No Surrender (27 page)

Looked at from this viewpoint, the pleas urging me to come out really meant that I should
not
come out, because if I came out, the game would have to end.

I knew from the radio that the Americans had failed badly in Vietnam, and it occurred to me that Japan might have seen that debacle as an opportunity to woo the Philippines over to the Japanese side. The Philippine government, for its part, might well be in the mood to switch its support from America to Japan. It stood to reason that the Japanese strategic command might have selected Lubang, where I was still holding out, as the place to establish a foothold in the Philippines. Hence the phony search party.

If I were to accept the search at face value and give myself up, the “search party” would have to go back to Japan without having accomplished its real objective. I had felt tempted by
my brother's appeal, but it would not do for me to spoil the larger plan by giving in.

Mentally, I addressed words of encouragement to the “search party”: “I will keep hidden where you won't find me, so survey the island as closely as you can. Working in a large group, you can find out much more about the mountains and the towns and the airfield than I could ever learn alone. If you win the support of the islanders and render the island harmless, my objectives will have been accomplished all the more quickly.”

One thing that troubled me was that the members of the search party always seemed to be accompanied by armed Philippine soldiers. Why would intelligence agents sent from Japan always have Philippine guards with them? Was this not as much as telling me that they were enemies?

I was ninety-nine percent convinced that the “search party” had been sent from Japan. The remaining one percent remained hesitant because of those armed Philippine troops.

The helicopters kept flying noisily over the island and dropping countless leaflets in the jungle. The search party pitched tents in various locations and communicated with each other by telephone. As I moved about from hiding place to hiding place, I wondered why they did not leave me some binoculars and a telephone. If I had a telephone, I could talk to the intelligence agents in secret and relay to them all the information I had gathered over the years. The only explanation I could accept for their not leaving me a telephone somewhere was that they wanted at all costs to keep me from coming out of the jungle.

Looking at it from another angle, if they really wanted me to come out, they should have left not only a telephone but a machine gun and ammunition. If they had done so, I could have loaded the machine gun and walked right out in front of them. If they were really Japanese agents working for the same
cause as I, they had no reason to fear that I would shoot. I was convinced that the war was still going on, and if the searchers wanted to prove they were friends, they had only to furnish me a weapon and ammunition. There could be no better proof.

I kept as far away from the search party as I could. Having stopped for a time near the shore south of Looc Bay, I proceeded to a hill from which I could look down on White Lady's Field, and there I celebrated the beginning of 1973. It was the first time I had seen in the New Year alone since my arrival on the island. Even with no one else around, I prepared my version of the Japanese “red rice.”

On January 3 I left the hill, planning to move up toward Tilik by way of the Agcawayan plain and Wakayama Point. A day or two later, while I was still en route, I suddenly heard the sound of recorded music coming from the ridge in front of me. I moved to a point about five hundred yards away and spent one night. The following day near Wakayama Point I heard the record again. This time I decided to investigate.

That evening I approached the rice field where the loudspeaker was located. Someone had pitched a tent there, and I could tell by shadows from the light inside that people were moving around. I hid in a grove only about 150 yards from the tent and tried to hear what was being said.

It was my brother's voice again. Calling me by my childhood nickname, he said, “Hironko, this is Tadao. Many of the search party have left, and the soldiers who are here are only to protect us. They are not trying to kill you. If a Philippine soldier pointed his gun at you, I would jump in front of it and prevent him from shooting.

“I know you have had the experience of seeing Kozuka killed before your eyes, and I don't suppose you would believe anything I say. But if you don't get in touch with us, there is nothing we can do. Be brave! Act like an officer!”

I listened to my brother broadcasting two nights in a row, but I interpreted this also to mean the opposite of what he was saying about coming out of the mountains. My brother was an army officer, and he certainly knew what my orders were.

Three months passed after Kozuka's death. The survey appeared to have been nearly completed, because I rarely caught sight of the “search party” anymore.

I kept expecting a secret agent to come and establish contact with me. Maybe the attack on the Philippines had already begun. Whether it had or not, there should be some significant change in the near future.

But nothing happened. As I thought about this, it occurred to me that perhaps Lubang alone had declared itself independent and appealed for protection to the East Asia Co-Prosperity League. After all, even the little island of Nauru was now independent. If America could no longer be depended on, it stood to reason that the Philippines might ally themselves with the league, but even if that had not happened, it was possible that Lubang had become independent and come under the league's protection. But if that were the case, there would be no reason why a Japanese base could not be built here.

All in all, I decided I had better stay in hiding and wait a while longer.

