Japanese Soldier Fought WW II Decades After It's Over.

Posted by Alex in Weapons & War on July 6, 2006 at 10:05 am


In 1944, the Japanese Army sent then 23-year-old soldier named Hiroo Onoda to the small island of Lubang in the Philippines to lead a guerilla warfare.

In 1974, nearly 30 years after the war was over, he finally surrendered:

By the time he formally surrendered to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos in 1974, Onoda had spent twenty nine of his fifty two years hiding the jungle, fighting a war that had long been over for the rest of the world.

Link | Hiroo Onoda [wiki]

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COMMENT

One comment to "Japanese Soldier Fought WW II Decades After It's Over."

  1. Josiah St. John
    July 7th, 2006 at 2:13 am

    I know you have a link to the Wikipedia page here, but it's worth repeating how they finally got him to come out of the forest. He refused to leave unless given a direct order by his commanding officer. His commanding officer had long since retired and was running a bookshop in Japan. So at great expense, the Japanese government located and actually flew his commanding officer out to the Philippines to issue the order to surrender. It really happened, but I can scarcely believe it!


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