The Japanese fought after the end of the war. Two Japanese soldiers who did not know about the end of World War II were found in the jungle.
Photographs from the Second World War show us, first of all, German and Soviet prisoners of war, as well as captured soldiers of the British and US armies, the same post will show rare photographs of Japanese military personnel who were captured by the USSR or the USA.
Japanese pilot captured during the fighting at Khalkhin Gol. 1939
Japanese who were captured by the Soviets during the battles at Khalkhin Gol. The Soviet commander in the foreground has the military rank of major. Soviet military personnel wore cotton Panama hats for hot areas, which have survived to this day with minimal changes. Red stars with a diameter of 7.5 cm are sewn onto the front of the Panama hats; enamel stars are attached in the center. 1939
Japanese soldiers captured after the capture of Betio Island, part of Tarawa Atoll. From the Japanese garrison numbering more than 5,000 people, including 1,200 Korean workers, according to various sources, from 17 to 35 Japanese soldiers, as well as more than a hundred civilian personnel, surrendered. November 1943.
Members of the crew of the American battleship New Jersey watch the washing of a Japanese prisoner of war. During World War II, in the Pacific Theater, Japanese prisoners of war were washed, cut, de-liced, and dressed in American military uniforms without insignia by Americans. There is a version that the prisoner of war in the photo is a downed kamikaze pilot. 1945
US Marines remove a Japanese captured soldier from a US submarine returning from patrol.
Captured Japanese. Manchuria.
A Japanese soldier lay there for 36 hours with a grenade in his hand, pretending to be dead. Having received a promise from him not to resist, the American treats him to a cigarette. Location: Iwo Jima, Japan. Time taken: February 1945.
American Marine, First (Senior) Lieutenant Hart H. Spiegal, using sign language, tries to start a conversation with two short Japanese soldiers captured on the island of Okinawa. The one on the left is 18 years old, the other is 20 years old. Filming location: Okinawa, Japan.
Japanese prisoners prepare for recovery of the small submarine No. 53 (Type B Ko-Huoteki, Kō-hyōteki) in Simpson Bay on Rabaul (New Guinea). Main characteristics: displacement - 47 tons, length - 23.9 m, width - 1.8 m, height - 3. Maximum speed - 23 knots (underwater), 19 knots - surface. Cruising range - 100 miles. Crew - 2 people. Armament - 2 torpedoes of 450 mm caliber and a 140 kg explosive charge.
Japanese Lieutenant General Yamashita Tomoyuki (Tomoyuki Yamashita, 1885-1946) arrives in Manila under the escort of American military police. In the background on the right is the general's personal translator, a Harvard University graduate, Masakato Hamamoto. Location: Manila, Philippines.
Japanese prisoners of war on the island of Guam listen with bowed heads as Emperor Hirohito announces Japan's unconditional surrender.
A Japanese prisoner of war in a camp on Guam after news of Japan's unconditional surrender.
Japanese prisoners receive lunch at the Bilibid camp in Manila in the Philippines.
Surrender of the Japanese garrison of Matua Island to Soviet troops. Location: Matua Island, Kuril Islands. Time taken: 08/25/1945. Surrender ceremony for military personnel of the 41st separate infantry regiment, which was part of the Matua Island garrison. The Japanese officer is the regiment commander, Colonel Ueda.
Captain III rank Denisov interviews captured Japanese officers. Kataoka Naval Base, Shumshu Island. Filming location: Shumshu Island, Kuril Islands.
The taking under protection of Japanese military warehouses and property by Red Army units after the surrender of the Kwantung Army. Taking under guard Japanese warehouses in the area of operation of the 57th Rifle Corps of the 53rd Army of the Trans-Baikal Front in the vicinity of the Chinese city of Fuxin. Immediately after the signing of Japan’s surrender on September 2, 1945 and the end of hostilities, it was decided to take under the protection of Soviet troops numerous military warehouses with food, weapons and other property located in China. Filming location: China.
About five thousand Japanese prisoners of war took part in the construction of the Farhad Hydroelectric Power Station (HPP-16) on the Syrdarya River from 1945 to 1956. Location: Shirin, Uzbekistan, USSR.
Two Japanese prisoners returning from the USSR pass by a group of greeters.
A group of former Japanese prisoners walks along the road after returning from the USSR.
A group of former Japanese prisoners on the pier after returning home from the USSR.
