No Surrender – Hiroo Onoda (1975)

S$48.00

No Surrender – Hiroo Onoda (1975)

S$48.00

The fascinating true account of a Japanese soldier who lived in the Philippine jungle for 30 years, convinced that the war was still going on.

Title: No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

Author: Hiroo Onoda, Charles S. Terry (trans.)

Publisher: Andre Deustch, 1975.

Condition: Hardcover, with dust jacket. Very good. Very slight foxing. With black-and-white photographs. 219pp., app 8″x5″.

SKU: onoda-surrender Categories: , ,

About the book (from jacket flap):

In the spring of 1974 Second Lieutenant Onoda hit international headlines when he emerged from the Philippines jungle after thirty years of fending for himself. Stubbornly convinced that the Second World War was still being fought and that his fellow soldiers would one day return to the island victorious, Onoda refused to capitulate until one of his commanding officers came to the island in person to issue him with the order to surrender his arms. His brave exploits fired the imagination of the whole world, and he returned to Japan to a hero’s welcome.

Onoda’s account of his years on the island is full of drama, tension and an invincible will to survive. After his early training as an intelligence officer and his assignment to Lubang Island, American forces took over the island and Onoda and his companions (none of whom survived the ordeal to return to civilisation) retreated to the mountains. Their life became a constant battle against the enemy and against the elements, and Onoda describes in detail the various methods used to keep themselves alive – shoes were made out of old tyres found on the island of ‘requisitioned’ from the islanders; ammunition was stored in old whiskey bottles, covered in coconut oil and stopped up with rubber from discarded gas masks…

Onoda’s ingenuity and his Crusoe-like resourcefulness in coping with life on the island, combined with his fervent but misguided belief in his country’s victory, make No Surrender one of the most intriguing and readable real-life adventure stories of recent history.