In this week’s chapter we look at attempts by the Japanese government to convince Onada that the war was over and his one-man-mission should end. If you missed previous installments you can catch them HERE and HERE.

A great many attempts were made over the years to communicate to Onada and his three fellow-hold-out soldiers (the last of whom stayed hiding with him up until just two years before he was finally rescued).

The first of these occured just a month after Japan surrended in September 1945. Onada found a leaflet that had been dropped on Lubang Island by a plane. It read “The war ended on 15 August. Come down from the mountains!” They distrusted the leaflet and concluded that it was Allied propaganda.

Toward the end of 1945, leaflets were again dropped by air, this time with a surrender order printed on them from General Tomoyuki Yamashita of the Fourteenth Area Army. Onoda and his three fellow soldiers studied the leaflet closely to determine whether it was genuine, and decided it was not.

In 1952, letters and family pictures were dropped from a plane urging them to surrender, but the by then three soldiers concluded that this was also a trick.

Onada writes in NO SURRENDER – “My reaction was that the Yankees had outdone themselves this time. I wondered how on Earth they had obtained the photographs. That there was something fishy about the whole thing was beyond doubt, but I could not figure out exactly how the trick had been carried out.”

Onoda had been trained as an intelligence officer, so was naturally suspicious of any communications. One of the search parties that landed on Lubang Island included Hiroo Onada’s own brother, who took to the jungle with a megaphone calling Hiroo’s name.

Onada’s reaction was to think to himself, “That’s really something. They’ve found a prisoner who looks at a distance like my brother, and he’s learned to imitate my brother’s voice perfectly.”

In late 1965, Onada and his (by then) one fellow hold-out had acquired a transistor radio, stolen from one of the local islander’s huts.

Onada writes “What pretended to be a broadcast from Japan or Australia was, to our way of thinking, a tape prepared by the enemy and rebroadcast with suitable changes. We read into the broadcasts the meanings we wanted them to have.”

Next week, in our final instalment, we witness Hiroo Onada finally emerge from the jungle and resume civilian life.

What’s happier than Hiroo Onada taking his first hot shower in 30 years? Click HERE to find out.

The story of WW2 Japanese soldier Hiroo Onada is one of the most armor-piercingly incredible true stories I’ve ever come across amongst a lifetime of reading.

In today’s 2nd installment, we document some of the daily challenges encountered by Hiroo Onada during his three decades living in the Phillipine jungle after WW2 ended. We also reveal some of the survival hacks that kept him alive.

If you missed the previous chapter you can catch it HERE

For 28 of the 30 years Lieutenant Onada remained in hiding on Lubang Island, he had company. Three fellow soldiers also took to the jungle with Onada following the end of WW2.

Private Akatsu lasted five years before he surrended to local police on the island.Corporal Shimada died in a gunfight with local police in 1954. Private Kozuka lasted until 1972, also finally succumbing in a gunfight with local police.

In NO SURRENDER, Hiroo Onada talks about some of the quarrels he had over the years with his fellow hold-outs. Some of them came to blows.

“Life in the jungle was never easy,” writes Onada, “but so far as food, clothing and utensils were concerned, it was far easier in the later years than in the first five or ten.”

Hiroo mentions problems with ants and rats during his time in the jungle. He recounts being stung by bees, bitten by centipedes and seeing snakes as thick and wide as a man’s thigh.

Having no toilet paper, he used palm leaves instead. His clothes were always rotting due to the extended rainy season on Lubang. Onada writes that during his 30 years on the island, he was sick with fever only twice.

Onada and his three fellow soldiers cut each others hair with improvised scissors. For 30 years he never saw his own face as anything other than a reflection in a river.

After fifeteen years of surviving on coconuts, bananas and cow meat, Onada and his (by then) one fellow soldier, managed to obtain coffee and a few canned goods pilferred from the local islander’s huts.

In Part 3 next week, we look at the rescue attempts and search parties launched to bring Onada out of the jungle, all of which he dismissed as enemy tricks.

What could be happier than Hiroo Onada with a handful of freshly dropped coconuts?

GO HERE to find out.