During one of the attacks on an enemy base, the scout received a radio receiver, converted it to receive decimeter waves and began to receive information about the situation in the outside world. He also had access to Japanese newspapers and magazines that were left in the jungle by members of Japanese search commissions. Even before being sent to the front, Onoda was taught at officer school that the enemy would resort to mass disinformation about the end of the war, so he did not believe the information he received.
On February 20, 1974, a young Japanese traveler and student Norio Suzuki accidentally found Onoda in the jungle of Lubang. Suzuki tried to persuade him to return home by talking about the end of the war, the defeat of the Japanese and the modern prosperity of Japan. However, Onoda refused, explaining that he could not leave his duty station because he did not have permission to do so from his senior officer. Suzuki returned to Japan alone, but brought back photographs of the Japanese intelligence officer, which created a sensation in the Japanese media. The Japanese government urgently contacted Yoshimi Taniguchi, a former major in the Imperial Japanese Army and Onoda's immediate commander, who had been working in a bookstore since the end of the war. On March 9, 1974, Taniguchi flew to Lubang, contacted Onoda while wearing a military uniform, and announced the following orders to him:
“1. According to His Majesty’s order, all military units are exempt from combat operations.
2. According to Order No. 2003 on combat operations “A”, the special group of the General Staff of the 14th Army is exempt from performing all operations.
3. All units and persons who are subordinate to the special group of the General Staff of the 14th Army must immediately stop fighting and maneuvers and come under the command of the nearest senior officers. If this is not possible, they must contact the US Army or its allied armies directly and follow their instructions.
Commander of the Special Group of the General Staff of the 14th Army, Yoshimi Taniguchi
On March 10, 1974, Onoda brought a report for Taniguchi to the radar station and surrendered to Philippine forces. He was in full military uniform, carrying a serviceable Arisaka type 99 rifle, 500 rounds of ammunition, several hand grenades and a samurai sword. The Japanese handed his sword to the base commander as a sign of surrender and was ready to die. However, the commander returned the weapon to him, calling him “a model of army loyalty.”
According to Philippine law, Onoda faced the death penalty for robbery and murder, attacks on the police and military during 1945-1974, but thanks to the intervention of the Japanese Foreign Ministry, he was pardoned. The surrender ceremony was attended by dignitaries from both countries, including then-Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos. Onoda solemnly returned to his homeland on March 12, 1974.
“The war is not over for him,” they sometimes say about former soldiers and officers. But this is rather an allegory. But the Japanese Hiroo Onoda was sure that the war was still going on several decades after the end of World War II. How did this happen?
Scout on Lubang
Hiroo Onoda was born on March 19, 1922 in the village of Kamekawa, Wakayama Prefecture. After graduating from school, in April 1939 he got a job at the Tajima trading company, located in the Chinese city of Hankou. There the young man mastered not only the Chinese language, but also English. But in December 1942 he had to return to Japan - he was called up for military service. In August 1944, Onoda entered the Nakano Army School, which trained intelligence officers. But the young man failed to complete his studies - he was urgently sent to the front. In January 1945, Hiroo Onoda, already with the rank of junior lieutenant, was transferred to the Philippine island of Lubang. He received orders to hold out until the last. Arriving in Lubang, Onoda suggested that the local command begin preparations for the long-term defense of the island. But his call was ignored. American troops easily defeated the Japanese, and the reconnaissance detachment led by Onoda was forced to flee to the mountains. In the jungle, the military set up a base and began guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines. The squad consisted of only four people: Hiroo Onoda himself, Private First Class Yuichi Akatsu, Private First Class Kinshichi Kozuki and Corporal Shoichi Shimada. In September 1945, shortly after Japan signed the act of surrender, an order from the commander of the 14th Army was dropped from planes into the jungle, ordering them to surrender their weapons and surrender. However, Onoda considered this a provocation on the part of the Americans. His unit continued to fight, hoping that the island was about to return to Japanese control. Since the group of guerrillas had no contact with the Japanese command, the Japanese authorities soon declared them dead.
