Hiroo Onoda

Life & Legacy

Hiroo Onoda (Japanese: 小野田 寛郎, Hepburn: Onoda Hiroo; IPA: [o̞no̞da̠ çiɾo̞ː]) 19 March 1922 – 16 January 2014) was a Japanese soldier who served as a second lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. One of the last Japanese holdouts, Onoda continued fighting for nearly 29 years after the war's end in 1945, carrying out guerrilla warfare on Lubang Island in the Philippines until 1974.
Onoda initially held out with three other soldiers. One surrendered in 1950, and two were killed, one in 1954 and one in 1972. The men did not believe flyers and letters from their families stating that the war was over. They survived on wild fruits, game, and stolen rice, and occasionally engaged in shootouts (using their service rifles) with locals and police. Onoda was contacted in the jungles of Lubang by Japanese adventurer Norio Suzuki in 1974 but still refused to surrender until he was formally relieved of duty by his former commanding officer, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, who flew from Japan to the island to issue the order.
Onoda surrendered on 10 March 1974 and received a hero's welcome when he returned to Japan. That year, he wrote and published an autobiography and later moved to Brazil, where he became a cattle rancher. In 1984, Onoda returned to Japan, where he died in 2014 at the age of 91.