eye and said, “Be strong! It won’t be long before you’re going to need all the strength you have.” I said firmly, “Don’t worry, I’ll die like a man.” “Well,” said my brother, “there is no point in rushing off to get killed. But you’d better be prepared to die in case your turn comes.”

 

The commandant, Lieutenant Colonel Mamoru Kumagawa, addressed our class of 230 officers with words to the following effect: “The purpose of this branch school is to train you in secret warfare. For that reason, the real name of the school is to be kept absolutely secret. Furthermore, you yourselves are to discard any ideas you may have had of achieving military honors.”

 

It was certainly different from the officers’ training school. Military forms and procedures were observed, but without excessive emphasis on regulations. On the contrary, the instructors kept stressing to us that in our new role as commando trainees, we should learn that so long as we kept the military spirit and remained determined to serve our country, the regulations were of little importance. At the same time, they tried to impress upon us that the more underhanded techniques that we were learning, such as wiretapping, were to be used against the enemy, not for our own personal benefit. They urged us to express our opinions concerning the quality of the instruction and to make complaints if we felt like it.

 

I began to understand the basic differences between open warfare and secret warfare. The attack drills at the officers’ training school had been lessons in open warfare, which is fundamentally unicellular. We were now being taught a multicellular type of warfare in which every available particle of information is used to throw the enemy into confusion. In one sense, what we were learning at Futamata was the exact opposite of what we had been taught before. We had to accustom ourselves to a whole new concept of war.

 

In one sense, the training we received can be compared with what is usually called “liberal education.” We were to a large degree given our heads, so to speak. We were encouraged to think for ourselves, to make decisions where no rules existed.

 

Here again the training was very different from what we had experienced at the officers’ training school. There we were taught not to think but to lead our troops into battle, resolved to die if necessary. The sole aim was to attack enemy troops and slaughter as many as possible before being slaughtered. At Futamata, however, we learned that the aim was to stay alive and continue to fight as guerrillas as long as possible, even if this entailed conduct normally considered disgraceful. The question of how to stay alive was to be decided at one’s own discretion. I liked this. This kind of training and this kind of warfare seemed to suit my personality.

 

At that time, if a soldier who had been taken prisoner later managed to return to Japan, he was subject to a court martial and a possible death penalty. Even if the penalty was not carried out, he was so thoroughly ostracized by others that he might as well have been dead. Soldiers were supposed to give their lives for the cause, not grovel in enemy prison camps. General Hideki Tōjō’s Instructions for the Military said explicitly: “He who would not disgrace himself must be strong. He must remember always the honor of his family and his community, and ...

 

But at Futamata, we were taught that it was permissible to be taken prisoner. By becoming prisoners, we were told, we would place ourselves in a position to give the enemy false information. Indeed, there might be times when we ought deliberately to let ourselves be captured. This could, for instance, be the best course when there was a need to communicate directly with othe...

 

The Nakano Military School answered this question with a simple sentence: “In secret warfare, there is integrity.” And this is right, for integrity is the greatest necessity when a man must deceive not only his enemies but his friends. With integrity—and I include in this sincerity, loyalty, devotion to duty and a sense of morality—one can withstand all hardships and ultimately turn hardship itself into victory. This was the lesson that the instructors at Futamata were constantly trying to instill in us.

 

We were sure that even if the enemy did land in Japan, in the end Japan would win. Like nearly all of our countrymen, we considered Japan to be the invincible land of the gods.

 

I was confident that those three months had done wonders for my spirit, as well as for my capability as a soldier. I felt that I would be able to conduct myself as cleverly and as coolly as the captured lookout who had been my fellow trainee. I told myself that whatever happened, I would be able to carry out my duties creditably.

 

Just before we finished school, word was received that forty-three of the trainees, including myself, would be sent to the Philippines, and twenty-two of us were directed to reassemble at Futamata on December 7.

 

I came to the conclusion then that I would probably go off to the Philippines and carry on my guerrilla warfare in the mountains until I died there all alone, lamented by no one. Although I knew that my struggle would bring me neither fame nor honor, I did not care. I asked myself, “Is this the way it ought to be?” And I answered, “This is the way it ought to be. If it is of the slightest use to my country, I shall be happy.”

 

I remembered hearing my mother tell how her mother had given it to her when she married my father. It was in a white scabbard, and as she handed it to me, she said gravely, “If you are taken captive, use this to kill yourself.”

 

When I left Wakayama, I told my mother, “My work being what it is, it’s possible that I may be reported dead when I’m not. If you’re told I’ve been killed, don’t think too much about it, because I may well show up again after a few years.”

 

We stayed one more night at Clark and then went to Manila on the twenty-fourth.