The "war" continues
In 1950, Yuichi Akatsu surrendered to the Philippine police. In 1951, he returned to his homeland, thanks to which it became known that members of Onoda’s squad were still alive. On May 7, 1954, Onoda's group clashed with the Philippine police in the Lubanga mountains. Shoichi Shimada was killed. By that time, a special commission had been created in Japan to search for Japanese military personnel remaining abroad. For several years, members of the commission searched for Onoda and Kozuki, but to no avail. On May 31, 1969, the Japanese government declared Onoda and Kozuku dead for the second time and posthumously awarded them the Order of the Rising Sun, 6th class. On September 19, 1972, in the Philippines, police shot and killed a Japanese soldier who was trying to requisition rice from peasants. This soldier turned out to be Kinshichi Kozuka. Onoda was left alone, without comrades, but obviously had no intention of giving up. During the “operations”, which he carried out first with subordinates and then alone, about 30 military and civilians were killed and about 100 seriously wounded.
Loyalty to officer's honor
On February 20, 1974, Japanese student traveler Norio Suzuki accidentally came across Onoda in the jungle. He told the officer about the end of the war and the current situation in Japan and tried to persuade him to return to his homeland, but he refused, citing the fact that he had not received such an order from his immediate superiors. Suzuki returned to Japan with photographs of Onoda and stories about him. The Japanese government managed to contact one of Onoda's former commanders, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, who was now retired and working in a bookstore. On March 9, 1974, Taniguchi flew to Lubang in military uniform, contacted his former subordinate and gave him the order to stop all military operations on the island. On March 10, 1974, Onoda surrendered to the Philippine military. He faced the death penalty for “combat operations,” which were classified by local authorities as robbery and murder. However, thanks to the intervention of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he was pardoned and on March 12, 1974, he solemnly returned to his homeland. In April 1975, Hiroo Onoda moved to Brazil, got married and started farming. But in 1984 he returned to Japan. The former military man was actively involved in social work, especially with young people. On November 3, 2005, the Japanese government presented him with the Medal of Honor with a blue ribbon for service to society. Already in old age, he wrote a memoir entitled “My Thirty Years' War in Lubang.” Hiroo Onoda died on January 16, 2014 in Tokyo at the age of almost 92 years.
After the Empire of Japan admitted defeat in September 1945, small groups of soldiers retreated into the jungles of Indochina and Indonesia still continued to resist. These soldiers received the nickname "Stragglers" from the US military, which can be translated as "stragglers" or "remainers." Many of them did not find out in time about the surrender of their country, and when they did, they refused to believe it. The reason for this was education in the spirit of samurai traditions, for whom the end of the war is victory or death.
In addition, when training soldiers of the imperial army, they were warned that “gaijin” were cunning and treacherous. They may resort to mass disinformation about the end of the war. Therefore, even having access to information about the current state of affairs in the world, these “samurai” thought that the Japanese government, which was spoken about on the radio or written in newspapers, was a puppet of the United States, and the emperor and his entourage were in exile. They perceived all events in the world from a distorted angle.
This fanatical devotion to the empire, which no longer existed, caused the death of some "stragglers" in clashes with local police. This article will tell the stories of three soldiers for whom World War II did not end until the 1970s. Perhaps each of you can formulate your own point of view and decide how to treat such people: as heroes, endlessly devoted to their country and traditions, or as fanatics whose minds have been thoroughly washed by the propaganda machine of militaristic Japan.
Corporal Shoichi Yokoi. Shoichi was born on March 31, 1915 in a small village in Aichi Prefecture. He worked as a tailor before being drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army in 1941.
He was initially assigned to the 29th Infantry Division, which was stationed in Manchuria. In 1943, already as part of the 38th Infantry Regiment, he was transferred to the Mariana Islands, and in February of the same year, Shoichi and his colleagues were transferred to the island of Guam, which they were supposed to defend from the invasion of American soldiers.
During fierce fighting, the Americans still managed to capture the island. However, the corporal, like ten other of his colleagues, did not give up. They remained true to their oath, which stated that soldiers of the empire had no right to be captured. The emperor spoke about this, the officers repeated this every day. The Guam samurai went deep into the island, to its most inaccessible part, where they found a suitable cave and decided to wait for the return of the Japanese army, without a moment’s doubt that this would happen.
Years passed, and help never came. Soon only three remained from the eleven soldiers. After a severe hurricane hit the island, the “stragglers” began to have problems with provisions. It was decided to cast lots: the one who wins will remain in the equipped cave, the other two will have to leave and look for a new shelter. The corporal was lucky, and two of his colleagues died a few days later from poisoning by the fruits of a poisonous plant. It is unknown whether they ate them by accident, or whether it was an act of ritual suicide. Be that as it may, the corporal was left completely alone. He buried his comrades in a cave, and he dug a new shelter for himself.
