Hiroo Onoda formally surrendered on Lubang Island in 1974, decades after V-J Day.
Onoda was a second lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Army who continued guerrilla activity in the Philippines after Japan’s 1945 surrender. He believed his orders remained active and distrusted leaflets and other messages saying that the war had ended.
A Japanese adventurer, Norio Suzuki, found Onoda in February 1974. Onoda still refused to surrender until his former commanding officer, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, traveled to Lubang and formally relieved him of duty. Onoda surrendered to Philippine forces on 10 March 1974.
Onoda was not the final Japanese holdout. Private Teruo Nakamura was arrested in Indonesia later in 1974. Onoda’s case remains especially famous because he spent nearly 29 years carrying out his wartime mission after Japan’s formal capitulation.