The Japanese Soldier Who Fought WWII for 30 Years

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/02/a-japanese-soldier-who-continued-fighting-wwii-29-years-after-the-japanese-surrendered-because-he-didnt-know/

by _pius • 16 years ago

138 78 16 years ago

todayifoundout.com

seldo• 16 years ago

I love this story. I remember reading a very abridged version of it in one of my Super Fact Books when I was 8 or 9 (it omitted the fact that he murdered dozens of people, for instance). Still, he's an amazing (if very, very dumb) character.

sown• 16 years ago

Winners never quit and quitters never win but if you never win and never quit...

jrockway• 16 years ago

You get a ranch in Brazil.

robryan• 16 years ago

With soldiers this dedicated to the cause though you have to think had there been no atomic bombs the world may have been a very different place.

lionhearted3• 16 years ago

Yes, but maybe in a different way than you'd think. There was a divide in Imperial Japanese politics - the Emperor wanted to end the war and was looking to surrender pre-Hiroshima. The heads of the military were split on a course of action - some wanted to fight to the end, but a more common position was trying to fight enough to get more favorable terms than just unconditional surrender.

It's common enough to fight a losing effort to get better surrender terms, and that's probably what would have happened. The United States never wanted to land invade Japan - the second option to bombings was a blockade to starve the army out. Do the Japanese still unconditionally surrender if they go that route? Could the Imperial Japanese Army be enough of a menace that the U.S. leadership takes less than unconditional surrender for terms? Maybe.

The most interesting question is what happens if Japan doesn't unconditionally surrender, become occupied, and have the MacArthur transition government put into place. It was hell at the time for Japan, but then Japan became an American protectorate and was able to run their government with one of the lowest military expenditures in the Western world. They were also well-protected from the various brutal Communist regimes in the area. Could Japan have been invaded by Red China or the Soviet Union if the Empire had kept more sovereignty and wasn't an American protectorate?

Interesting questions. After the Battle of Midway, the Japanese had already lost to the American forces and it was just a matter of time. The war was going to end, nuclear bombings or not. The question is when and on what terms. Japan got the worst possible terms - unconditional surrender, full disarmament, dissolution and loss of all colonies, and foreign military occupation - but then it works out that it becomes the most prosperous place in Asia. Funny world.

hristov3• 16 years ago

"Had there been no atomic bombs the world may have been a very different place."

That is true, but for reasons that have nothing to do with Japan. As far as Japan is concerned, the theories about how they would have fought for every house, etc. are false. The Japanese were trying to negotiate a surrender even before the first atomic bomb fell.

hooande• 16 years ago

The atomic bombs were devastating and impressive, but they didn't do much more actual damage than the B-29 fire bomb raids on Tokyo in terms of loss of life and property. When you can drop bombs at all, it doesn't really matter what kind of bombs they are. The atomic bombs were an excellent PR move of sorts, as a tool to convince the japanese to give up more than as a weapon of war.

wanderingknight2• 16 years ago

You have to think what would have happened if Japan went on with their negotiations with Soviet Russia.

You know, the ones the US tried so hard to stop with those bombs.

InclinedPlane4• 16 years ago

Without the shock of the atomic bombings there would almost certainly have been more Japanese civilians dead before the end of the war, even discounting a landed invasion. By late 1945 the allied bombing campaign was sufficiently geared up to destroy entire cities on a recurring basis. It was as effective as the atomic bombings, it was merely a lot less efficient (hundreds of planes and crews instead of just one). Had Japan held off surrendering, and had that conventional bombing campaign continued much longer the destruction would have been far greater.

Had the allies then lacked the courage to mount a landed invasion and been satisfied with a negotiated peace instead of an unconditional surrender, Japan would have become a devastated country with few allies and many enemies, it would not have been rebuilt with foreign assistance and would almost certainly be a 3rd world nation or perhaps even a failed state today.

FooBarWidget• 16 years ago

I don't know why you call him dumb. In his situation there are few ways to verify that Japan had indeed surrendered. If it really was an elaborate scheme by the Allied troops then he would have been called dumb for surrendering so easily.

kaptainlange• 16 years ago

His belief that the Allies would go through so much trouble to stop a group of people who had killed relatively few people over a 30 year period is what makes him dumb.

What troop movements was he observing? What logistics was he disrupting? How effective could he possibly be gathering intelligence if he couldn't even report his findings to his superiors? Even if the war was still going, his contribution to the war effort was minimal compared to the effort the Allies appeared to be putting forth to "capture" him.

yewweitan• 16 years ago

The power of indoctrination is strong.