Over the course of eight years, Yokoi learned to hunt and fish using the most primitive tools. He went fishing at night in order not to be noticed by the local population, whom he suspected of collaborating with the enemy. His soldier's uniform had decayed, and the corporal, remembering his past life as a tailor's apprentice, made himself new clothes from what he found in the jungle.
However, no matter how he hid, in 1972 he was noticed by two shrimp fishermen. They thought that this strange old man was a runaway peasant, so they tied him up and took him to the village. Corporal Shoichi considered himself disgraced; he could not believe that two fishermen had caught him, a loyal soldier of the imperial army. Yokoi had heard many stories from his officers about how the Americans and their allies executed their prisoners, so he thought that he was being led to the executioner.
However, it soon became clear that the war ended 28 years ago, and instead of a shameful death, the corporal would face a medical examination and return to his homeland. Before going to the hospital, Shoichi asked to be taken to a cave, where he dug up the remains of two of his comrades and put them in a bag. He did not part with it until his return to Japan. Doctors examined the corporal and found that he was completely healthy. Before being sent home, the soldier met with the Japanese consul, who answered many questions. It is said that Shoichi almost fainted when he learned that Japan and the United States were now allies, but the news that Roosevelt was long dead corrected the situation and made the emperor's soldier smile for the first time in 28 years.
The forgotten soldier who returned to his homeland was greeted as a hero - he was invited to talk shows, his feat was written about in newspapers and magazines, he was even paid a salary for the entire time that he was considered dead. A documentary film, Shoichi Yokoi and His 28 Years on the Island of Guam, was made about his life on the island. In 1991, the hero himself was honored with a reception from Emperor Akihito, who called his feat “An Act of Selfless Service to the Motherland.” Shoichi Yokoi died in 1997 at the age of 82. He was buried next to the grave of his mother, who died without waiting for her son to return.
Second Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda. Onoda was born on March 19, 1922 into a family of teachers from the village of Kamekawa, in Wakayama Prefecture. After graduating from school in April 1939, he became an employee of the Tajima Trading Company and moved to China. There he mastered Chinese and English. In December 1942, he returned to his homeland because he was drafted into the army. Onoda was initially assigned to the 61st Infantry Regiment with the rank of Private Second Class. Then, a few days later, he was transferred to the 218th Infantry Regiment. By mid-summer, Hiroo was already a private first class, and between September and November he was promoted to private first class, and then to corporal. From January to August 1944, Onoda Hiroo studied at the army school. In December 1944, he was sent to the Philippines and appointed commander of a detachment of saboteurs.
In January 1945, already at the rank of junior lieutenant, Onodo and his detachment went to Lubang Island. Arriving at his destination, the young officer suggested that the local command begin preparing for a long-term defense, but his proposal was rejected. As a result, US Army soldiers easily defeated the Japanese and took possession of the island.
True to his oath, Onoda and his three surviving subordinates disappeared into the jungle. There they set up a base and began waging guerrilla warfare. After Japan's surrender, American planes began dropping leaflets over the jungle announcing the end of the war. Onoda, being an intelligence officer, regarded this as disinformation.
Meanwhile, in Japan, due to the lack of communication with the second lieutenant's group, the authorities declared all its members dead, but they were forced to reconsider their decision when in 1950 one of the members of the guerrilla group, Second Lieutenant Hiroo, surrendered to the Philippine authorities. Thanks to his testimony, a special commission was created to search for the “stragglers.” Due to the unstable political situation in the search area, Japanese search engines were unable to begin work for a long time. While diplomatic proceedings were ongoing, another member of the sabotage group was discovered. On May 7, 1954, in the mountains, a police detachment noticed a group of people dressed in Japanese military uniforms. An attempt to make contact with them ended in a shootout, as a result of which the second member of Onoda’s group was killed.
After this, the Philippine government gave permission to Japanese search teams to conduct their activities on the territory of Luang Island, but they were unable to find anyone. Fifteen years later, Onoda and the only one he had left to repair them were again declared dead. They were posthumously awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, VI degree. On September 19, 1972, Philippine police again exchanged fire with a group of unknown Japanese, and the last member of the group, Hiroo, was shot and killed. Another search and rescue team arrived from Japan, but this attempt also yielded no results.
