No Surrender

by Hiroo Onoda

  If we let them carry this very far, we would not secure a sufficient supply of food before the enemy landed on our island. I ordered the rice bearers to use lamps if they had to. But then the mayor came again, protesting that they still could not move the rice because they had no fuel for lamps. I ordered him to mix the aviation fuel left on the island with lubrication oil and use that.

  One way or another, I managed to conceal the rice supply in the mountains, but about that time the seventy men from the radar and air intelligence units piled in on us. They had received orders to act in conjunction with us in the future.

  These were the troops who had stuck up their noses every time I had talked about guerrilla tactics, the ones who had waited for the last boat even though they already had orders to withdraw. Now that they were stranded, we had to take charge of them. There were forty of us already; with another seventy mouths, it was clear that what we had regarded as a five-month supply of rice would last barely two months.

  Futhermore, some of the men took to stealing rice and swapping it with the Filipinos for sugar. San Jose had been a big sugar center, and refugees who had fled from there to Lubang after the enemy landed on Mindoro had brought a considerable supply with them. The Ōsaki unit foolishly took them up on their offer to trade one sack for two sacks of rice. One of Ōsaki’s men even came to me and asked if the garrison did not want to get in on the deal.

  I gave him a good dressing down, but even as I yelled at him, my heart was sinking. What can you do with a bunch of idiots?

  After that came the coffee incident. Some time back a tanker had run aground off the coast of Tagbac, and the garrison had stored its cargo with the islanders. Now a group from the Ōsaki outfit broke into the islanders’ houses and made off with a quantity of coffee. I called Corporal Suzuki, who was responsible for the men, and gave him a bawling-out, but the incident only depressed me further.

  I had been sent to this island to fight, only to find that the troops I was supposed to lead were a bunch of good-for-nothings, quick to profess their willingness to die, but actually concerned only with their immediate wants. As if this were not enough, I had no authority to issue orders to them. I could only deploy them with the consent of their commander. I could have managed somehow if Lieutenant Hayakawa had delegated his command to me, but despite his serious illness, he refused to relinquish his authority. He had to pass on everything.

  It was infuriating. There I was, powerless, with a disorderly pack of troops, none of whom understood the first thing about the kind of guerrilla war that we would soon be engaged in. I began to hope that the enemy would go ahead and land. At least that would clear the air!

  The enemy obliged three days later.

  THE FOUR-DAY BATTLE

  On the west side of the island was a village called Tomibo, where a force of about fifty American soldiers landed on February 28.

  I was on a mountaintop, which later became a radar base for the Philippine Air Force. Since this mountain was about five hundred yards high, we referred to it simply as Five Hundred. When I sighted the Americans with my binoculars, my whole body went tense, and I said aloud, “They’ve finally come!”

  Disembarking from their landing craft, the American troops moved cautiously forward over the gently sloping terrain, their rifles ready. Something was wrong: there were not enough of them. It was a trick. Lubang is only a small island, and they may have known that it was not heavily defended, but even so the enemy would hardly attempt to take it with only fifty men. They were trying to trap us.

  And Lieutenant Suehiro fell into the trap. Speaking with gusto, he said, “I’ll take a few men over there and wipe them out.”

  “Don’t do it,” I urged. “You can bank on it that they are about to land in force at another point. Let’s just wait a while and see what happens.”

  “Don’t worry, Lieutenant! Fifty or a hundred Yanks don’t amount to a fart. We’ll wipe them out in no time.”

  And he jumped onto his truck with about fifteen men. They had one heavy machine gun, and each of the men had an infantry rifle. Tomibo was only about two miles from the top of Five Hundred as the crow flies, but there was no road between them. Lieutenant Suehiro decided to take the road along the north coast and around the west end of the island. This was quite a detour, but it would give the lieutenant a chance to look in on his sick troops in the town of Lubang on the way.

