No Surrender

by Hiroo Onoda

It was Kinkazu Saionji, broadcasting from Peking.

  The radio provided the first information about the outside world that we had had since the newspapers and magazines left by the 1959 search party, but we limited our listening time to conserve the batteries. For the first year, we listened only to the news as broadcast from Peking. After we acquired more batteries, we began listening to Japan Shortwave Radio, the South American broadcast from NHK, the Japanese-language broadcast from Australia and even the BBC from London.

  The replacements for the batteries came from the flashlights that the islanders carried. The farmers sometimes worked late in the fields near the edge of the jungle, and if we fired a few shots to frighten them, they would usually run away leaving their flashlights behind. The flashlight batteries were too big to go in the radio, of course, but we made a plastic cylinder that would hold four of them and connected this to the radio.

  When we had spare batteries, we melted a candle in the top of a can and dipped each end of the battery into the tallow to seal the terminals. They would stay good for about three years when we did this.

  During the rainy season, we made an antenna out of about ten yards of copper wire strung between two trees at a height of about fifteen feet. The wire was stolen from the islanders, of course.

  As in the case of the newspapers we had received, we did not believe anything we heard on the radio concerning military affairs or foreign relations. We considered that we were listening not to live broadcasts but to tapes made by the Americans, who had deleted or altered anything unfavorable to them. What pretended to be a broadcast from Japan or Australia was, to our way of thinking, a tape prepared by the enemy and rebroadcast with suitable changes. There were many people in the Philippines who understood Japanese, and the Americans were apparently trying to discourage those who might be sympathetic to Japan by broadcasting doctored Japanese-language programs that professed to come from Japan or other countries, but in reality presented the American viewpoint.

  At one point, Kozuka remarked, “When you think of it, the Americans are really good at this, aren’t they?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “They have to take out anything they don’t want heard and then rebroadcast it in almost no time. They must have managed to gather together a bunch of very smart people. Just one slip, and the whole thing would sound fishy. I take off my hat to them. It must be very tricky work!”

  Later, when I found out that the broadcasts had not been faked, it occurred to me that it had been “very tricky work” indeed for us to read into the news broadcasts the meanings we wanted them to have.

  Aside from items having to do with military activities or foreign affairs, we thought that the programs we heard were genuine enough. We accepted, for instance, the idea that the Tokyo Olympic Games had been carried out successfully, and that Japan had a new “bullet-train” system in operation between Tokyo and Osaka. After all, people were always saying that there were no national boundaries in the world of sports, and it seemed plausible enough that the Olympic Games might be held even if there was a war going on. As for the new train line, I knew that even before the war there had been a plan to build a superexpress railway between Tokyo and Shimonoseki.

  At the beginning of the rainy season in the year after we acquired the radio, Kozuka injured his foot. We had killed a cow, and as we were lugging the meat to our hut, he stepped on a thorn that went deep into his heel.

  It must have been terribly painful. He said nothing, but his face was contorted and he turned deathly pale. Having no way of knowing what kind of poison the thorn contained, after I removed it, I pricked around the wound with a needle, forced out the blood, and then applied some American-made mentholatum, which we had picked up in an islander’s house.

  This was the second time Kozuka had hurt his foot. The first time had been around the time Akatsu had made his second attempt to leave, and I remembered how bad it had been then. I had a feeling that this second injury was going to be troublesome too.

  I was right. The next day Kozuka’s leg was swollen up to the thigh. After about a week, I breathed a sigh of relief when the swelling went down, but this was premature.

  Thinking that the injury had healed, we decided to go fetch some batteries that we had hidden. Just as we reached the point near the Looc lookout tower where we had planned to spend the rainy season, Kozuka’s leg crumbled under him, and he could not go on. I put up our hut myself and continued to apply cool packs to Kozuka’s leg, sometimes massaging it lightly at the knee and calf to stimulate the blood flow.

  Kozuka was in bed throughout the rainy season. During this period we listened often to the broadcasts of Japanese horse races on Japan Shortwave Radio, and Kozuka taught me the rudiments of horse racing. Even now I remember one running of the Japan Derby that was delayed from May until early July by a trainers’ strike or something like that. Betting centered on three well-known horses, but Kozuka and I agreed that the horse ranked fourth looked like the winner.

  “There are more than twenty horses in the derby,” said Kozuka. “Anything can happen. I’ll admit this horse isn’t really as strong as the first three, but if his trainer didn’t push him very hard on the day before the race, I think he’ll run away from the pack and win before they catch him.”

  He did just that and won by six lengths. Kozuka and I were lost in self-admiration, particularly since the nag hardly won another race either before or after.

  After Kozuka recovered enough to walk, we started betting with each other on the races. Whoever won on a given day made the decisions on the following day. A lot depended on luck, of course, but we reasoned that the man who picked the winner was also displaying superior intuition, and it made sense for him to take the leading role. As often as not, however, the broadcast was drowned out by static, and we did not hear the results.

  We also listened to popular music programs. It seemed to me that most of the new singers had thin voices and had to stand very close to the microphone to be heard. I preferred the older singers, like Noriko Awaya, who had been singing the blues before the war. I heard a broadcast of her singing at Expo ’70 in Osaka; it reminded me of listening to records of Chaliapin singing the “Volga Boat Song.”

