Hiroo Onoda formally surrendered in 1974 after hiding on Lubang Island in the Philippines for nearly three decades.
Onoda was a Japanese Army intelligence officer sent to Lubang in 1944. He was ordered to continue guerrilla operations and not surrender, and he remained in the island's forests after Japan's 1945 capitulation. Leaflets and other attempts to tell him the war had ended did not convince him.
Onoda continued hiding with fellow soldiers for years. One companion surrendered in 1950, while others were killed or died. Onoda finally emerged on March 9, 1974, only after his former commanding officer, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, traveled to the Philippines and personally ordered him to stop fighting.
He surrendered his sword to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos. Onoda's story is often confused with Shoichi Yokoi, another Japanese holdout who was found in Guam in 1972.