Hiroo onoda biography of martin
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2nd Lt. Hiroo Onoda
Lubang Island, Philippines
Surrendered - March 5, 1974
The most famous of all Holdouts, his story was widly reported in the world media, and he wrote a book translated to English about his wartime experiences and 29 years as a Japanese holdout.
Background
Born in the town of Kainan, Japan in 1922 and when he turned seventeen, he went to work for a trading company in China. In May of 1942, Onoda was drafted into the Japanese Army. Unlike most soldiers, he attended a school that trained men for guerilla warfare.
Assignment to Lubang Island, Philippines
On December 26, 1944 (age 23), Hiroo Onoda was sent to the small island of Lubang Island, approximately seventy-five miles southwest of Manila in the Philippines. Shortly after Americans landed, all but four of the Japanese soldiers had either died or surrendered. Hiroo Onda was also with three other holdouts, who all died over the decades: Private Yuichi Akatsu, Corporal Shoichi Shimada (died 1954), P
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Hiroo Onoda
Hiroo Onoda, 84, is a former member of an Imperial Japanese Army intelligence unit, an elite commando during World War II who was sent to Lubang Island in the Philippines in 1944 to conduct guerrilla warfare and gather military intelligence. Trained in clandestine operations, his mission was to sneak behind enemy lines, conduct surveillance and survive independently until issued new orders. He did exactly that for the next 30 years. Long after Japan's surrender in 1945, he continued to serve his country in the jungle, convinced that the Greater East Asia War was still being fought. He lived on mostly bananas and mangoes, evading many Japanese search parties and the local Philippine police, all of whom he believed were enemy spies. In March 1974, at age 52, a Japanese man who had run across Onoda brought his former superior to the island with instructions that relieved him of his military duties. After a brief return to Japan, he moved to Brazil where he became a succes
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The Japanese soldier who kept on fighting after WW2 had finished
Lieutenant Onoda was still stubbornly fighting WW2 nearly thirty years after Japan had surrendered | Image: Wikipedia Commons
WW2
Adventurer Norio Suzuki was on a quest. Bored of his life in Japan, he had set off to the Philippines determined to find a man many presumed had been dead for years. That man’s name was Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda, an intelligence officer with the Imperial Japanese Army who had been sent to the island of Lubang in 1944 to hinder an Allied invasion expected to take place in early 1945. What made Suzuki leave his home and trek through the forests of Lubang in search of this particular Japanese soldier? Because the year was 1974, and Lieutenant Onoda was still stubbornly fighting the Second World War nearly thirty years after everyone else had packad up and gone home.
Born on the 19th of March 1922, Hiroo Onoda grew up in the village of Kamekawa on the island of Honshu. Like many youn