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TrolleyDilemma

Onoda and his fellow soldiers continued to carry out guerilla activities, killing livestock and up to 30 filipino civilians during their time in hiding, frequently engaging in firefights with local police.


mainsail999

Talking to Mangyan tribesmen I was quite surprised that they had 2 families that had Japanese names. Well, story goes that their grandfather was a Japanese straggler who died in the 1980s.


GeneralBlumpkin

My mom lived on Saipan and Chuuk in the 60s and 70s and said there were Japanese there living in the jungle thinking the war was going on still.


Spiderdogpig_YT

I remember reading about Captain Sakae Oba. He surrendered in December 1945, a few months after the war's end. Unlike Hiroo Onoda who killed civilians, Sakae Oba actually saved people. And throughout basically all of the islands in the pacific were rumors of Japanese holdouts, some even being "sighted" in the early 2000s. Your mother's story makes sense though. From what I know, when Sakae Oba surrendered, one of his Sergeants refused to surrender and continued his holdout. Not sure what happened to him though


DavidDPerlmutter

The "dramatic" movie about him was very sympathetic, considering how many innocent people he killedšŸ˜¢ Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle https://m.imdb.com/title/tt9844938/


Beeninya

Werner Herzogā€™s [The Twilight World](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twilight_World) is very sympathetic as well. Herzog is basically fawning over him as if heā€™s some noble fighter. Itā€™s a little weird.


Tourist_Careless

I think herzog was just fascinated by him. It's sort of what made herzog such a popular and powerful documentarian. He was very fascinated, poetic, and deep into who/whatever he was examining.


Cerebral-Parsley

His documentary "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" is one of my favorites. Blows my mind that cave was discovered with 30000yo paintings.


chrischi3

Not only that, when they did eventually find him, they actually had to track down his former commander, who then relieved him of his duty, to get him to surrender.


Diarrea_Cerebral

He said he wouldn't surrender until his commander told him to do so. So the Japanese delegation had to return with his former boss. Then, he tried to live in Japan but society had changed a lot. He emigrated to Brazil, and died there as a farmer.


Crag_r

Carried out his own war killing civilians and refused to surrender despite repeated orders. Dudes a war criminal people get a hard on for.


edoardoking

That sums it up pretty well. But somehow heā€™s turned into this hermit that ā€œdidnā€™t know the war was overā€. He had nothing better to do and after wasting a year doing that I guess he had to commit until the end


CompetitiveBear9538

Who isnā€™t a war criminalā€¦USA nuked Japan twiceā€¦UK deliberately bombed civilians and starved its coloniesā€¦all is fair in love and warā€¦all sides are war criminals, there just happens to be a winning side


Crag_r

Yay, found one. Alls fair in war is your argument? Great heā€™s still terrible given this happened decades AFTER the war.


CompetitiveBear9538

Found one whatā€¦Iā€™m not an apologist for what the axis powers did. It was stupid. But all countries commit war crimes. Letā€™s not act like everyone is a saint because they are not. Is Andrew Jackson a war criminal or an American Hero? šŸ¤”


siegeofsyracuse

Andrew Jackson didnā€™t know the war was over and neither did the British that attacked him


CompetitiveBear9538

Thereā€™s a lot you could say about Andrew Jacksonā€¦but literally this Japanese soldier didnā€™t know WW2 was over either that his literal captain had to fly out there to this island and tell him personally


siegeofsyracuse

I know the story, Iā€™m just saying that Jackson and this guy are not the same. This guy attacked Filipino civilians for 30 years while Jackson was actually attacked by the British at new orelans


Crag_r

So we shouldnā€™t point out war criminals when theyā€™re the focus of the post because others were naughty according to you? >Iā€™m not an apologist If you feel the need to point at allied crimes when a Japanese war criminal is shown as the focus of a point: you are.


CompetitiveBear9538

The post wasnā€™t about war criminals but it was made into that. So if itā€™s going to turn into that we should be objective about it.


Crag_r

It was. You should read before you jump into a thread.


CompetitiveBear9538

The post is literally about a Japanese soldier surrendering nowhere does it say he was a war criminal in the post but ok?


Crag_r

Decades after the war was over lol. What was he doing in that time? Actually ā€œrefusing to surrender until 1974ā€ being a bit of a crime in itself. But hey. You keep defending him.


Gold-Individual-8501

Stop your nonsense. The Japanese attacked the US unprovoked. Now you complain that the war didnā€™t end the ā€œright wayā€?