The stubborn samurai was found only at the end of February 1974. A Japanese traveler, exploring the Philippine jungle, accidentally came across a saboteur's hideout. First, Second Lieutenant Hiroo tried to attack the intruder, but when it turned out that he was Japanese, he decided not to do so. They talked for a very long time. The researcher, whose name was Norio Suzuki, tried to persuade Onoda to lay down his arms, since the war had long ended, but to no avail. Onoda stated that he has no right to do this, since he is a soldier, and he was given an order, and until the order is canceled, he has no right to surrender.
After Suzuki returned to his homeland, the story of this meeting created a sensation, and a third search team was assembled, to which the former commander of Hiroo Onoda, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, was invited. On the island, Taniguchi contacted Onoda and read him the order to surrender. When the junior lieutenant handed over the weapon, everyone present saw that it was in perfect condition. According to Philippine law, Hiroo faced the death penalty, since during his protracted war he killed about 30 people and wounded more than 100 more, but the Japanese Foreign Ministry settled the issue, and the officer, faithful to his oath, returned home on March 12, 1974.
Interesting fact: The return of Hiroo Onoda was met with mixed feelings by the Japanese. The majority, of course, supported the junior lieutenant and considered him a model of officer honor, but the communists and social democrats called him the “ghost of militarism” and said that he knew about the surrender of Japan, but did not surrender only because he was a complete militarist and chose to live in the jungle and kill innocent Filipinos rather than admit defeat to their country.
Private First Class Teruo Nakamura. Nakamura was born on November 8, 1919. He was drafted into the army in 1943. The private served on the island of Morotai in Indonesia. After US troops finally defeated enemy forces in this territory in January 1945, contact between Japan and the island where Nakamura remained was lost. Teruo served in a unit whose training was equivalent to commando units, so he easily managed to avoid capture and hide in the jungle, where he built himself a shack and started a small vegetable garden in which he grew potatoes. The private believed that if they found out about his existence, they would immediately hand him over to the enemy troops, and then capture and all the horrors that the officers talked about would follow.
For almost 30 years, the private coped well with the role of the ghost of the jungle, but in 1974, the crew of an Indonesian Air Force aircraft noticed his hideout and reported him to the command. For two months, negotiations were held with the government and a plan was developed to evacuate the “straggler” soldier. No one knew how Nakamura would react to the appearance of a rescue group and whether he would believe the news of his country’s surrender.
On December 18, 1974, several Indonesian soldiers quietly approached the private's shack and surrounded the area to prevent an escape attempt. Then, during the Japanese national anthem, they began waving the Japanese flag. After this, Teruo himself left his home and laid down his weapon (an Arisaka rifle with five cartridges). After this, he said: “I was ordered to fight to the very end.” He was taken to Jakarta where he underwent a full medical examination. It turned out that, apart from traces of malaria, which the samurai picked up during his years of living in the jungle, he was absolutely healthy, and his physical condition was even better than that of most of his peers (in the meantime, he had turned 55 years old).
The Japanese government returned the private to his homeland in Taiwan and granted him a military pension. According to Nakamura himself, the only thing he wanted most was to return alive to his wife. However, it turned out that while he was believed to be dead, she, considering herself a widow, remarried. This may be why he lived only three years after being deported home.
Interesting fact: Teruo Nakamura was not Japanese, he belonged to Taiwan's largest Ami people. When informed that Taiwan was no longer a Japanese or Chinese colony, he replied, "I've been a Japanese soldier for too long and I don't care that Taiwan is now a free state." By the way, his real (Taiwanese) name never became known.
According to official information, more than a hundred Japanese soldiers who remained in Indochina after the surrender of their country joined the detachments of the Malayan communists and continued their war. In addition, in 2005, two soldiers were discovered on the territory of the Philippines, who by that time were already over eighty. They hid, fearing that they would be accused of desertion and executed. Based on this information, we can safely assume that today in the jungles of Southeast Asia there may be the remains of more than a hundred of these “stragglers” who never knew that their war was over, and the empire for whose glory they fought had already long gone.
Former Imperial Japanese Army second lieutenant Hiroo Onoda, who continued to fight on the Philippine island of Lubang 30 years after the end of World War II, has died in Tokyo. He was 91 years old.
Onoda's story began in 1944, when he entered the army school, where they trained commanders of the Japanese army. There he received the rank of senior sergeant. Afterwards, Onoda decided to become a scout, for which he went to the Nagano School. However, he did not have time to complete his studies, as he was sent to the front.
In December 1944, Onoda found himself in the Philippines as the commander of a special detachment, which was supposed to conduct sabotage operations behind enemy lines.