  The singers I like today are the ones who sing of traditional subjects and put a lot of vigor in their performance. After I returned to Japan, I mentioned this to my brother Tadao, and he said, “You like the songs aimed at giving you more fight.”

  I suppose he was right, although I had never thought of it that way.

  One of the programs that I always wanted to listen to was the big New Year’s Eve show put on by NHK every year, in which all the leading singers participate. It was broadcast on shortwave, but we never listened to more than a part of it, because it runs for three hours, and we did not like to use the batteries that long.

  To cheer Kozuka up while he was sick, we indulged ourselves somewhat in the radio, but that did not last long. The main trouble was that since we had to keep the volume low, we had to twist ourselves into unnatural positions to keep our ears close to the speaker. This could be very tiring. We decided that our bodies and the batteries were more important than the fun of listening to the horse races and music programs, and before long we gave them up almost entirely.

  One difficulty with the Japanese language is that it has many words meaning “I” and “you,” and they have to be chosen with care to fit the given situation. In the Japanese army, the common words for “you” were kisama and omae, both of which can easily sound insulting if not used with caution. We dodged this problem by using the Tagalog words ako for “I” and ikao for “you.”

  I tried very hard not to say anything that would make Kozuka angry, and he did the same toward me. There was no one around to intervene. Once we started fighting, it was bound to go on until both of us had it all out of our system. But our world had a population of two, both male, and every once in a while we did have bitter clashes, usually over something trivial.

  The f
arming-fishing community of Looc, on the eastern part of the island, faces on a bay where the water is shallow for a considerable distance out from shore. During the course of our stay, a simple waterworks was installed in the town and the main street paved with concrete, so that Looc became, along with Lubang and Tilik, one of the island’s “cultural centers.” We sometimes went to the edge of the town in the evening to requisition supplies.

  In late December, 1968—I remember the date well—we were looking down on Looc from a nearby mountain and noticed that one of the buildings of the primary school on the outskirts of the town was missing. I said, “I’m sure there were three buildings, but now there are only two.”

  Kozuka agreed with me, and since it was our duty to find out everything that was going on on the island, we decided to go and take a closer look. That evening after sunset we came down from the mountains and made our way in the shadows of trees to a spot just behind the school.

  One look told us that the missing building had been blown down by the typhoon we had had in October. What was of far more interest, however, was the tin roof, still lying there on the ground. If we had tin roofing, the roof of our hut would be waterproof!

  Fortunately, there was a fairly strong wind that evening, and from time to time the loose ends of the roofing squeaked and clattered. If we adjusted our movements to this noise, we could remove some of the roofing without alarming the islanders. It was an opportunity not to be lost.

  I found a suitable piece of roofing, cut it in two with my bolo knife, and rolled up the two pieces. With these tied to our backpacks, we retreated into the mountains as fast as possible. We reached the watershed, from which the south shore is visible, about one in the morning. We were extremely tired, not only because of the climbing but because we had had to keep an eye on the town all the way. Still, it was important to take the roofing to the place where we planned to spend the next rainy season, and we forced ourselves on. It was dawn before we reached a point on the south shore near our destination.

  After taking a nap, I went into a thicket to look for a vine with which to tie up the roofing. Since it was dangerous to have the metal around in the daytime, I intended not only to tie it up but to camouflage it with branches and weeds to keep it from reflecting the sunlight and to cut down on the noise it made. Not finding a really good vine, I came back with the best I could find and started tying up the rolls of tin.

  At that point Kozuka growled, “You shouldn’t do things halfway. You need a stronger vine than that. Why didn’t you look until you found one?”

  He was accusing me of being lazy, and I could not let that go by.

  “I’m still tired from last night,” I protested. “Anyway this is good enough to carry the stuff as far as we’re going.”

  That started it, and for a while we bickered with each other, fatigue making us all the angrier. Eventually Kozuka, looking furious, stormed off into the woods. He came back just under an hour later carrying a very strong vine. Taking out his bolo knife, he cut off the vine I had used and began lashing the roofing with the new vine. There was triumph in his profile. I kept my mouth shut, because I knew that if I said anything, we would be at it again. We hardly spoke to each other all afternoon.

  In the evening, I put my roll on my back and prepared to move on. Kozuka, walking ahead of me, began grouching about what I had done earlier in the day. I put up with this in silence until he spat out the words, “From now on, I’ll lead the way, so you just follow!”

  That stopped me dead in my tracks. He would lead the way?

  “Just hold on a minute, Kozuka,” I said. “I’m not going to take that lying down!”

  During all my time in the army, I had never once sent Kozuka or any other of my men in front to protect myself. I could not let him get away with a nasty remark like that. I took off my pack and plopped down on the ground where I was.

  Speaking quietly, I said, “I can get along by myself, and I can carry out my duties by myself. I’m grateful for all that I’ve learned from you and Shimada about living in the mountains, but I am an officer, and I am responsible for the war on this island. Up until now I’ve acted in accordance with my own judgment, and I’m prepared to take responsibility for what I’ve done.”

