In this week’s concluding chapter, we witness the amazing end to Onoda’s 30 years in hiding. If you missed the previous three installments, you can catch up HERE – HERE – and HERE.

A Japanese explorer by the name of Norio Suzuki (1949 – 1986) located Onada in the jungle on Lubang island in 1974. Onada refused to end his wartime mission however until he received official orders from his former commanding officer.

The Japanese government organised for Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, Onada’s former war-time commander and by that time an old man working in a Japanese bookstore, to fly to Lubang and officially relieve Hiroo Onada. It was only then, after 30 years of hiding away in the jungle after WW2 had ended, did Onada ‘surrender’.

Upon his arrival back in Japan, Onada was hailed a hero. The Japanese government offered him a large sum of money in back pay, which he refused. When money was pressed on him by well-wishers, he donated it to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. 

In later years, he followed the lead of his brother and moved to Brazil. His wife, who he married in 1976, became head of the Japan Women’s Association (JWA). Hioo Onada lived to the age of 91.

Only one other Japanese soldier held out after the war ended longer than Onada. Private Teruo Nakamura emerged from his hiding place on Morotai Island (Indonesia) only a few months after Hiroo Onada.

And don’t forget…

What could be happier than Hiroo returning a hero (I liked it too) to Japan after 30 years in the jungle?

Click HERE to find out.

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.

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.

NO SURRENDER is a self-penned, first person account of Onada’s 29 years spent hiding in the jungle after WW2 ended in 1945. Putting it mildly, it can be considered an all-powerful, uplifting and swashbuckling celebration of the human spirit. NEXT NEXT LEVEL.

I remember becoming engrossed in another tale of survival back when I read the 2006 book MIRACLE IN THE ANDES. Also a first-person memoir, it was written by one of the survivors of the 1972 light plane crash in the Andes mountains.

That account spanned 72 days, from the day of the crash to the day of rescue. Hiroo Onada’s tale of beyond superhuman endurance and ‘survivorship’ spans three decades.

During WW2 in 1942, Japan captured the Phillipines. It was to this country that a 23-year-old Japanese Intelligence Officer by the name of Hiroo Onada would be sent. When Japan finally surrended to the Western Allied forces in September of 1945, word of the end of the war did eventually reach the Phillipines.

However Onada and three other Japanese commandos he was with refused to believe it. They lived on in the mountains for decades, with Onada the last to emerge from his jungle hideaway.

To grasp the degree of fanaticism and devotion to duty that kept Onada sustained for all those years, one must take into account the thinking and codes of conduct that governed some of the more extreme units of the Japanese military at the time.

Onada writes in his book that the brutal guerrilla warfare training he received in Kyushu before being dispatched to the Philippines emphasised the importance of staying alive and continuing to fight as long as possible. He adds this ideology perfectly suited his personality at the time.

Shame was used as a powerful enforcer of such impossibly high standards. If a soldier who had been taken prisoner later managed to return to Japan he was subject to a court martial and a possible death penalty. Onada mentions that even if the penalty was not carried out, the soldier upon returning would be so thoroughly ostracised by others that he may as well have been dead.

Against the backdrop of this cultural brainwashing, Onada pledged to carry out his orders on the Island of Lubang in the Phillipines with the devout fanaticism and ‘never say die’ mindset that was expected of him.

He recalled the exact words of his commanding officer who handed him his orders before leaving Japan – “You are absolutely forbidden to die by your own hand. So long as you have one soldier left you are to continue to lead him. You may have to live on coconuts. You may have to eat grass and weeds. Under no circumstances are you to give up your life voluntarily.”

Next time, we check out the literally death-defying tricks and ‘hacks’ Hiroo Onada used to stay alive for three decades in the Phillipines jungle.

It was happy days when Hiroo decided to ‘come out’ (of the jungle). Your HAPPY DAYS is just a click away HERE

History is about moments. Special moments. Moments like these…

To conclude this week’s no-holes-barred historical romp we return to 1989, when this song was entertaining lots…

READ IT HERE

Mission Control we have launch sequence in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…

What you’re looking at is the cover of my just released short story collection.

And yep, it has got a deliberately long title.

Am I excited? Am I pumped? Am I in writing heaven? Yes, yes, yes! And let me add – you don’t know how much!

The day my author’s copy from the publisher arrived in the mail was a day to behold – literally!

