World War Two is by far one of the hardest fought wars in the history of humankind. The war was fought on many fronts. One of these fronts was the war in the Pacific. The Allied Pacific Campaign began after a surprise attack by the Japanese Empire on the Hawaiian Navy base “Pearl Harbor.” The attack would spark outcry in the United States to join the war forcing the US government to send the US Army to Europe, and the Navy and Marine Corps to the Pacific to defeat Japan in the Philippines. By 1945 the Japanese would lose the war after the US dropped two nuclear atom bombs Japanese mainland. Despite Japanese surrender, many loyal soldiers of the Japanese Empire would find themselves spread out in various islands around the Philippines. These stragglers were considered by the press as “hold outs,” meaning soldiers who (for many reasons) did not compute the defeat and hid in the jungle from the rest of the world, waiting for the Empire to return. One such “hold out” would hide out in the mountains for 30 years before returning home. His name is Hiroo Onoda and had he known what his name means in English, it’s plausible he would have thought it befitting of his harrowing story.
The Mysterious Men in the Jungle
Source: philippineslifestyle.com
In the Island the Pilipino Island of Lubang there was a group of mysterious ghost-like figures, who would creep around the island in the middle of the night, and kill and pillage everything they came across. These ghosts were feared by all the Islanders, who learned very quickly after the war to stay away from the mountains. Soon the Pilipino army stationed there would catch wind of these story’s and find themselves in the crosshairs of an invincible enemy. The allied forces suspected them to be Japanese soldiers, but little did they know that these were no ordinary troops.