No Surrender (30 page)

The next morning I went over to Snake Mountain to check on the ammunition that I had hidden there.

It was my intention to hold out on this island, if necessary, for twenty years more. As I had told Suzuki, I considered my body to be no more than thirty-seven or thirty-eight years old. I was confident that I could last another twenty years.

The main reason for checking on the ammunition was to make sure I would not lose track of its exact location. I also wanted, however, to check on the number of bullets left, divide the number by twenty, and determine how many I could use per year.

During the early years, I had used about sixty rounds a year, but in the years just before Kozuka died, this number had fallen to only about twenty. Now that I was alone, I might have to use more in case I encountered enemy patrols, but I hoped that I would be able to hold the number down to no more than forty or fifty a year.

Having counted the bullets, I put one third of them aside as reserve ammunition, in case some unforeseen need should arise. Dividing the number of the remaining bullets by twenty, I found that I could use thirty bullets a year. I decided that I would just have to make do on that.

About ten months had gone by now since the departure of the search parties in which my family and friends had participated. I had expected a friendly army to land at almost any time, but there had been no further word. I was beginning to think that the plans had been changed.

That, I thought, was all right too. If ever I did manage to return to Japan, I would still have to work and sweat every day, and I could do that just as well on Lubang. Staying here even had one advantage: if I died, it would be death in the line of duty, and my spirit would be enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine. That idea appealed to me.

Before allowing Suzuki to photograph me, I had said to him,
“You apparently risked your life to come to this island. Now it is my turn to gamble.”

I did not really believe what he said about the war being over. In several instances, his account agreed with what I had heard over the radio and read in the newspapers, but I still saw inexplicable discrepancies. If the war was really over, why would such a large search party as the last be sent to Lubang? Why would they call themselves a “search party” when their purpose was to survey the island? Wasn't this survey proof that Lubang was considered very important from the strategic viewpoint?

Surely the war between America and the East Asia Co-Properity League was continuing, and as long as it continued, I could not neglect my duties for a single day. Until some new secret orders arrived, I intended to fight to preserve the territory I was “occupying.”

Still, I found that I could not completely ignore Suzuki's explanation of how things were. Ninety-nine percent was unbelievable, and I was in doubt about that remaining one percent. It was actually on that one percent that I was betting when I let Suzuki take my picture. If the war was really over, as he said, then he would immediately tell Major Taniguchi about his meeting with me, and Major Taniguchi would send word of some sort to me.

But I was sure that this would not happen. Major Taniguchi knew perfectly well the nature of the orders under which I had come to Lubang, and he knew that I could not leave the island unless those orders were properly rescinded.

That was the key point. The strategic command had not rescinded my orders; that meant simply that they wanted me to stay on the island.

According to the newspapers, Major Taniguchi was now a bookdealer living in Miyazaki Prefecture. I suspected, however, that this was merely for public consumption, and that in fact he
was still a secret agent, disguised as a civilian. It is not so easy for people engaged in secret warfare to return to civilian life.

Moreover, if the war had really ended thirty years ago, why should Major Taniguchi's name come up only at this late date? Why could he not have issued new orders to me in his own name much earlier? The fact that he had not done so seemed to me proof that all this time he too had still been engaged in secret warfare. No doubt he had been given some new assignment that entailed his pretending to be an ordinary citizen.

True, thirty years had gone by, and it was unlikely that the Sugi Brigade of which I had been a member had continued on unaltered. Still, when the new army took over, the rolls and records of the old army would naturally have passed to it, and they must know my name and whereabouts.

Well, I had rolled my dice on that one percent. The only thing to do now was wait and see—without depending too much on the results.

When I finished counting the bullets, I started out on my usual patrol route. I could not afford to consider the meeting with Suzuki as anything more than an unexpected diversion.

L
UBANG
, S
AYONARA

I almost never dreamed, and when I did, it was almost always the same dream.

I would be defending myself against an enemy patrol that had spotted me. Bullets were whizzing by me, and I was returning fire from behind a shelter of some sort. I would aim and pull the trigger, but the gun would not go off. Was it a bad cartridge, or was the gun not working properly? I would pull the trigger again, and again the gun would not fire. By this time the enemy's bullets were nearly grazing my ears. One more try. Still no luck. The gun was broken. . . .

At this point, I always woke up.

In March I began to have a different dream, and a stranger one.

I dreamed I was awakened by a noise and started to ask Kozuka if he had heard it too. But Kozuka was not there, and I wondered where he was. Then I awoke and realized I had been dreaming. Kozuka was not there because he was dead. Only after this did I really wake up. It was a dream within a dream.

Kozuka would not appear even in a dream within a dream. Nothing made me feel more alone than that idea.

On March 5, near the mountain hut, I heard the excited voices of islanders. I wondered what they were doing so deep in the mountains.

Suddenly it occurred to me that maybe Suzuki had come
back to the island. About two weeks had passed, plenty of time for him to go to Japan and back. I had given him my word, and I thought I ought at least to go and see whether he had come. If he had, it would not be right to let him down. He had been so elated and so earnest when he had promised to come again.

