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.
Well, it finally arrived. Part 2. Yeah. I guess I didn’t want to THINK about snakes as wide as a man’s thighs, but of course those snakes had to be there, didn’t they? Uggggghhh. But even worse would be the rats and ants. I remember just being in a tree, once, as a kid, ’cause I loved climbing trees and swaying with the breeze and looking out over the view, and suddenly feeling this stinging and biting, and red ants were crawling all over me! Uggggghhh! Couldn’t get down fast enough, lol
It was sad that two of his companions died in pointless gunfights with police. Which, of course, they didn’t know it was pointless. They believed in what they were doing. Looking forward to part 3 and the capture. I can only imagine that he thought all of it was a dirty trick to fool him. Imagine his complete and utter shock to find out the war HAD actually ended 29 years ago. I hope you document some of his thoughts about that, when it finally set in.
Speaking of long-held, maybe even cult-like beliefs, I tried watching a documentary about that young guy who went to that protected island near India where the tribes live as they always have and haven’t been encroached on by the “modern” day. So he went there thinking he needed to convert them to Christianity (because he was born again) and, of course, they killed him. I only got like 1/4 into the documentary and couldn’t continue because I felt that if contempt was the only thing I was feeling watching this guy and couldn’t drum up even one measure of empathy that I should quit while I was ahead.
Oh gosh, your comments always put such a ‘human face’ on mere words on a page and breathe life into them Stacey. Thankyou for being you! I also used to swing from trees when I was a kid and play camoflage games, so we have that in common as well. With you on the religious salesman who met his end at the hands of the tribes people.
It kind of reminds me of the scene in the original WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953) movie where the priest (ok, ‘Uncle Matthew’!) ventures forth to try to ‘reason’ with the aliens. That didn’t end too well either…