Last Samurai

By FLORO M. MERCEN

MANILA, Philippines — Patriotism, nationalism, love of country are abstract values that are taught in grade school but seem to elude most of us in the course of our lives. These values are most noticeable in our heroes such as Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio, Apolinario Mabini, Claro M. Recto, Benigno Aquino Jr., to name a few.

These ideals are timeless. They are inculcated at an early age as a means to unify a country and make its citizens feel as one so that in times of war, hostilities, or when the country is threatened by outside forces, the people would be rallied to support their motherland even at the cost of their lives.

These personification of selfless abnegation, as shown by our heroes, comes to mind due to the current state of affairs, where we seem to be threatened with outside forces as in the case of the conflict arising out of the South China Sea, which we now call the West Philippine Sea.

Of course, war would be farthest in the minds of our leaders, small as we are compared to our perceived enemies. However, it is in times like this that the people should be conscious about their country and how to turn these abstracts ideals into something more tangible and concrete.

Lest I be accused of jingoism, I choose a citizen of Japan to show the universality of the standards I mentioned, and the one that immediately comes to mind is the example of Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier who refused to surrender 29 years after WWII ended.

In my book, he is The Last Samurai.

Onoda, for those who are not aware, had enlisted in the Imperial Japanese Army at the age of 20, receiving training in intelligence and guerrilla warfare.

In December, 1944, he and a small group of elite soldiers were sent to Lubang Island, at the tip of Mindoro. Their mission was to destroy the island’s little airstrip and port facilities. They were prohibited, under any circumstances, from surrendering, or committing suicide.

The division commander ordered: “You are absolutely forbidden to die by your own hand. It may take three years, it may take five, but whatever happens, we'll come back for you. Until then, so long as you have one soldier, you are to continue to lead him. You may have to live on coconuts. If that's the case, live on coconuts! Under no circumstances are you [to] give up your life voluntarily.”

Onoda took these words literally and seriously, more than the division commander could ever imagine.

Of coconuts, Lubang has plenty. And wild animals too, along with those domesticated by the few inhabitants. Only 16 miles long and six miles wide, the island is covered with dense forest and Onoda, accompanied by three other Japanese soldiers, remained in hiding.

It is a wonder that the four soldiers did not die of malaria. Long before the war, Mindoro and Palawan had been mosquito-infested places and few dared to settle here for fear of dying from malaria.

When Onoda was dropped in Lubang, he was accompanied by three other soldiers – Private Yuichi Akatsu, Corporal Shoichi Shimada, and Private First Class Kinshichi Kozuka.

They carried out guerrilla activities and in the course of their operations, killed some 30 Filipino islanders and engaged the local police in several shootouts.

The United States and Philippine Commonwealth forces took the island when they landed on February 28, 1945. Within a short time of the landing, Onoda who had been promoted to lieutenant, ordered his men to take to the hills.

In October, 1945, the men stumbled across a leaflet that read: “The war ended on August 15. Come down from the mountains.”

Believing it was Allied propaganda, Onoda refused to leave his mountain redoubt.  Couple of months later, the men found a second leaflet that had been dropped from the air. It was a surrender order issued by General Tomoyuki Yamashita, commander of the Fourteenth Army.

Once again, Onoda and his men did not believe it to be genuine and vowed to continue Japanese resistance.

Four long years passed, the small band continue to survive in the forest of Lubang, although, one of the four – Yuichi Akatsu  – soon called it quits.  He abandoned his comrades, surrendered to the Filipino army, and returned to Japan. He informed the army that three of his comrades still believed the war to be ongoing.

Two more years elapsed before family photographs and letters were again airdropped into the forest of Lubang. Onoda found the parcels but still believed it was part of an elaborate trick. The remaining band was determined to continue fighting until the bitter end.

They had little equipment and almost no provisions: We can assume they survived on wild animals, coconuts, and bananas and occasionally killing a cow.

Years turn to decades and the Japanese soldiers felt the ravages of age. One of Onoda’s comrades was killed by a local in 1954: Another lived for a further 18 years before being shot in October, 1972.

He and Onoda had been engaged in a guerrilla raid on Lubang’s food supplies when they got caught in a shoot-out.

Onoda, was now alone: the last Japanese soldier still fighting the Second World War, a conflict that had ended 29 years earlier.

What was going on in his mind? He was alone but this seemed not to bother him. He was still conducting guerrilla raids in 1974, when a traveling Japanese student, Norio Suzuki, made contact with him.

“Onoda I presume?” we can imagine Suzuki as saying when they met.

This, in my mind, would be a re-enactment of when Sir Henry Morton Stanley, born John Rowlands, a Welsh journalist and explorer, who went to Africa to search for David Livingstone, Scottish Congregationalist pioneer and medical missionary with the London Missionary Society and an explorer in Africa.

When the two met, it gave rise to Stanley allegedly uttering the now-famous greeting, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

It must have been an emotional meeting in that Lubang forest in 1974.

The Last Samurai, frail, but in high spiris, still proudly sporting that military uniform, shaking hands or probably bowing before a fellow  up-to-date Japanese 30 years after the last great war had ended.

Despite Suzuki’s appeal for the soldier to give up, Onoda refused to believe him. He said would never surrender until he received specific orders from his superior officer.

Suzuki went back to Japan to report his encounter with the stubborn Onoda.

This time, the Japanese government intervened. It wanted to end Onoda’s surreal war and managed to locate his previous commanding officer, Major Taniguchi, who was, at that time, still alive.

Taniguchi was flown to Lubang Island and he told Onoda face-to-face on March 9, 1974: “Japan had lost the war and all combat activity was to cease immediately.”

Stunned by what he heard, Onoda blurted: “We really lost the war! How could they [the Japanese army] have been so sloppy?”

To us who were not brought up to be so idealistic, Onoda must sound crazy. But this attitude is what makes the Japanese different from other peoples. And this kind of behavior is what the military values in a man.

Onoda, by then 52 years old, was feted as a national hero on his return to Japan.

But his years in the mountains had made him a totally different person.

“Probably a loner, he disliked the attention and found Japan a mere shadow of the noble imperial country he had served for so many years,” it was described by another writer.

We could envision him now. Had he been born a Filipino, with his new-found popularity, he would have run for a political position and handily won.

But Onoda is Japanese, and despite urgings for him to run for the Diet, the Japanese parliament, he refused!

Onoda was reportedly unhappy being the subject of so much attention and troubled by what he saw as the withering of traditional Japanese values.

In April, 1975, he followed the example of his elder brother Tadao and left Japan for Brazil, where he raised cattle. He married in 1976 and assumed a leading role in the local Japanese community at Terenos, Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, called  “Jamic Colony.”

On reading about a Japanese teenager who had murdered his parents in 1980, Onoda returned to Japan in 1984 and established the Onoda Shizen Juku ("Onoda Nature School") educational camp for young people, held at various locations in Japan, Wikipedia said.

Onoda revisited Lubang Island in 1996, donating US$10,000 for the local school on Lubang.

His wife, Machie Onoda, became the head of the conservative Japan Women's Association in 2006. He currently spends three months of the year in Brazil. Onoda was awarded the Merit Medal of Santos-Dumont by the Brazilian Air Force on December 6, 2004. On February 21, 2010, the Legislative Assembly of Mato Grosso do Sul awarded him the title of "Cidadão do (citizen of) Mato Grosso do Sul."