However, I remember reading about Mr. Onoda when he finally surrendered. My dad was alive then, and I hope that he, too, read the story.

Kamikaze men,
You who flew down to kill my
Shipmates, I forgive.

NewEvolution said: “ynggrsshppr said: “It is a complete wonder how Japan lost the war with guys like this in its armed forces.”

Sadly, we split the atom first. This kind of determination is pretty instrumental in that, really. The threat of having to invade mainland Japan, where every last woman and child would have given their very lives to stop our advances was a strong arguing point in favor of the eventual use of the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Still, this man is more than impressive in his determination and steadfast resolve to carry out his orders ’til the end.”

Splitting the atom helped end the war faster… but Japan would have never won the war. Even if we had to invade, it’s doubtful we would have to tromp across the entire island to force surrender. In the end it was a small island nation who added another enemy to its list when it couldn’t even successfully manage the rest of its current enemies.

Also, the motivation for much of Japan’s heroic soldering was the false assumption that the rest of the world was populated by inferior people. Arrogance destroyed Japan, so its greatest assest was also its largest detriment. To this day Japan has a large subset of people who are openly racist and bigoted.

The History Channel ran a documentary about WW II, Japanese Army 2nd Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda. He was the Japanese solider who spent 30 years hiding in the hills of the Philippine Island, of Lubang. He was a 23-year-old officer who had been trained in guerrilla warfare. His first combat assignment was in December of 1944 to Lubang Island. This was not some combat seasoned Japanese Army officer who had spent years fighting the War. This was by his own admission a young man who had problems with authority figures and following the rules. However if the orders were to his liking, he was fanatical about blindly following rules. When the Second World War ended, because no one sat Onoda down and explained the fighting had officially stopped, Onoda took it upon himself to continue the struggle. He started out with three other Japanese soldiers. One ran away and surrendered after almost five years of living in the jungle. The other two were killed in firefights with Filipinos. In some of the more politely written information I found, Onoda lived on coconuts & bananas and he killed an occasional Filipino cow. What he really did was develop a thirty-year reign of terror on the inhabitants of Lubang Island. He raided the local villages, stealing what he could carry off and burning what he could not. He kept this up even after he was the last of the four Japanese, left on the island. It is believed he killed between 30 and 50 local Filipinos and wounded up to 100. One Filipino tells how his brother was shot while gathering coconuts up in a tree. After the man fell to the ground Onoda hacked him to death. He finally gave it up in 1974 after his old Army commander came to the jungle and read an order for Onoda to surrender. This way, Onoda did not have to take the personal responsibility for his actions. Someone else made him give up. He stated “I have never regretted anything I have done,” apparently to include the killing of up to 50 innocent civilian Filipinos. Of course Onoda was part of the Army of Japan that brutally invaded and occupied the Philippines. Now having President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines pardon Onoda right a way, for the sake of relations with Japan (read money), went a long way to excuse the atrocities of Onoda. Onoda lived on a cattle ranch in Brazil. He believes Japan is a puppet-state and their current constitution was forced onto that nation at gunpoint. You know what, it probably was and there are good reasons for that? Approximately one third of the US Marine Corps is stationed on Okinawa at any given time. This is not because Marines love Sushi. Japan continues to be an occupied nation (whether anyone admits it or not) and one of the reasons for this, is that there are still people like Onoda on that chain of islands. So what does this have to do with anything in regards to current political situations? During WW II the US, a nation made up largely of European, Judeo-Christian descended people did not truly understand the fanatical practices of the Japanese military and we suffered because of that failure to understand the enemy. Our current enemies are no less fanatical than the Japanese were and with modern communication and transportation they can be just as deadly. Onoda returned to Japan in the 1990s as a guest speaker, at the very Army officer training facility where he himself was trained. He was met at the airport as if he was a great national hero, instead of a murderer. The Japanese crowd loved him and he received over 100 proposals of marriage from adoring Japanese women. He was giving a $160,000 book deal. Later in life he returned to the Philippines and generously bestowed $10,000 to a group of people he terrorized and murdered. There are numerous third world countries that hate the US as much as the Japanese did back in 1941. They too treat their murdering, terrorist-patriots, with similar displays of affection and we do not understand this anymore now, than we understood the 1940’s Empire of Japan. But we as a nation must protect our country from the likes of Onoda as we did with Osama Bin Laden. The intolerant-dogma that breeds the uncompromising desire to destroy America and what we stand for must be stopped. If we cannot prevent hostile actions against our country through peaceful negotiation, then we have to strike with as much destructive force as we can muster. It is better to be preemptive on their soil, rather than reactive on our soil. Hiroo Onoda has died at the age of 91. No more one man banzai charges into unarmed post-war Philippine villages—so much Japanese honor in that act. Modern day Japan needs to increase and improve the ability of its current day military to meet future threats to that country and region of the world. However war criminals such as Hiroo Onoda and Emperor Hirohito offer strong reasoning why Japan’s military should not be allowed to go nuclear. But let us not fool our western peace of mind; do you really believe that Japan does not already have “nukes”?

Major Van Harl USAF Ret.
vanharl@aol.com

aten said: “See, a man does not surrender, a man is soldier, a man is a fighter, a man is a warrior, a man is a captain.
The story of this soldier should be taught in all military and research schools.

Other thing: he must be in very good health after spending 29 years in the jungle: No chemical foods, no sex, no pollution,no worries about jobs,no noise. This man will live for long.”

He did. He died age 91.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25772192

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25772192

Well, I don’t know about uniform, but from an article I read, it seems the medical check-up result showed that onoda was in good health. Not even cavities found in his teeth.

[quote]bryon said: “I wonder how Suzuki got close enough to Onoda without getting capped?”[/quote]

Apparantely, it was easier for onoda to trust a single exploring man, rather than a band of search parties. furthermore, at first sight of onoda, suzuki said to him: “Onoda-san, the emperor and the people of japan are worried about you.”

Thi way after the act, but to answer that, if it is the movie that I am thinking of, then it is “Hell in the Pacific” with Lee Marvin and Toshirô Mifune