Hiroo Onoda was the last widely recognized Japanese World War II holdout to surrender, doing so in 1974.
Onoda was a Japanese Army intelligence officer who continued hiding on Lubang Island in the Philippines after Japan’s surrender. He had been ordered to conduct guerrilla operations and did not accept that the war had ended. For decades, he and his companions treated leaflets, newspapers, and other notices as enemy deception.
Onoda’s former commanding officer, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, traveled to Lubang in March 1974 and formally relieved him of his duties. Onoda then surrendered his sword and his service rifle to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos.
He is often described as the last Japanese soldier to surrender, but that wording can be misleading. Teruo Nakamura, a Taiwanese-born soldier serving in the Japanese army, surrendered in Indonesia in December 1974, later in the same year. Onoda is more precisely the last commissioned Japanese Army officer and the last major holdout associated with the war. His story illustrates why the formal surrender did not immediately end every isolated act of resistance across Asia and the Pacific.