I went to the mountain hut, but saw no change. I decided that the excited cries I had heard meant nothing more than that the natives had caught a water buffalo. I had no objection to that. Let them be! I had a two-day food supply, and I did not plan to leave until I had eaten it. I spent the night on a nearby slope.

Two mornings later I remembered that Suzuki and I had agreed to leave messages in a box that had been set up by search parties on a boulder at Snake Mountain. Maybe I would find a message there. At dusk, I went to see.

A brand new plastic bag was taped to the side of the box; I knew he must have come back. I thought of Suzuki's friendly, honest face and decided that maybe I had been wrong to doubt him.

In the bag were two of the photos he had taken as proof and a noted saying, “I've come back for you, just as I promised.” There were also copies of two army orders.

The minute I looked at the photos, which had been enlarged to eight by ten size, I was struck by my resemblance to my uncles on both sides of the family. It also seemed to me that I looked rather like generals Sadao Araki and Senjūrō Hayashi, and it occurred to me that if a man stayed in the army that long, maybe he could not help looking like that. This was the first time in thirty years that I had seen my face as anything other than a reflection in a river.

One order was from Fourteenth Area Army headquarters and the other from the Special Squadron. The first, issued in the name of General Yamashita, was the same as the order
reproduced in leaflets dropped by search parties. The other, however, said that “instructions would be given to Lieutenant Onoda orally.”

Oral instructions! This was what I had been waiting for all these years. To men in special units like mine, there were always direct oral orders in addition to the usual printed ones. Otherwise, it would have been impossible to maintain secrecy.

Apparently Major Taniguchi had been sent to deliver my oral orders.

I laid my plans. The aerial distance from Snake Mountain to Wakayama Point was no more than about six miles, but the route involved crossing several mountains and valleys. The trip would take eight or nine hours of walking, but I decided to allow myself two days. For fear of running into islanders, I could only walk in the early morning and late evening, and I did not want to try to advance too rapidly, because haste tends to make a person careless about his surroundings.

That evening as I rested at Shingu Point, I asked myself what the oral orders would be. They might, of course, be simply to stay on Lubang and continue fighting. Or they might tell me to shift to a completely new location. Considering that so many people had come the year before to survey the island, it seemed possible that the strategic command now knew all it wanted to know and might completely relieve me of my duties. The only certainty was that if they were oral orders, they were secret.

“The time has come,” I said to myself, “to take a chance.”

Whatever the content of the orders, I must go and receive them. But there remained the possibility that all of this was the work of the enemy. Or maybe real orders were on the way, but the enemy had found out about them and was striking first. Still there is never an end to doubts. If you doubt everything, you end up not being able to do anything, and certainly it was high time that new orders be sent to me! My only hestitation was that after carrying on for thirty years, I did not want to let
everything go down the drain because of some false step on my part. I had to be careful still!

Presumably Major Taniguchi had come because I had mentioned his name to Suzuki, but it was really General Yokoyama who had given me my orders and Major Takahashi who had instructed me to proceed to Lubang. Any new oral orders should properly come from General Yokoyama, but I supposed that headquarters in Japan had picked Major Taniguchi as a substitute because he was familiar with the situation. Major Taniguchi might be posing as a bookdealer, but in reality he was still a secret warfare agent.

True, I would not know until I saw the man whether he was really Major Taniguchi or not. The plain fact was that I might be walking into an enemy trap, and if I did not exercise the utmost care, I could end up being shot in the back. I must be as cautious as possible and at the same time be prepared to shoot my way out if I should suddenly find myself surrounded.

It rained on the second day of my journey. When the rain let up in the evening, I started walking again, but I was soon drenched by the water falling from the trees. It was about the same as walking in the rain.

The next day Major Taniguchi delivered to me orally my orders from the Special Section of the Chief of Staff's Headquarters.

Outside the tent it was daylight, the first morning in thirty years with no duties to carry out.

Young Suzuki arose and asked whether he should now let the others know of my arrival.

“Not now,” said the Major. “Let's take our time and eat first.”

Major Taniguchi and I went to the Agcawayan River to wash up. He handed me a razor and suggested that I shave.

“I'll shave off my goatee,” I said. “I don't need it to scare the islanders anymore.”

“No,” said the Major. “Leave that, because the president specifically requested that you come as you were in the mountains.”

“President?”

“Yes, President Marcos of the Philippines said he wanted to see you after you were found.”

Major Taniguchi shaved the back of my neck for me and then handed me some face lotion.

“Being down here, you wouldn't know it, but you'll be a celebrity when you return to Japan. You will have to make appearances all over the country. You may as well start now getting used to cosmetics.”

For the first time, he laughed. I could not understand at first what he meant about my having to go all over the country. But I applied the lotion to my face anyway. It had a fragrance that I had not smelled since I left Hankow, more than thirty years ago.

Major Taniguchi went back to the tent ahead of me, and I stripped down to my loincloth so that I could wash my clothes. I could not use soap on them, because it would wash away the carbon from cooking pots with which I had dyed them. I just rinsed everything in water to get the sweat out.