 

That morning a low-flying enemy Consolidated B–24 had dropped Christmas cards on the city. Addressed to the Philippine people, they bore a picture of a lamb and a message in English saying: “We are now in the South Pacific, hoping to ring in a Happy New Year with you!” When one of my fellow officers translated this for me, I gritted my teeth and said, “Fools! Idiots! Who do they think they are!”

 

Our own truck arrived at division headquarters just before dawn. The orders that I was to receive here would decide my fate for the next thirty years.

 

After a while, Shigeru Moriguchi and Shigeichi Yamamoto were called over and ordered to lead fifty troops in an attack on San Jose. Next Shin Furuta and Ichirō Takaku were assigned to lead a guerrilla group on the island of Mindoro. Now it was my turn. Major Takahashi said, “Apprentice Officer Onoda will proceed to Lubang Island, where he will lead the Lubang Garrison in guerrilla warfare.” This was the first time I ever heard of Lubang. I had no idea where it was or how big it was.

 

After I read this paper, Major Takahashi said, “Our objective is to hamper the enemy attack on Luzon. The first thing for you to do is destroy the Lubang airfield and the pier at the harbor. Should the enemy land and try to use the airfield, destroy their planes and kill the crews.”

 

General Mutō being the senior officer present, we reported first to him. Looking us over carefully, he said, “I knew you were coming, but I thought I’d be too busy to see you. I’m glad we happened to meet here. The war is not going well at the moment. It is urgent that you exert every effort to carry out your orders. Understand? I mean it!” It was a strange feeling to receive a pep talk from a famous general. We were honored and impressed.

 

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.”

 

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.

 

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.”

 

“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.”

 

At about eight thirty in the morning on January 3, a lookout I had stationed at the top of the mountain came running toward me. “Enemy fleet sighted!” he cried. Clutching my binoculars, I hurried up the mountain. What the lookout had seen was an enemy fleet, all right. And what a fleet! As carefully as I could, I counted the vessels. There were two battleships, four aircraft carriers, four cruisers and enough light cruisers and destroyers to make up a total of thirty-seven or thirty-eight warships. What astonished me most, however, was not this awesome armada, but the host of troop transports that followed it. There must have been nearly 150 of them. As if that were not enough, the sea was literally peppered with landing craft—more than I could possibly count. The invasion of Luzon was about to begin.

 

To make matters worse, Lieutenant Hayakawa had had an attack of kidney trouble and needed to stop frequently to rest and take a drink of coconut milk. With their commander in this shape, the men were all the more truculent. It did not seem to me that they had any will to go on fighting. The other outfits were no help. They began grumbling that if the enemy attacked, the garrison troops were supposed to stand in the front line and protect them as best they could. If the garrison was going to hide in the mountains, they said, they might as well commit suicide on the spot.

 

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.

 

With Lieutenant Suehiro’s assistance, I gathered up pieces of airplanes that had been destroyed and laid them out to look like new airplanes, taking care to camouflage them with grass. As I think back on it, the scheme sounds rather childishly simple, but it worked. After that, when enemy planes came, they invariably strafed my decoys on the airfield. At that time, they were coming over every other day, and we utilized the other days to put together fake airplanes. I considered it good guerrilla tactics to make attacking planes waste as much ammunition as possible.

 

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 Ōsaki 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.

 

With Manila surrounded by the enemy and American airborne troops landing on Corregidor, things were obviously going badly for Japan. The islanders were taking advantage of our helplessness.

 

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.

 

Then, just as we were setting out from the base, a messenger came from the sick tent asking for explosives. I went to the tent to see what the situation was. A young man with a very pale face looked up at me from his cot and mumbled, “We can’t move. Please let us kill ourselves here.” The rest of the twenty men in the tent, all gravely wounded, stared pitifully at me. I suppressed my emotions and said, “All right, I’ll do it. I’ll attach a fuse to set off the dynamite, but just in case it doesn’t, I’ll leave a cannister, which you can throw into the dynamite to ignite it.” I looked at each and every face, twenty-two in all. They were all resigned to death, ready to make the sacrifice they had been brought up to make. With difficulty, I continued. 

 

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.

 

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.

 

The islanders fled, leaving behind them a piece of paper. Printed on it in Japanese was a statement saying “The war ended on August 15. Come down from the mountains!” Neither I nor the others believed this, because just a few days before a group of Japanese who had gone to kill a cow had bumped into an enemy patrol and had immediately been fired on. How could that happen if the war was over?

 

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.

 

We saw our second surrender leaflet around the end of the year. A Boeing B-17 flew over our hideout and dropped a lot of big, thick pieces of paper. On the front were printed the surrender order from General Yamashita of the Fourteenth Area Army and a directive from the chief of staff. On the back was a map of Lubang on which the place where the leaflets were dropped was marked with a circle. We gathered together and considered whether the orders printed on the leaflet were genuine. I had my doubts about a sentence saying that those who surrendered would be given “hygienic succor” and “hauled” to Japan. 