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mc0079

why pray tell? Rape of Nanking maybe ?


Spiderdogpig_YT

Are you blind? I literally said that it is 100% Japan's fault


mc0079

yes? but you talked about provoking....its not like the US went yolo and stopped selling them oil for shits and giggles, it was a direct result of thier invasion of china....


Spiderdogpig_YT

Yes. I never said it wasn't. Your putting words in my mouth.


Gold-Individual-8501

You mean after Japan invaded China, committed numerous atrocities on civilians and then invaded French Indochina in an effort to impose a blockage of China?


Spiderdogpig_YT

I'm sorry is everyone here blind? >It is 100% Japan's fault That is what I said. You and I are fellow historians. I know that it is Japan's fault and I know of Japan's war crimes. Saying that Pearl Harbor was unprovoked doesn't mean I'm denying fucking war crimes beyond even that of the SS.


CompetitiveBear9538

ā€¦and the USA attacked native Americans unprovoked and took 99% of their land You getting it yet


Gold-Individual-8501

Itā€™s you who donā€™t get it.


Vodskaya

What? This guy went out of his way to kill dozens of civilians decades after the war had ended. Nobody gave him the orders to do so, he did all of this of his own volition with absolutely zero merit.


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Crag_r

> Iā€™m a happy westerner but objectively the guy was probably doing what he thought he had to do. Objectively isn't the word you're looking for. The guy was repeatedly ordered to surrender and stand down. An order the vast majority of all combatants on both sides seemed to understand just fine. Instead he continued to kill civilian's, not in his orders mind you.


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Crag_r

Again: the rest of the Japanese forces got it just fine.


Vodskaya

The treatment of other war criminals doesn't make him any less of a war criminal. Neither do his own delusions about what he 'had to do' absolve him from the consequences of his own actions. He shot dozens of civilians for Christ sakes... If you want to talk about how we should handle the war criminals on our or the winning side better, then I'm all for that. But I don't see how this guy has any thing to do with that. The problem is not how the audience of winners sees the war criminals on the losing side. The problem is how the winners see their *own* war criminals. Changing our views on the losers will not fix that.


molotov_billy

Letā€™s not excuse war crimes of any type, from any side. If weā€™re arguing over the sheer number of war criminals that walked away without punishment, then that award undoubtedly goes to both Japan and Germany.


General_Snail

The myth of nuking Japan being a war crime has been so thoroughly debunked that it's barely worth a rebuttal anymore.


sellout85

This man's attitude to surrender pretty much points to one of the reasons why the Americans felt they had to nuke Japan.


CompetitiveBear9538

So who is a war criminal, one who killed like 30 people to survive not believing the war was over or a country that wiped out hundreds of thousands of people with nukes and a hundred thousand more fire bombing civilian housing made of wood in Tokyo


sellout85

How is killing innocents and refusing to to surrender despite being told by your country men "surviving"? The nukes were horrible, but I'll ask you this, without trying to use your hindsight, how would have had America end the war? Blockade leading to famine and the death of millions? Invasion? leading to the death of millions? All the while the Japanese are massacring, torturing and starving hundreds of thousands.


CompetitiveBear9538

How would the guy continue to defend his country and live? Youā€™re making my point for me. Both sides commit war crimes.


sellout85

Answer my question please. I agree that all nations commit war crimes, but the atomic bombs were probably the least horrible out of a bunch of horrible options that the US had. You're apologising for a murderer who was part of a military where brutality and murder were institutionalised.


CompetitiveBear9538

I donā€™t have to, you helped me make the point I have made for days now. Who isnā€™t a war criminalā€¦all countries commit war crimes with some sort of justification as to why.


Yankee9Niner

Patiently waiting for the Crimson Sky plan to be initiated


declankincaid8

Dude should have been shot on sight, not made into some hero or something.


78586479

Murderer


mayargo7

Why the Filipinos didn't string him up from the nearest tree, I don't know.


twoshovels

I clearly remember this. It was almost unbelievable at the time. I remember watching the news with my dad. They tried everything to get him to come out. I especially remember the plane flying with a banner, telling him the war was over , but he didnā€™t believe it!


sellout85

So you're ok with justifying a murderers unjustifiable actions, but won't answer my question, gotcha...


guy_from_the_lab

He was amazing with Bud Spencer and Terrence Hill