  Keeping our voices down, we began to prepare our defenses. In the rolling hills considerably down the mountain from where we were, the air intelligence squad, which had a radar set, had dug in, along with part of the air maintenance crew.

  The Americans had disappeared into the forest this side of the beach, and at sunset we had neither seen nor heard any more of them. Where were they? And what was Lieutenant Suehiro doing? I grew more nervous as time went on. By nightfall I was beginning to feel that the enemy was breathing down my back.

  Night enveloped us in inky darkness. It had been a long day. At about one o’clock in the morning a truck drove up, and Lieutenant Ōsaki jumped out, followed by Warrant Officer Tachibana. They had brought the part of the maintenance crew that had been left at the airfield. But no sign of Lieutenant Suehiro.

  Warrant Officer Tachibana explained, “Lieutenant Suehiro stayed in Lubang. He tried to persuade us to stay, but we thought it was too dangerous. We decided to come here.”

  Not thirty minutes later we saw flames rising in the vicinity of Lubang. I felt certain the Suehiro group had come under enemy fire, but there was no way to make sure. I was more nervous than ever. I do not know how many times I must have grasped the handle of my sword.

  As dawn broke, I aimed my binoculars toward Tilik, and sure enough, in the offing I spotted an enemy light cruiser and three troop transports making straight for the island. I decided to smoke a cigarette to calm myself. It took me five or six matches to light it. Then I thought of the incense tube I had snitched from my father. I did not want that to fall into an enemy hand, so I burned it, along with my secret papers.

  The naval ships began their bombardment—ear-splitting shots followed by thunderous explosions as the shells found their mark. My whole insides shook with the vibrations. Tilik was the enemy’s chief target, and in no time the coast in that direction was covered with dust and smoke. Palm trees and parts of houses flew through the air, as the little town of Tilik disappeared before our eyes. The bombardment went on relentlessly. Our base was so far away that I was not really frightened, but I worried about the coastal advance squads. Their little attack boats had been hidden in the river that empties into Tilik Bay, ready to launch an attack as soon as enemy ships appeared, but the enemy, perhaps on guard against such an attack was pouring volley after volley into the little river.

  And what about the pier? I had lined it with explosives, but I could not tell whether it had been blown up or not.

  After about two hours the bombardment finally ended, but as soon as it stopped, shells from enemy land mortars began raining down on our encampment. We hid as best we could behind trees. Enemy planes swooped down, dropping two-hundred-pound parachute bombs. Swinging back and forth from their chutes, they sort of fluttered down to earth and then erupted with an unearthly noise. The more I looked, the angrier I became. The enemy obviously knew we had no antiaircraft weapons.

  Finally the planes went away. I looked through my binoculars and saw that the light cruiser, flying the Stars and Stripes, was advancing toward Tilik harbor. The troop transports were also under way.

  At that point, a soldier from Lieutenant Suehiro’s outfit came crawling up the mountain. He reported that during the previous night the outfit’s quarters in the town had been attacked.

  “We were caught in a real crossfire. Everybody but me . . .” He broke off.

  “Are they all dead? What about Lieutenant Suehiro?”

  “He was standing by the window. They got him first thing.”

  Just as I feared, the fire in the town the night before had been Lieut
enant Suehiro’s barracks. Although the lieutenant and I had had our disagreements, it hurt inside to know he was gone. I remembered how he had rushed about helping me put together my fake airplanes.

  When the bombardment began, Lieutenant Ueno of the Sixteenth Coastal Attack Squad ordered his men to take shelter in the mountains but stayed behind himself to blow up the engines of the attack boats. He soon realized that the enemy was pointing artillery directly at him. There being no chance of surviving, he too beat a retreat into the mountains. When I heard his story, I could hardly believe it. Machine guns, even mortars, yes, but naval guns against a single enemy straggler? Incredible! The enemy must have equipment and ammunition to throw away!

