Japanese 29-Year Holdout Looks Back : Philippines: Former Imperial Army lieutenant hid in jungle, unaware the war had long since ended. As he looks back he is neither angry nor bitter.

TOKYO — While the rest of the world prepares to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, Hiroo Onoda has his own long, lonely fight to remember.

Isolated in the Philippine jungle, refusing to believe Japan had surrendered, the former Imperial Army lieutenant held out until 1974--29 years after the war was finished.

Now 73, he looks back without anger or bitterness.

“I don’t consider those years a waste of time,” said Onoda, small and bespectacled, soft-spoken and smiling. “Without that experience, I wouldn’t have my life today.”

Onoda began his long war as a draftee. The son of a strict schoolteacher, he was working at a Japanese trading firm in Shanghai when he was conscripted into the military in 1942.

Trained as an intelligence officer, he was sent in December 1944 to the tiny Philippine island of Lubang, 90 miles southwest of Manila, with orders to spy on the U.S. military.

The island was small and mountainous, heavily forested. Its few residents, mostly farmers or fishermen, lived in thatched bungalows.

Onoda had no way of knowing it would be his home for almost three decades.

In February 1945, American forces landed on Lubang. Most Japanese soldiers on the island surrendered, but about two dozen killed themselves rather than give up. Onoda did neither.

Cut off from their unit, he and a handful of holdouts hid and waited. Weeks went by. Then months. Then years.

Their biggest enemy was hunger. They stole rice and bananas from local residents, and killed an occasional cow, drying the beef.

“I never felt happy being there,” recalled Onoda, his silver hair neatly parted, his posture erect. “But it was my little kingdom.”

Surrender, he said, was not an option.

“I was ordered to go there,” he said. “I couldn’t leave the post unless my commanding officer reversed the order.”

Over the years, Onoda and his two companions had skirmishes with the villagers. In 1954, one of them was shot to death by Philippine soldiers searching the island.

That set off a series of search missions by Japan. Relatives and former classmates appealed over loudspeakers. Pamphlets were dropped from airplanes. Onoda’s brother Toshio even sang a school song for him.

But Onoda believed it was all an enemy ploy, and refused to respond.

There was some basis for his belief that the war was continuing. The Philippines was a major staging ground during the Korean War in 1950-53 and, later, through the long U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Onoda often saw U.S. military jets flying overhead.

“I couldn’t contact anyone,” he said. “All I could do was trust what I saw.”

In 1972, Onoda’s last comrade was fatally shot in a gunfight with local farmers. He was alone.

Two years later, a young adventurer named Norio Suzuki arrived on Lubang with the self-assigned mission of bringing Onoda out of the jungle.

Suzuki made camp in lonely clearings, letting himself be seen, and waited. Finally, one night came a voice from the jungle.

“Oi,” Onoda called. Hey.

The two talked long into the night, Onoda explaining that he could not leave until ordered. Suzuki returned to Japan and contacted the government, which located Onoda’s superior, Maj. Yoshimi Taniguchi.

On March 10, 1974--nine days before his 52nd birthday--Onoda donned his carefully preserved Imperial Army uniform, complete with cap and sword, and stepped out of the jungle to formally receive his long-awaited order from the major.

The next day, he turned his sword over to then-Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, who praised his bravery and told him all was forgiven.

Then Onoda came home--to an utterly changed Japan.

He was showered with attention, an object of curiosity. The Japanese, great respecters of loyalty and perseverance, were deeply moved by his long ordeal. But in a country trying to put the war behind it, he was also a disturbing symbol. Some denounced Onoda as an embodiment of the same militarism and blind allegiance to the emperor that had driven Japan into battle.

Onoda’s initial feelings of joy at his homecoming were replaced by a growing feeling of emptiness. He felt no one understood what he had believed his duty to be.

“I never wanted to go to war,” he said. “I did only because I didn’t want to face the guilt of having someone else go and die for me.”

Torn by conflict, he did what he had never done during his years in the jungle. He rebelled.

The government wanted him to meet the prime minister and make a pilgrimage to the Imperial Palace and the Yasukuni Shrine, where Japan’s war dead, including a number of convicted war criminals, are enshrined. Onoda refused, insisting instead on a visit to his dead subordinates’ graves.

While he was away in the jungle, Japan had rebuilt itself from the ashes of war into an industrial giant, humming and modern. To Onoda, it didn’t feel like home any more.

Seeking space to think, he went to Brazil. There, he danced in discos, bought a ranch and acquired 1,800 head of cattle.

But he didn’t want to cut his ties with Japan. He married a Japanese woman and, in 1992, became the director of a children’s nature camp in northern Japan.

Talking of his plans for this summer’s session, he was happy and animated. He and the children would hike in the woods, he said. They’d catch fish in the river, and cook them over the campfire. He’d teach them some of the outdoor skills he honed in his long years in the jungle.

“This way,” he said, “I can still contribute to society.”

The only thing Onoda feels he hasn’t got enough of is time.

Ever since he stepped out of the jungle, he’s been hurrying, rushing to make up for those missing years. He walks fast and skips steps on the stairs. He stays up late reading.

“I wish someone could eat and sleep for me so I could work 24 hours a day!” he said.

For all his eagerness to experience life, there’s one thing he has no wish to do: return to Lubang.

“I never want to go back again,” he said.