In January 1945, Onoda was sent to Lubang Island with the rank of second lieutenant.
Before being sent, Onoda received an order from his commander Shizuo Yokoyama, which stated that suicide was strictly prohibited, and he needed to hold out for three to five years, after which Yokoyama would come for him. This was followed by the defeat of Japanese units in the Philippines by the US Army, and Onoda and his three-man squad fled into the jungle. Having established a base there, Onoda continued to wage guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines.
After Japan's surrender, Onoda received leaflets announcing the end of the war, which were dropped by planes in the jungle at the end of 1945. The leaflets contained an order from General Tomoyuki Yamashita for all Japanese soldiers and officers to surrender their weapons and surrender.
However, Onoda considered the news of the surrender to be enemy propaganda and continued to fight American troops, expecting that the island would soon return to Japanese control.
Japanese authorities considered Onoda and his comrades dead because there was no contact with them. However, in 1950, Private Yuichi Akatsu, who served under Onoda's leadership, surrendered to the Philippine police, and returned home the following year. This is how the Japanese government learned that Onoda was alive. At the same time, a commission was created in Japan, which began to deal with the return of its soldiers who remained abroad.
Onoda hands over his sword to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos
In 1954, Philippine police clashed with Onoda's squad and Private Seichi Shimada was killed in a shootout. After this, the Filipinos allowed the Japanese to search for their soldiers on their territory, but Onoda and his subordinate Kinshichi Kozuka were never found.
Searches were carried out several times until the end of 1959, and the two of them were again recognized as dead and even awarded orders.
However, in 1972, Japanese Army Corporal Seichi Yokoi was found on Guam, continuing to fight in the jungle. It became obvious that there might still be military personnel who were still waging their war. And later that year, Philippine police shot and killed a Japanese soldier who was trying to take rice from peasants. He turned out to be Kinshichi Kozuka, who served under the leadership of Onoda. After this, the Japanese again sent a commission that was supposed to find Onoda, but the search again did not bring any results.
Japanese authorities tried to search for Onoda for 30 years after the end of the war. All this time he continued to wage his war. He collected information about the enemy, made forays, and attacked the Philippine military and police. During these operations he killed 30 and wounded 100 military and civilians.
At the same time, Onoda received news from his homeland thanks to a retuned radio receiver. He knew that the Olympic Games were held in Tokyo, he knew about the economic recovery of his country, but he refused to believe that Japan had lost the war. While still at school, Onoda was instructed that the enemy was resorting to mass disinformation, so it was worth being especially vigilant.
In 1974, Onoda was discovered in the jungle by Japanese traveler Norio Suzuki. He tried to persuade him to return to his homeland, talked about what was happening in Japan. But Onoda refused, citing the fact that he had no orders to surrender from his superiors.
After news of this, the Japanese government contacted Onoda's former commander, Yoshimi Taniguchi, who worked in a bookstore after the end of the war. That same year, Taniguchi flew to the Philippines and got in touch with Onoda. He gave him the order to stop all military operations and surrender.
Onoda returns to Japan. 1974
Onoda surrendered to the Philippine military in March 1974. He had a rifle, cartridges, grenades and a samurai sword with him. The base commander returned the sword to Onoda, calling it a model of army loyalty.
According to Philippine law, the Japanese faced the death penalty, but after the intervention of the Japanese authorities, he was pardoned.
At home, Onoda received a mixed reception. Many media and public figures said that the Japanese knew about the surrender, but continued to kill the Filipinos. But officials and ordinary Japanese supported Onoda. He met with the Prime Minister of Japan, but considered himself unworthy to meet the Emperor because he had not done anything special.
In 1975, because of such attention to his person, Onoda moved to Brazil, where he was engaged in cattle breeding. And in 1984 he returned to Japan, where he led the organization “Schools of Nature”, which was engaged in the socialization of teenagers. Onoda wrote several books about his 30-year stay in the Philippines, including the memoir No Surrender: My Thirty Years' War.
Hiroo Onoda fought his war in the Philippines until 1974. In addition to him, the Japanese Yokoi Seichi “fought” in Guam until 1972. Another Japanese, Teruo Nakamura, did not recognize Japan's surrender and continued the war until 1974 in Indonesia. Onoda and Nakamura became the last soldiers to “surrender.” However, even after this, there were numerous rumors that Japanese soldiers who fought in World War II were hiding in the Philippines and other countries, not believing that the war was over.