  Presently the troops landed—a battalion of marines led by four tanks. Looking out from among the trees, I saw them march off toward Vigo, a mile or two west of Tilik. Just before they reached Vigo, they split into two units. One unit continued westward toward the town of Lubang, while the other started advancing toward our base. I decided on a retreat. If we dug in and made a stand where we were, we did not have the remotest chance of winning. I figured that the only chance left was to go up into the mountains and carry on a guerrilla campaign.

  The intelligence squad and the coastal attack squads did not agree. They said they would hold out to the end where they were. I tried to tell them that with no more armaments than they had, they would be sitting ducks for the enemy, but they would not listen.

  Enemy shells began to fall, and I ordered the wounded soldiers who were able to walk to move deeper into the mountains. Picking out five or six strong-looking men, I ordered them to carry as many provisions as they could, and we started off.

  We had not walked for thirty minutes when we heard guns from the direction in which we were moving. The enemy had apparently cut off our retreat. I had been afraid of something like this. Some time before I had told the Ōsaki outfit that instead of waiting around for planes to come to the rescue, they should get busy and move provisions to the rear, so that when the attack did come they could fall back and make a stand.

  If they had paid any attention then, we would not be in the position we were in now. I sent a lookout ahead, then set out myself with a small force. Before long we met the lookout, limping back with a bullet wound in his leg. He had been spotted by an enemy scout. It was now certain that our retreat was cut off, no doubt by the troops who had landed in Tomibo the day before.

  In front of us, the enemy’s mortars were coming closer. We were trapped! Suddenly I noticed blood on the path; bending down to take a look, I sighted two Japanese soldiers lying on their stomachs a little ahead of us. They were Private First Class Kinshichi Kozuka and Private First Class Muranaka. I called to them to creep forward a little farther. Muranaka looked at Kozuka for a moment, then for some crazy reason stood straight up. Instantly a shot rang out, and he fell. The bullet had hit him in the head.

  Shouting to Kozuka to stay down, I crawled backward a little, and feeling around with my foot, I found a ditch. Suddenly, the light-footed Kozuka was up and running toward me. He jumped over me into the ditch, just as another shot rang out. I slipped back into the ditch before noticing that my right hand was covered with blood. The bullet had sliced off the tip of my little finger, leaving only a little of the nail.

  On the following night I resolved to carry out a raid on the troops blocking our retreat.

  Lieutenant Ōsaki had been killed yesterday, Lieutenant Tanaka today, both by mortar shells. Together with Lieutenant Suehiro, we had lost three officers, and another, Lieutenant Tategami, was missing, having gone off in pursuit of enemy scouts (he was later found dead). With no commanding officers, the troops lost all sense of organization. They were firing willy-nilly, as the spirit moved them. Unless something was done soon, they would all be destroyed.

  A mountain range, about eighteen hundred feet high at its peak and covered with dense forest, ran down the island from northwest to southeast. My idea was to retreat along the ridge, offering resistance when necessary. I thought that if we could reach a certain point I had in mind, some of us could then double back along the skirt of the mountains to our former base, where provisions had been hidden, and then dive back into the forest.

  To carry out this plan, it was essential to wipe out the enemy troops to the rear. I waited until the night of March 2, because Captain Tsukii had promised to rendezvous with me by that time at the latest. His squad had almost no weapons; I did not want to retreat ahead of them, leaving them defenseless.

  Holding up under sporadic mortar fire, we waited and waited, but no Captain Tsukii. I finally decided we could wait no longer. Taking fifteen men with me, I set out to attack the enemy troops who were blocking us. The path along the ridge was fairly straight, and if we were to run into the enemy, the men in the vanguard would certainly be wounded or killed. Still, I figured that if we resigned ourselves to sacrificing three or four men, the rest of us could get through to the enemy camp. I was confident that in hand-to-hand combat we would beat them.

