How interesting that I am seeing the story of Onada again. I remember coming across it on Reddit a couple years back and briefly read about this persons adventure in the Philippines. I even recall going to work and telling my friends about it just because I felt like this was a story like no other.

It made for a unique story because at the time because it seems as though many people were trying to communicate with Onada that the war had been over for 29 years but he refused to believe it, thinking that it was all propaganda. In one of the articles I read from over a year ago, apparently a helicopter flew over the jungle that Onada had possibly been staying in and just dropped TONS of leaflets over the jungle in hopes that they would find it. Stating things like “The war is over! Come down now!” but he refused to believe it because at the time of WWII, his commanding officer Major Yoshimi Taniguchi promised to him and Onada’s men that he would come back for them.

Then this strange layer was added when an explorer named Norio Suzuki was on a mission around the world in 1974 to find three things:  Lieutenant Onada, a panda and the abominable snowman. Suzuki seemed to be very specific that it needed to be in that order exactly. I guess I really love Suzuki’s story in particular is partially because the three things that he was on a mission to find seemed so random. Suzuki ended up finding and even befriending Onada and tried to convince him to come out of the jungle, yet Onada still refused.

It wasn’t just Onada was camping in this jungle either, he was still pillaging Philippine villages and harming people. The Japanese Government had to step in and relocate Major Yoshimi Taniguchi who had long since retired and was working at a small book shop. They brought him to the jungle and had them speak to each other and it was then that Onada had learned that the war was over.

He ended up receiving compensation for the additional 29 years he served in the military. In some ways people looked up to him as an incredibly strong, and loyal person and to strive to be like him but from what I remember reading from the old article, he became very depressed that when he returned back to Japan, so much had changed especially with how the youth were treating their elders and he was not very proud of his actions in the Philippines and felt a lot of embarrassment. He ended up donating a lot of money to the Philippine villages that he pillaged but they still do not forgive him.