Eliezer• 16 years ago

Now there was a man who needed to learn how to lose.

Kliment• 16 years ago

Sly reference to your fanfic, I see. For those who missed it when it was on HN, I'm referring to http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_M...

gametheory• 16 years ago

Great fanfic btw.

JacobAldridge• 16 years ago

Turns out Step 3 is 'Live on coconute for thirty years and then get back pay'. Step 4 remains Profit.

chrischen2• 16 years ago

Blind conviction to your country is nationalism. I don't see how he can be seen as a hero for that. Sure what he did was amazing, but I wouldn't encourage such patriotic behavior.

coryl2• 16 years ago

It wasn't just blind conviction though, he was a professional soldier. It was war time, and his commanding officer sent him in to conduct guerrilla warfare in the jungles. He was expected to be there for a long time and operationally independent.

"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 [to] give up your life voluntarily."

varjag• 16 years ago

There's no mention he was professional though.

EDIT: "When he was 20 years old, he was called to join the Japanese army."

He was in fact a conscript.

chrischen2• 16 years ago

It was obvious his conviction that his country could not lose was based on faulty reasoning. Japan was inevitably going to lose, nuclear bomb or not. So I think his persistence was fueled by his blind allegiance to his country, most likely because he believed that his country was superior to all other countries because he was born in it. Professional or not, I think the primary motivation was his country, and not his training. Doing something that dedicated requires a firm belief in the purpose (unless you were retarded to some degree). Of course he may have been lied to, or misled into thinking his country was greater than it was. In any case this would be why blind allegiance is bad.

hernan7• 16 years ago

Actually, if his orders included killing civilians, then those were unlawful orders. And if he was obeying them that would make him a war criminal, no?

seertaak• 16 years ago

> Among his list of things to do on his journey was to find “Onoda, a panda, and the Abominable Snowman”.

Genius!

jimbokun• 16 years ago

How'd he do on the other two?

coryl2• 16 years ago

Wow, first time reading about this. Absolutely insane.

willhankinson• 16 years ago

I highly recommend his autobiography (linked in the article)-- No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War. I picked it up on a whim once, having never heard of the story, and was blown away by it.

scotty794• 16 years ago

> Now in the end, we might look at Onoda as a fool and worse, a murder of innocent people. In the end, he was both of those things, there is no denying it.

Funny thing is that at war time being idiot murderer of innocent people is just fine. I think there should be much more footage from war zones. Maybe then people would stop looking at war as sane and sometimes appropriate option.

JoeAltmaier5• 16 years ago

Worse option: letting the other guy go to war, and you don't. Its called surrender and can be worse.

MichaelSalib5• 16 years ago

This is not always true. Almost all wars are started for "defensive" reasons and oftentimes those reasons are just lies told to drum up support for the war.

The Nazi regime convinced ordinary people that they had to fight against an internal Jewish threat. That was a lie. If ordinary Germans had let "the other guy" go to war, nothing would have happened because there was no internal threat. Likewise, if Americans had ignored the terrible threat that Iraq posed to the US in 2003, then nothing would have happened: Iraq wasn't a threat to the US. Claims that it was trying to do destroy the US or had the capability to do so were lies. Ignoring the lies is not surrender.

The first rule of honorable war fighting is to figure out which justifications are true and which are lies. A people that can't or won't do that can never be honorable since sooner or later, they'll end up exterminating lots of innocent people in a war based on lies.

scotty794• 16 years ago

I'm just curious. Do you have any example of country (region?) that had a real option of waging war against its enemy but chose to surrender and got worse then it would get if it choose to wage war? (by any reasonable prediction, of course)

foxtrot• 16 years ago

there was a film with this in, or at least inspired by it. Remember the image in my head of a japanese soldier in dishevelled clothes looking out at the ocean from a bunker.

JoeAltmaier5• 16 years ago

Don't we all live a life of self-delusion? Most of us haven't seen through the fog yet; we're still fighting for nothing.

TallGuyShort• 16 years ago

Ignoring his actions for a moment, I really admire his quotes about children needing to be raised to be more independent (which can be seen at the bottom of the article). I'm a big believer that most of the world's problems today, are caused because someone, somewhere, didn't take responsibility for themselves, and I think he hit the root cause of that on the head. Interesting to hear the opinion of someone who basically skipped 30 years of society's gradual change.

Tichy2• 16 years ago

Being independent doesn't imply living a sustainable lifestyle.

dennisgorelik• 16 years ago

That's the danger of brainwashing...

The Japanese Soldier Who Fought WWII for 30 Years

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