With no one looking, I spent what no doubt amounted to a quite shameful length of time caressing the smooth-as-wax cover (over and over), smelling it’s pages with every nostril muscle I could command and staring long-fully, lovingly and smoochfully into ‘it’s’ dreamy, hardcover eyes.

No denying this was a forbidden, unholy love that, in a previous time, dare not have spoken it’s name. Would it be too unhinged of me to admit I slept with ‘it’ that first night under my pillow?

I’d been hit hard with first-time author’s lovey-dove goo-goo eyes for my new book and I was determined to make the honeymoon last as long as possible.

Now that that magical time is a week past, I can say I don’t think I’ll ever forget that first, memorable night alone. Just the two of us... beautiful new book and I.

Before the story continues, would you like a taste? Maybe a little rude of me not to have offered before now? Ok then. Don’t waist it – taste it – HERE.

Anyways, with the infatuation-phase drawing to a close, it was time to get down to business. The promotion business, that is. I’d organised a 10 000 flyer letterbox drop of my local neighbourhood. Time to get that underway.

The thought did occur to me how much easier and quicker it might be to just hire a helicopter and drop the whole damn heaving paper mass of promotional codswallop in one go on the unsuspecting folk in my local surrounding suburbs.

Apart from the expense of that I also figured I might cop a littering fine from council, so thought the better of it.

Promotion-wise, I also managed to reign in a couple of favours from ‘celeb’ mates of mine I’ve rubbed shoulders with – Walter-Mitty style – along the way of my ‘authors journey’, as they say.

Jack Black’s reaction to the book, for example, was impressive to say the least –

This book features 87 (’cause 87 is one helluva magic number – just ask any cricketer!) completely whacked-out short stories written by me. They range in length from 30-second to ten-minute reads.

You can buy it or browse it –

HERE

HERE

HERE

Thanks for attending my book launch. I do hope you enjoyed the complementary glass of champagne on the way in (apologies if we’d run out by the time you arrived).

To celebrate the sheer austerity, sophistication and class – the ‘front-of-the-plane’ kind – of this occasion and leave you in no doubt as to the fully-fledged highbrow-ness of the company you’ve been in while here, I leave you with this –

Just for laughs of the ironic kind, here’s a flashback to 2021 when I penned a genuine hand-on-my-heart blog post entitled REASONS WHY I’LL NEVER – AND I MEAN NEVER – WRITE A NOVEL. Well, I did say novel.

So what’s next on the SWS drawing writing board? Would it surprise anyone to know that SHACK is currently hard at work on a script for the live, one-man-show version of THE HIGH-FIVEABLE, FIRE-GOD BRILLIANT, CLEVER-IN-SPADES AND UTTERLY RIPSNITIOUS SHORT STORY COLLECTION? You heard it here first.

What’s happier than a writer with a new book? Try full-on HAPPY DAYS HERE

Next week, things get proper huge. Proper huge for around these parts, anyway.

SCENIC WRITER SHACK’S worst kept secret of 2024 can now be finally revealed.

It’s book launch time, baby!

In T-minus seven days and counting the champagne corks will pop, the streamers will fly and the sonic boom at lift-off will be felt every bit as much as it’ll be heard.

SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK will don it’s finest Perspex safety glasses as it launches it’s published short story collection – fully ten years in the making – with all the fanfare it can muster.

You won’t want to miss it! Until then, here’s a first-time cover reveal…

This week, SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK travelled more than 2000 kilometers to take in the sights of South Australia.

While in Adelaide, spotted in a ‘not-so-ordinary’ ordinary suburban houses’ front yard was this rampantly cuckoo and rare-as-a-blessing-of-unicorns statue I’ve dubbed UPSIDE-DOWN READER.

When you take the SCENIC route, you never know what you might see.

And is it just me or does UPSIDE DOWN READER bear at least a passing resemblance to a literary, silvery version of the long-limbed golden dude from the 1966 episode of LOST IN SPACE titled THE DREAM MONSTER?

Okay, it’s just me.

Construction workers have been cool since as far back as THE VILLAGE PEOPLE. Maybe even before (tee hee!).

Pitched firmly at the Tik Tok generation, this South Australian tv ad currently doing the rounds does precisely what it sets out to do – make being a tradie look like a cool career choice for school leavers.

I so love this ad. Hard hats off to you, city of Ad-elaide!