  Looking at me insolently, he said, “Second Lieutenant Onoda, sir! Keep it to yourself! I’m fed up with your sermons!”

  “Sermons?” I countered. “I am merely stating facts. I’m simply pointing out to you where you’re wrong.”

  “Why you lazy, good-for-nothing . . .”

  He was so mad he could not go on. By this time, our Tagalog ikaos had given way to the most abusive army language, and I was almost as excited as he. Suddenly I realized that I was losing control of myself; shouldering my pack again, I walked on ahead. We both needed to go somewhere and cool off.

  I had not taken ten steps when Kozuka threw a rock and hit me in the back. I whirled around and found him preparing to throw more rocks.

  “Stop that, you idiot!” I shouted.

  The command only made him worse, and he started raving.

  “Who’s an idiot? Not me. I’m no idiot! I know who’s on my side and who isn‘t. You don’t listen to me, so you’re not on my side. You’re an enemy! You’re an enemy of Japan, and I’m going to kill you!”

  I put my pack down again and looking straight into Kozuka’s eyes said, “We’ve been together a long time. Whenever I’ve given orders, it has been because I thought they were for the good of my country and my people. I consider you my comrade, and I’ve tried very hard all this time not to say anything that would harm you or hurt your pride. It hasn’t always been easy, because I’m human too. And still, every once in a while you go into your song and dance about how my faulty leadership caused a lot of soldiers to surrender, how I undercut Akatsu, how I was responsible for Shimada’s death.

  “You don’t know it, but whenever you go off on that tack, one of four situations exists. Either the weather is bad, or the enemy is stronger than we thought, or you’re tired and discouraged because something hasn’t gone according to plan, or chow is late and you’re very hungry. It’s only when one of those things happens that you get angry and start criticizing me. The situation today is number three—you’re very tired, and a couple of things haven’t gone the way you wanted them to.

  “Why can’t you be cooler and more objective? There are only the two of us, after all.”

  “Shut up!” he cried. “I told you I don’t want any more sermons.”

  “All right then,” I replied. “I’ve said what I had to say. If you still want to kill your only comrade, go to it. I’ll do you the favor of dying for you. But after I’m dead, it’s up to you to go on living. It’s up to you to fight twice as hard to cover my share.”

  Rough waves were breaking in the ocean nearby, but I could not hear anything. I do not think Kozuka could either. All sound around us was shut out; we faced each other in silence.

  Thirty or forty seconds passed, and Kozuka said quietly, “Lieutenant, you lead the way.”

  Those words made us closer comrades than we had been before. I nodded silently and started off on the rocky path.

  The islanders called us the “mountain bandits,” the “kings of the mountain,” or the “mountain devils.” No doubt they had good reason to hate us.

  One year just before the rainy season we stopped for a few days about halfway up Snake Mountain. At one point we decided to “step out” to the nearby village and look for supplies. We hid our packs and around sundown started down the mountain. Coming out at a spot somewhere between Vigo and Malik, we peered from the safety of a small hillock out over the nearby fields. We saw a young girl with a bandanna around her head and a boy in an undershirt and shorts. They appeared to be watering the vegetables growing in the field. It was already fairly dark, and if they were still working in the field, they must live nearby.

  Keeping our bodies low and moving closer, we soon saw the roof of a nipa house nestled among t
he banana trees. We had never seen the house before and wondered when they had built it.

  When we came out of the bushes, we saw the girl walking toward the house beyond the banana field. The boy had disappeared. The girl went into the house and soon came out again with a man who appeared to be her father. They started preparing their dinner on an outdoor hearth near the door. We slipped up behind them and forced them at gunpoint back into the house. Inside was a darkish, dingy room where an elderly woman, presumably the mother, stood motionless with fright as she watched us. We began searching the hut, but there were only a few articles of men’s clothing among a lot of women’s things.

  I motioned for the man to give me his flashlight; trembling with terror he handed it over. The battery was so near dead that it was useless. The only food to speak of was some unpolished rice, and we found neither sugar nor cigarettes. Near the back of the room there was a pair of new basket-weave sandals, which I took.

  “There’s nothing else here,” I said, “so we may as well go back.”

  But at that point the man started talking in Tagalog, and I gathered that he wanted to go outdoors and take his pot off the fire. I nodded permission, and the girl and her father tumbled out of the house as though they were falling from a ladder. After the man had removed the pot, he said something that seemed to mean that the rice was just right, and then he offered it to us.

  “Should we eat it?” asked Kozuka.

  “Why not?” I replied.

  The girl had gone back into the house. We thought she was helping her mother prepare something to go with the rice, but when we looked inside, we found that the mother was gone. We immediately saw where the woman had removed a floor board and crawled out on the other side of the house, doubtless to run for the police. That did not seem to matter much, because it would be some time before they arrived, and we could eat in the meanwhile.

  Just as we were finishing, the mother came back. We knew it was time for us to leave, but somehow we felt we ought to pay the woman back for her treachery. Scowling, we pointed our rifles at the girl and the father, and I said, “You’re coming to the mountains with us.”