In the latter part of February, the loudspeaker appeals started again. This was the third search party, and I knew from leaflets that it included fellow students from primary and middle school, as well as soldiers who had been at Futamata with me.

For a while I stayed in a place northwest of Kumano Point where I could hear the broadcasts, but afterward I moved to Wakayama Point and then to Kainan Point on the south shore.
From there I saw on the beach a yellow tent flying a Japanese flag and a slightly smaller Red Cross flag. Some people offshore in a native craft were calling out over the loudspeaker that they were from Kainan Primary School.

I began to wonder whether my brothers or these friends knew that they were being used by the Japanese strategic command. If they were consciously putting on this show, they must feel rather shabby about it. On the other hand, if they were sincerely making this appeal without knowing the real purpose, I felt sorry for them.

Two months later the island quieted down again. Six months had passed since Kozuka's death, and I thought that by now the survey must certainly be finished. Toward the end of April, by way of checking on whether the search party had really left or not I went up to my mountain hut. There I found a seventeen-syllable poem written by my father and left in the hut for me. It said:

Not even an echo

Responds to my call in the

Summery mountains.

It gave me a strange feeling to know that even my aged father had been brought down to Lubang.

A lot of newspapers and magazines had been left in the hut, along with a new search-party uniform in a sack, and an old uniform with the name Ichirō Gozen sewn on it. Ichirō Gozen had been in Kainan Middle School when I was there. I examined the old uniform and found that it was torn in several places, and the cuffs had been turned up to make the trousers shorter. The shoulders were particularly worn, and when I reflected that Gozen, who had specialized in judo, had had wider shoulders than any of the other students in our school, I decided that the uniform had really been worn by him.

With a ball-point pen that I had requisitioned from an islander,
I penned the following message on the back of a large Red Cross leaflet: “Thank you for the two uniforms and the hat which you kindly left for me. In case you are not sure, let me inform you that I am in good health. Hiroo Onoda, Army Second Lieutenant.” Naturally I did not put the date on the message, but to make sure that it would not blow away in the wind before someone found it, I put a small rock on top of it.

I went to a place some distance from the hut and read the newspapers I had found. I learned that a large funeral had been held in Manila for Kozuka. It was written up at considerable length as an example of Japan-Philippine friendship. I could not decide immediately whether this was just talk or not.

I judged that these newspapers, unlike those of 1959, had really been produced in Japan. Still, it puzzled me that they did not contain a word about the war between the East Asia Co-Prosperity League and the United States. Putting that omission together with the failure of the previous papers to mention Kozuka's “thousand-stitch waistband,” I decided that the papers must have been printed specially by the Japanese strategic command for the purpose of leaving them in Lubang.

For one thing, the sending of such a large “search party” to survey Lubang suggested to me that a big battle was going on somewhere, and that America was losing. Otherwise, I could not see how the strategic command could afford to lavish so much attention on this little island. If this was indeed the situation, however, the strategic command would not want to send me newspapers telling me about it for fear that I might decide upon reading the good news to come out of the jungle. In a way then, the omission of the news from the doctored newspapers was a sign to me that I should stay put. Of course the Americans were aware of Japan's activities on Lubang, and they would naturally have to reserve military forces to fight in the Philippines when the Japanese attack came.

In sum, my being on Lubang enabled the Japanese strategists to take a number of steps that would otherwise have been impossible. If the cumulative effect were to be that the Americans would keep a number of planes in readiness against a Japanese attack on the Philippines, it was well worth the price of printing a few doctored newspapers to prevent me from showing myself. So long as I remained in place, the larger the “search” operations would be—and the more it would cost the Americans in the long run.

I was not one hundred percent convinced I was right about this. Still, it seemed plausible enough. It was quite possible that the Philippines had grown more pro-Japanese than I thought, even possible that Lubang might have separated from the Philippines and called on the league for help. According to the papers, a big funeral had been held in Manila for Kozuka, and that might indeed mean that relations between the Philippines and Japan were better than I had believed.

I read the newspapers over and over; there were many statements that I found difficult to explain. One way or the other, I convinced myself that it would be best for the time being not to adopt aggressive tactics against the islanders, even though up until now they had acted as stooges for the Americans.

I had pledged to avenge Kozuka's death, but the arrival of the search parties had prevented me from taking action. Now, finally, both search parties were gone, but the idea that Japan and the Philippines had become friendly nations deterred me. In my heart I whispered to Kozuka, “I haven't forgotten you. Just give me a little more time.”

The rainy season arrived. For the first time, I had to put up a
bahai
for only myself. Choosing a site below the observation peak near Looc, I made the house smaller and simpler than
before, but even so it took me two or three times as much effort as when Kozuka was with me.