 

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.

 

We picked up the leaflets later, and among them was a letter from my oldest brother, Toshio. The letter started, “I am entrusting this letter to Lieutenant Colonel Jimbo, who is going to the Philippine Islands on the invitation of Madame Roxas.” It went on to say that the war had ended, that my parents were both well and that my brothers were all out of the army. There were also letters from Kozuka’s and Shimada’s families, together with family photographs.

 

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.

 

As I recalled this incident, it seemed plain to me that the Japanese flag was part of an attempt to make the enemy divert troops to Manila in the belief that Lubang was about to be reoccupied. I was excited to think that a Japanese counterattack was soon to take place. I was not alone in regarding the flag as a fake message. Kozuka agreed with me that it could not be anything else. I had taught Kozuka a good deal about the principles of secret warfare, and he, no less than I, had developed the habit of reading even beyond the lines between the lines. By this time he would have been a match for any graduate from Futamata.

 

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.”

 

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.

 

A man was standing on the top of Six Hundred speaking earnestly into a microphone. I approached a point about a hundred and fifty yards away from him. I did not dare go nearer, because I would have made too good a target. I could not see the man’s face, but he was built like my brother, and his voice was identical. “That’s really something,” I thought. “They’ve found a Nisei or a prisoner who looks at a distance like my brother, and he’s learned to imitate my brother’s voice perfectly.”

 

The man started to sing, “East wind blowing in the sky over the capital . . .” This was a well-known students’ song at the Tokyo First High School, which my brother had attended, and I knew he liked it. It started out as a fine performance, and I listened with interest. But gradually the voice grew strained and higher, and at the end it was completely off tune. I laughed to myself. The impersonator had not been able to keep it up, and his own voice had come through in the end. I found it very amusing, particularly so because at first he had nearly taken me in.

 

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

 

The newspapers, which covered a period of about four months, made a stack nearly two feet high. We thought they were reprints of real Japanese newspapers doctored up by the American secret service in such a way as to eliminate any news the Americans did not want us to see. This was all we could think so long as we believed that the Greater East Asia War was still going on.

 

And in a way the newspapers confirmed that the war was still going on, because they told a lot about life in Japan. If Japan had really lost the war, there should not be any life in Japan. Everybody should be dead.

 

When I arrived in the Philippines in 1944, the war was going badly for Japan, and in the homeland the phrase ichioku gyokusai (“one hundred million souls dying for honor”) was on everybody’s lips. This phrase meant literally that the population of Japan would die to a man before surrendering. I t...

 

After all, this is what we Japanese had all vowed to each other. We had sworn the we would resist the American and English devils until the last single one of us was dead.

 

The wartime newspapers all played this idea up in the strongest possible language. “Struggle to the End!” “The Empire Must Be Protected at Any Cost!” “One Hundred Million Dying for the Cause.” I was virtually brought up on this kind of talk. When I became a soldier, I accepted my country’s goals. I vowed that I would do anything within my power to achieve those goals. I did not, it is true, come forward and volunteer for military service, but having been born male and Japanese, I considered it my sacred duty, once I had passed the army physical examination, to become a soldier and fight for Japan. 

 

It was difficult to tell, for example, which countries were now on Japan’s side and which were not. Putting together what we read in the newspapers and the bits and pieces of information (or misinformation) we had gleaned from leaflets and the like, we formed a total picture of Japan and the war situation in 1959. We knew that the Great Japanese Empire had become a democratic Japan. We did not know when or how, but clearly there was now a democratic government, and the military organization had been reformed. It also appeared as though Japan was now engaged in cultural and economic relations with a large number of foreign countries. The Japanese government was still working for the establishment of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, and the new army was still engaged in military conflict with America. The new army seemed to be a modernized version of the old army, and we supposed that it must have assumed responsibility for the defense of East Asia as a whole, China included. China was now a communist country under the leadership of Mao Tse-tung: there seemed little doubt but that Mao had come to power with the support of Japan. No doubt he was now cooperating with Japan to implement the co-prosperity sphere. Although there was nothing in the newpapers about this, it was only logical that the American secret service would have eliminated any mention of it in preparing the newspapers for us. 

 

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.

 

“Well, my guess is that it’s at least a friendly nation. Australia may still be holding out, but it shouldn’t be too long before the Australians join us too. Anyway, that leaves us with East Siberia, Manchukuo, China, Java and Sumatra all in the league and supporting Japan in the war against America and England. The big question is when will the Philippines split off from America and join our side?” “I think it’s only a matter of time,” I said confidently.