Hiroo Onoda: The incredible story of the Japanese WWII soldier who didn't surrender until 1974

On 19 March 1922, Hiroo Onoda was born in Kamekawa village in Wakayama Prefecture, Japan, as the fourth son of a family that owned a small farm.

He grew up in a society that specifically valued military service and loyalty to the emperor.

After completing school, he worked briefly for a trading company in China before being called to military service.

In 1942, during the height of Japan’s expansion in the Pacific War, he trained as an intelligence officer at the Nakano School in Tokyo.

As part of his training, he learned guerrilla warfare, propaganda, and survival tactics such as camouflage, improvised farming, and weapon maintenance.

Because military leaders considered him capable of independent action, his assignments frequently required him to operate far from the main army. 

By late 1944 Japan had suffered severe defeats in the Pacific, and its armies faced constant Allied advances.

At this time Onoda became part of Japan’s desperate attempts to defend its remaining territories, and he soon received an assignment that would determine the rest of his life. 

In December 1944, Onoda received orders to travel to Lubang Island in the Philippines, a small island of about 125 square kilometres that lay south of Manila and held a small farming community.

His mission required him to carry out sabotage operations against Allied forces.

He had to destroy airfields, sink supply ships, and harass the enemy through the use of guerrilla tactics.

From the beginning, his superior officers instructed him never to surrender and never to take his own life.

They told him that reinforcements would arrive eventually and that he must hold out until then. 

When Onoda reached the island, the Japanese garrison already faced desperate conditions.

By that point Allied forces had cut off supplies, and local guerrillas controlled much of the territory.

In February 1945, American and Filipino forces invaded Lubang Island and quickly overwhelmed the defenders.

After the battle, many Japanese soldiers lay dead, and the survivors retreated into the thick jungle.

Onoda gathered three fellow soldiers (Kinshichi Kozuka, Yuichi Akatsu, and Shoichi Shimada) and they continued to fight in strict obedience to their orders. 

By August 1945, Japan had surrendered after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet declaration of war.

At the time, Onoda and his men did not know that the war had ended. Allied aircraft dropped leaflets that announced Japan’s surrender, some of which were signed by Japanese generals and carried the imperial seal, yet Onoda believed that these documents were enemy propaganda.

Over the following years, villagers and officials tried to contact him through loudspeakers and leaflets, but he distrusted every attempt.

Yuichi Akatsu surrendered in 1950, and Shoichi Shimada was killed in a clash with local police in May 1954.

The last remaining companion, Private Kinshichi Kozuka, was killed by police in October 1972. 

Throughout the decades that followed, Onoda remained firm in his mission. He believed that Japan would never surrender unconditionally, and he expected reinforcements to arrive.

Because no direct orders came from his superiors, his conviction that the war continued only grew stronger.

In 1959 Japanese authorities even declared him legally dead, unaware that he remained alive in the jungle.

In secret locations, he built shelters, cultivated crops such as bananas and coconuts in hidden clearings, and hunted water buffalo and wild pigs for food.

At times he gathered information when he watched villagers from a distance, and he stole rice, tools, and clothing whenever opportunities arose.

During his years in hiding, he engaged in more than a dozen armed clashes with local police and farmers, which caused around thirty deaths and about a hundred wounded. 

Through the years, seasonal changes created constant challenges. During typhoons his shelters and food stores were destroyed, while droughts reduced his access to water and fresh crops.

Despite these hardships, he maintained his weapons and ammunition and repaired them with whatever materials he could find.

In February 1974, a young Japanese man named Norio Suzuki travelled to Lubang Island on an adventure.

He had heard the stories about Onoda and hoped to find him. After several days of searching, Suzuki encountered the older soldier near a riverbank.

He greeted him by saying, “Onoda-san, I have been sent by Japan. The war is over. Please come home with me.”

Onoda explained that he would surrender only if he received orders directly from a superior officer. 

Soon after, the Japanese government located Onoda’s former commanding officer, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, who had long since retired and become a bookseller.

Taniguchi travelled to Lubang Island and personally delivered the order to lay down arms.

On 9 March 1974 Onoda finally surrendered, and he still wore his faded uniform and carried his rifle when he did so.

He formally handed over his sword, rifle, and ammunition to the Philippine authorities.

Hundreds of villagers and officials gathered to witness the moment, and afterward President Ferdinand Marcos pardoned him for the killings that had taken place during his years in hiding. 

Upon his return to Japan Onoda became a national sensation. For many months he struggled to adjust to the country’s swift post-war changes, since Japan had transformed into a wealthy democracy, and many of the values that had driven his actions no longer guided society.

The government held a formal ceremony to welcome him back, and newspapers ran headlines about the “soldier who never surrendered.” 

In 1975 he moved to Brazil, where he ran a cattle ranch in Mato Grosso do Sul for about a decade.

After returning to Japan once more, he established the Onoda Nature School, which taught young people survival skills and outdoor education.

He also published an autobiography titled No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War, which gave a detailed account of his experiences.

Until his death in 2014, he gave lectures and interviews about his extraordinary life.

As a result, Onoda continued to fascinate historians and the public because it showed the extreme devotion and sense of duty that wartime Japan instilled in its soldiers, as well as the personal cost of such loyalty when separated from the modern world. 

While, other Japanese soldiers continued to hide in remote islands for years after 1945, Onoda became the most famous of these holdouts because his refusal to surrender lasted the longest.