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When I first came to the Philippines I didn't really have any idea of where I was going to go or end up but just traveled in the moment but thought originally that I would head north past Boracay to Mindoro and then I was going to go to Lubang Island (Circled in RED). After week 2 I knew I wasn't going to go that far north and was going to fly south to Davao and explore Mindanao. I am sure many of you have heard of dedicated WW2 Japanese soldiers who would never surrender and many continued fighting into the 1950s and 1960s and there were still a handful that were fighting into the early 1970s completely oblivious that World War 2 ended 30 years early!! |
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One of these die-hard Japanese soldiers was Hiroo Onoda who was stationed on Lubang Island, Philippines with the orders to defend it to the death. He became good at guerilla warfare as he hid during the day and hunted at night and killed many innocent filipinos over 30 years because Hiroo didn't know that WW2 ended in 1945 and any news stories he heard over the radio saying Japan had lost the war he believed was enemy propaganda. On Lubang island they have Onodas cave and I think they are trying to make it into a tourist attraction. I remember watching an episode of Gilligans island where a Japanese soldier enters the island oblivious that WW2 has long been over. I Didn't realize it at the time that it was based on actual accounts of many Japanese soldiers on these lone islands like the Philippines, Indonesia, Guam, etc... that just never knew the war was long over. |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroo_Onoda
Hiroo Onoda just died last year at the age of 91.
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