No Surrender Quotes

“In what, then, can those engaged in this kind of warfare place their hope? The Nakano Military School answered this question with a simple sentence: “In secret warfare, there is integrity.” And this is right, for integrity is the greatest necessity when a man must deceive not only his enemies but his friends. With integrity—and I include in this sincerity, loyalty, devotion to duty and a sense of morality—one can withstand all hardships and ultimately turn hardship itself into victory. This was the lesson that the instructors at Futamata were constantly trying to instill in us. One of them put it this way: “If you are genuinely pure in spirit, people will respond to you and cooperate with you.” This meant to me that so long as I remained pure inside, whatever measures I saw fit to take would eventually redound to the good of my country and my countrymen.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“If I could kill one more enemy with the last bullet, so much the better. That, rather than commit suicide, seemed to me to be what a soldier ought to do.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“Together, Kozuka and I vowed that somehow we would avenge Shimada’s death.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“Don’t shoot,” I said. “We can always kill some of them whenever we want to. Let’s let them live a little longer.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“I was doubly impressed with the responsibility I bore. I said to myself, “I’ll do it! Even if I don’t have coconuts, even if I have to eat grass and weeds, I’ll do it! These are my orders, and I will carry them out.” It may sound strange today, but I meant it.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“Then, with his eyes directly on me, he said, “You are absolutely forbidden to die by your own hand. It may take three years, it may take five, but whatever happens, we’ll come back for you. Until then, so long as you have one soldier, you are to continue to lead him. You may have to live on coconuts. If that’s the case, live on coconuts! Under no circumstances are you give up your life voluntarily.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“Lubang.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“We really lost the war! How could they have been so sloppy?”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“We calculated that Japan would have found it advantageous to set Mao Tse-tung up as the leader of the New China, because this would make the vast sums of money held by wealthy Chinese financiers available to Japan. We assumed that to secure Japan’s support, Mao had agreed to drive the Americans and English out of China and to cooperate with the new Japanese army.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“It was difficult to tell, for example, which countries were now on Japan’s side and which were not. Putting together what we read in the newspapers and the bits and pieces of information (or misinformation) we had gleaned from leaflets and the like, we formed a total picture of Japan and the war situation in 1959. We knew that the Great Japanese Empire had become a democratic Japan. We did not know when or how, but clearly there was now a democratic government, and the military organization had been reformed. It also appeared as though Japan was now engaged in cultural and economic relations with a large number of foreign countries. The Japanese government was still working for the establishment of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, and the new army was still engaged in military conflict with America. The new army seemed to be a modernized version of the old army, and we supposed that it must have assumed responsibility for the defense of East Asia as a whole, China included. China was now a communist country under the leadership of Mao Tse-tung: there seemed little doubt but that Mao had come to power with the support of Japan. No doubt he was now cooperating with Japan to implement the co-prosperity sphere. Although there was nothing in the newpapers about this, it was only logical that the American secret service would have eliminated any mention of it in preparing the newspapers for us.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“When I returned to Japan, I learned that it really had been my brother.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“The man started to sing, “East wind blowing in the sky over the capital . . .” This was a well-known students’ song at the Tokyo First High School, which my brother had attended, and I knew he liked it. It started out as a fine performance, and I listened with interest. But gradually the voice grew strained and higher, and at the end it was completely off tune. I laughed to myself. The impersonator had not been able to keep it up, and his own voice had come through in the end. I found it very amusing, particularly so because at first he had nearly taken me in.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“A man was standing on the top of Six Hundred speaking earnestly into a microphone. I approached a point about a hundred and fifty yards away from him. I did not dare go nearer, because I would have made too good a target. I could not see the man’s face, but he was built like my brother, and his voice was identical. “That’s really something,” I thought. “They’ve found a Nisei or a prisoner who looks at a distance like my brother, and he’s learned to imitate my brother’s voice perfectly.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“If there should indeed be a full-scale search, we had a plan for escaping from the island, but in the event that we were found before we could carry this into effect, we had resolved to inflict as much damage as we could. If we had to die, it would be easier knowing that we had killed ten or twenty or thirty enemy troops.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“Not long after that the large search party of 1959 arrived from Japan to look for us. “The Americans seem to be starting another one of their fake rescue operations,” I said. “What a nuisance!” growled Kozuka. “Let’s move somewhere where it’s quiet.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“There was also a photograph of “Kozuka-san’s Family.” Kozuka said, “How do they expect me to believe this? Why would my family be standing in front of a new house that doesn’t belong to us?”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“As I recalled this incident, it seemed plain to me that the Japanese flag was part of an attempt to make the enemy divert troops to Manila in the belief that Lubang was about to be reoccupied. I was excited to think that a Japanese counterattack was soon to take place. I was not alone in regarding the flag as a fake message. Kozuka agreed with me that it could not be anything else. I had taught Kozuka a good deal about the principles of secret warfare, and he, no less than I, had developed the habit of reading even beyond the lines between the lines. By this time he would have been a match for any graduate from Futamata.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“About ten days after Shimada died, a Philippine Air Force plane trailing a streamer behind it passed over several times. It dropped leaflets, and a loudspeaker kept saying, “Onoda, Kozuka, the war has ended.” This infuriated us. We wanted to scream out to the obnoxious Americans to stop threatening and cajoling us. We wanted to tell them that if they did not stop treating us like scared rabbits, we would get back at them someday, one way or another.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“There were about thirty-five of them, clustered on the beach like a flock of seagulls, only about eight hundred yards away. I thought the best thing to do was open fire on them.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“The beach at Gontin was unlucky for Shimada. On May 7, 1954, he was killed at a spot only about half a mile from the place where he had been wounded in the leg.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“My reaction was that the Yankees had outdone themselves this time. I wondered how on earth they had obtained the photographs. That there was something fishy about the whole thing was beyond doubt, but I could not figure out exactly how the trick had been carried out.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“One time I came to blows with Shimada. We were talking about Akatsu’s defection, and Shimada took a sympathetic view toward Akatsu. I, for my part, had no sympathy at all for a soldier who had deserted before my very eyes. Before very long a fistfight started, and we rolled down the hill pounding each other.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“Shimada spoke even more enthusiastically. “The three of us ought to secure this whole island before our troops land again.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“When Akatsu disappeared the fourth time, Shimada started to go look for him, but this time Kozuka and I argued that it was a waste of effort. We did this with the knowledge that Akatsu would eventually tell the enemy everything he knew about our group.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“Akatsu finally deserted in September, 1949, four years after the four of us had come together.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“Although I had a pencil that I had found, I kept all the reports I intended to make in my head. I firmly believed that when friendly troops eventually established contact with us, they would need my reports in planning a counterattack.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“And so the four of us vowed to each other to keep on fighting. It was early April, 1946, and by this time we four made up the only Japanese resistance left on Lubang.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“In the back of my mind I thought of General Yokoyama telling me that as long as I had one soldier, I was to lead him even if we had to live on coconuts.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“But we could not believe that the war had really ended. We thought the enemy was simply forcing prisoners to go along with their trickery. Every time the searchers called out to us, we moved to a different location.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

“We saw our second surrender leaflet around the end of the year. A Boeing B-17 flew over our hideout and dropped a lot of big, thick pieces of paper. On the front were printed the surrender order from General Yamashita of the Fourteenth Area Army and a directive from the chief of staff. On the back was a map of Lubang on which the place where the leaflets were dropped was marked with a circle. We gathered together and considered whether the orders printed on the leaflet were genuine. I had my doubts about a sentence saying that those who surrendered would be given “hygienic succor” and “hauled” to Japan.”
― Hiroo Onoda, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War