Onoda Hiroo

Onoda Hiroo (b. 1922) was a Japanese soldier stationed on the island of Lubang[?] in the Philippines during World War II. Ordered to avoid capture at all costs and to conduct a campaign of guerilla warfare against the "enemy," Onoda refused to believe that the war was over, and continued his campaign, living in the mountains with a small band of men, until 1974, some of whom abandoned him and others who were killed, leaving him alone in the mountains.

Found by a Japanese student, Onoda still refused to believe that the war was over until he received orders to lay down his arms from his superior officer, who had since become a bookseller. Though he had killed some thirty Philippine inhabitants of the island and engaged in several shootouts with the police, the circumstances of these events were taken into consideration, and Onoda received a pardon from President Ferdinand Marcos.

After his surrender, Onoda moved to Brazil, where he became a cattle farmer. He released an autobiography, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War, shortly after his surrender, detailing his life as a guerilla fighter in a war that was long over.