To get your weekly HAPPY DAYS hit, click HERE

Today we get to ogle – (yes, ogle!) – another winning tale from the SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK 2024 Short Story Competition. Enjoy this one from third-place getter, UK writer Sue Barnard –

Dylan’s face had turned a pale shade of old sock. It was faded, threadbare and discolored by years on end of being laundered to within an inch of its life. He stared at the card in his hand as he wandered through to the kitchen, where his wife was making coffee.

“What do you make of this?” Sarah peered at the invitation and her jaw dropped.  “What?  Who in their right mind invites a vicar to a Clown Workshop?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” Sarah shook her head as she handed him a steaming mug, then her face creased into a smile.  “But why not give it a go?”

“What?  You must be joking!” “No more than whoever it was who sent you that invitation.  Maybe someone thinks you need a bit of fun in your life. Who knows – you might even enjoy it!”

“But—” “No buts!” She squeezed his hand.  “Just go for it, darling.  It’s only for one day.  And you’re only middle-aged once!”

Dylan felt decidedly middle-aged when he arrived at the workshop.  To his horror, most of the other clowns appeared to be far more skilled than he could ever hope to be.  

With hindsight, he realized it would have been more sensible to try his hand at preliminary juggling in the garden rather than the lounge.  He made a mental note to buy a replacement for Sarah’s favourite vase.

He peered around the room.  What on earth, he wondered, can I ever hope to learn from this?  He was on the point of turning round and heading for the exit, then he thought of Sarah’s words.  Yes, she was right – perhaps he did need a bit of fun in his life.  

A young man smiled at him as he took a cautious step forward.  “First time?”  Dylan nodded.  “To be honest I haven’t a clue what I’m supposed to be doing.” “Don’t worry.  We all have to start somewhere.  You should have seen me on my first day.  But you’ll be amazed what you can do by the end…”  

The following Sunday, Dylan paused at the foot of the pulpit steps and turned to face the congregation. “Sometimes,” he began, in a serious voice, “life sends you an unexpected challenge.” Instead of climbing into the pulpit, he reached behind it and pulled out a unicycle.

“One thing I learned during the course of this challenge is the need to have a sense of humour.  A sense of humour is a sense of balance.  So, let’s see if I have a sense of balance and you have a sense of humour.”  He grinned, mounted the unicycle with the ease of a seasoned performer, and rode backwards and forwards along the aisle.  

The congregation roared with laughter.  As Sarah watched from her customary seat in the front pew, it suddenly dawned on her that Dylan might one day figure out exactly who had organised that invitation.  

Her face turned a pale shade of old sock… 

Before we depart the question of balance altogether, there’s this…

My brief – what you might term ‘short stretch’ (sorry!) – and ungainly foray into the alternate universe that is yoga classes looked for much of the time not dissimilar to this – only I’m pretty sure I would have been wearing a t-shirt and the person to my immediate left would usually not have been stripped down to their underwear.

Ready for your HAPPY DAYS hit? Then you’d better go ahead and click HERE.

Last week super-chameleon man-hero Dylan underwent the surgeon’s knife and came out all… Rusty.

This week, in equal second-place getter’s Tycho Dwelis’s bullet-riddled saloon saga, Dylan trespasses onto a scene visited by none-other than the Angel of Death himself. He’ll forever wish he hadn’t.

Enjoy Steady yourself for…

Dylan’s face had turned a pale shade of old sock. His hand lingered on the saloon door and the whole building creaked as he stared into what he had hoped to be abandoned space. A dry wind was blowing dust down the road and past his feet. Shelter was shelter, but what his eyes beheld had turned his stomach to rot. All color drained from his face as he realized why the place had been deserted. 

A man, who some time ago, had been shot straight through the forehead, slumped over the counter, whisky bottle still in hand. But he wasn’t the only one. The saloon, from the door to the stairs, from wall to wall, may as well have been a sea of corpses. Bodies piled together in such a dense mound that Dylan couldn’t even see the floor. 

“I reckon I should’ve camped by the creek,” he muttered to himself. No job in Corpus Christi, no matter how good, was worth this. 

Dust-covered planks creaked beneath his boots as he crept into the saloon, tiptoeing between bodies to get to the bar. A worm of thought wriggled into his head. He couldn’t get rid of it. He needed to know what had happened before settling down in an unfamiliar place. For a brief moment, he imagined what it must have been like when the town pulsed with life.

Now, it stood as a sepulcher for memories etched into its wooden bones and blood that had long since soaked into the floor. Some of the dead had fallen in this room, gunshot wounds in their chests, but others had been dragged from elsewhere for some unholy reason. 