  The airfield had been captured intact by the enemy. The pier had not been blown up. I had, in short, allowed the enemy to land without accomplishing either of the specific objectives I had been assigned by division headquarters. I had disgraced myself as a secret warfare agent. Deep down I felt that we would not be in the predicament we were in if I had been more forceful and aggressive as a leader. The only way I could see now to discharge my duty to those who had died so tragically was to carry out this desperate night attack on the enemy. I would lead the way into the enemy camp and slaughter as many Americans as I could.

  When we reached a certain point, I took a deep breath and looked around behind me. The men’s helmets dully reflected the moonlight. I breathed again and drew my sword, discarding the scabbard by the wayside. From now on I would not think of anything. I grasped the sword tightly and started forward. I had nothing to rely on but my own strength.

  When I threw away my scabbard, I was disobeying the orders I had received from General Yokoyama. I was also ignoring all I had been taught at Futamata about the duties of a secret warfare agent. I was reverting instead to the suicide tactics I had been taught at officers’ training school. I was young; I had lost my head!

  If the enemy had been waiting for us at that moment, I would probably have been killed. As luck would have it, however, they had found out about our night attack and withdrawn far to the rear. I was both crestfallen and relieved. We moved quickly back the way we had come.

  On the way we found the body of Private First Class Muranaka. With the dagger my mother had given me, I cut off his little finger, which I wrapped in paper and placed in the inner pocket of my jacket. I also recovered my scabbard. As I picked it up, I remembered the division commander’s face as he ordered me to stay alive. I was ashamed of myself.

  On the morning of the third, Captain Tsukii and his men finally arrived at our base. I decided to check our path of retreat once more, and I took Corporal Shōichi Shimada with me. As we started to leave, Lieutenant Ueno told me he had also sent out a scout and asked me to bring him back if I saw him.

  Then, just as we were setting out from the base, a messenger came from the sick tent asking for explosives. I went to the tent to see what the situation was. A young man with a very pale face looked up at me from his cot and mumbled, “We can’t move. Please let us kill ourselves here.”

  The rest of the twenty men in the tent, all gravely wounded, stared pitifully at me.

  I suppressed my emotions and said, “All right, I’ll do it. I’ll attach a fuse to set off the dynamite, but just in case it doesn’t, I’ll leave a cannister, which you can throw into the dynamite to ignite it.”

  I looked at each and every face, twenty-two in all. They were all resigned to death, ready to make the sacrifice they had been brought up to make. With difficulty, I continued.

  “Also, in the event that your matches don’t light, I’m leaving a piece of long-burning incense to light the fuse with. One wa
y or another, you should be able to achieve your wish. There is one thing, however, that I must ask you in return. It is hard for me to give you an assignment when you have already made up your minds to die, but I ask you one more time—just one more time—to serve your country. Do not blow yourselves up until you can see the enemy from this tent. There is food here. You can hold on until the enemy has been sighted.”

  One man answered, “It’s all the same to us whether the enemy comes or not.”

  “I know that, but it’s not the same to us. If the enemy invades this base, we can’t return to it. We want some way of knowing whether the enemy has come or not. Do you understand?”

  They said they understood and would do as I requested. Then they all thanked me for making it possible for them to destroy themselves.

  I prepared the explosives and the cannister and left the tent.

  The feeble voices followed me, “Take care of yourself, Commander!”

  I found Corporal Shimada and pushed off.

  Later I came back to the place and found no trace of either the tent or the twenty-two corpses. Nothing was left but a gaping hole in the ground. I stood there and stared at it. I did not think to bow my head or say a prayer. I just stood and stared at that awful hole. Even the tears refused to come.

  After Shimada and I had walked for a while, we ran into the scout that Lieutenant Ueno had mentioned. He was a boy of only seventeen or eighteen. I asked him whether he had sighted enemy troops; he said no.

  “Go back to the base,” I told him. “Guide the men there to the point where we are now. In the meantime, we’ll check the road ahead and take up a guard position there. When you’ve brought the troops here and secured the place, come ahead for us. Whatever happens, see that you establish contact with us.”