The door swung open on its own and banged against the wall. Dylan’s hand instinctively twitched for his six-shooter but froze as he found himself alone. The smell of decay choked up his throat. Despite his unease, he approached the poker table anyway.

The players had stopped mid-game, the cards in their rotting hands a snapshot of the moment when death had claimed them. One hand was a royal flush. Dylan’s fingertips hesitated over a stack of chips. It was then that he spotted a dusty gold bar under the table. 

He suddenly understood. Weeks ago, a poker game had begun. A high roller entered the saloon and waged a bar of gold that now lay unclaimed. The tension escalated, palpable and electric, and then… the stakes were higher than any amount of gold. Someone snapped. A stolen glance. The flicker of a hidden ace. 

A massacre.  

Dylan’s eyes scanned the saloon. The bullet-riddled walls spoke volumes about the sheer number of shots that had been fired, each hole telling the story of a life cut short. And still… his eyes fell onto the gold bar on the floor. The thing that had caused so much death had been left behind. 

Dylan turned to leave, spurs clinking. Some things were better left with the dead.

Next week, it’s wobbly unicycles all ’round as we discover the charm and effervescence of 3rd-place getter Sue Barnard’s –

Click HERE for your HAPPY DAYS hit.

U.S author Dianna Webb penned an edgy hot-ticket of a story – complete with a side-order of Hollywood glam – to take out equal second place in SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK’S short story competition.  

Here’s her story…

Dylan’s face had turned a pale shade of old sock. Packed in the very ice in which he died, he lay beneath my scalpel on the edge of nothingness…or perhaps eternity.

I watched my surgical team blowtorch the solid frost and cut away layers of shredded Moncler ski gear. Audible gasps orbited the operating room as the horrifying wreckage of his famously perfect body was revealed.

Dylan’s reckless stunt jump down a mountain at 60 m.p.h. ended in a canyon, his torso impaled upon a jagged stone with one saving grace – the custom-designed helmet kept his glorious visage eerily intact. His pacific blue eyes stared back at us as we gawked in awe.

He was the gold standard, sporting a heroic jaw and a tousled gilded lock over his mischievous brow. His sensual mouth proved just full enough to play the lover, the Greek God, the endearing outlaw.

Dylan’s iconic cockiness and tragic self-depreciation enthralled millions of fans over three decades. He had dodged bullets, survived shipwrecks, nuked Nazis, rallied an asylum, and aged backwards! 

Denied the luxury of onscreen death in 100 movies, The Studio weighed the risks. Unfortunately, Dylan’s contract forbade use of AI. His departure left five massive films in varying stages of production with millions on the line. His career had to continue.

Rusty Reid, Dylan’s longtime body double, had no clue he would now be playing his hero for the rest of his life. My scalpel balked at this daunting task. Why had I agreed to such an extremely risky procedure? Money. This endeavor would net a private island level payday, life-altering compensation no honest surgeon could accrue in a lifetime.

I’d subtly tucked Dylan’s fabulous face for over a decade. The Studio loved my work and today they definitely wanted me to get to it. A rap on glass from the observation balcony of the operating theater broke my guilty trance. I glanced up at the sinister ‘fixers’ hovering over their iPhones. I felt a distinctly threatening chill. 

I gave the nod.

Poor Rusty made his drugged entrance on a table pushed parallel to Dylan’s. Like sous-chefs, a second surgical team replicated my incisions of Dylan with precision on Rusty, gently detaching his face, delicately laying it on a sterile plate.

I lifted Dylan’s face from its corners. As if a rubber mask, I securely fit it on Rusty. After patting it down, I secured veins and nerves with wisps of a high-tech laser. The other general surgeons positioned the perimeter and ears. An ocular surgeon stepped in to finish the job. Lastly, ice packs were applied.

Under Rusty’s face, Dylan’s luminous pacific blue peepers, angelic and seductive, were forever lost. Dylan was now in the netherworld, void of his glorious past as a beautiful swaggering young actor of effortless charm, inexplicable luck, outsized worship, and dumbfounding wealth.

The God complex is a curse with room for only one Supreme Being. Imposters pay the ultimate price.

Next week…the bodies start stacking up higher than a New England leaf pile in equal-second place getter Tycho Dwelis’s tow-cable taut Western thriller –

If it’s HAPPY DAYS you’re wanting, then go click HERE