The story moves at a good pace. Onoda describes how he lived for 30 years on a small island, still fighting WW2. He was thoroughly brainwashed--came up with ways to distrust the updates they were given trying to get them to surrender. Great insight into the Japanese thinking prior to WW2 and how the world was plunged into that conflict...even, by extension, the ending of the war, too. ( )

This was one of the best, most poignant books I've read in years. Onoda is a surprisingly good author. He gets your attention immediately, then progresses through an autobiographical sketch leading to his arrival on Lugon, that immerses you in pre-war and wartime Japanese culture. If you have some familiarity with that culture, the events of the book are easier to understand; he was thoroughly brainwashed. I found the sections of tortured reasoning to square the profundity of evidence of the war's end with their faith that it was not, painful insights into the nature of humanity, that drove these malnourished men to work themselves to the bone daily, fighting their own war thirty years after ours ended.

You will attend his greatest and most painful moments as if you were by his side. Accept him as he is, set aside your incredulity, and you will gain an incredible human experience. ( )

No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War is a memoir by a Japanese soldier who held out in the mountains from 1944 to 1974. He lived off bananas and beef rustled from villagers who knew his shadowy presence in the mountains as the devil. The survival story is interesting, but what sets this apart is the psychology of denial that allowed him to believe, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that WWII was still going on. The depth of denial was absolute. It didn't matter this his own family arrived with bullhorns, hometown newspapers and even a transistor radio to prove reality. Nope, everything was a conspiracy by the Americans. More disturbing than Dostoevsky, it is the mind of insanity laid bare. Though he does not mention it, he killed several people during his 30 years in hiding. He received no punishment and was hailed a hero but really was a menace who killed without reason, an example how humans can pointlessly deceive themselves to destruction. ( )

Amazing. Mindboggling. Confounding. Doesn't answer any of your questions and you remain just as confused as when you first pick up the book but the journey with Mr. Onoda is fascinating.

Last year I read a news article announcing the death of Hiroo Onoda. I had never heard of him before but upon reading his story I knew that I had to know about this interesting character. Onoda is a Japanese soldier who fought in the Philippines at the end of the second world war. However, even when the war ended he did not stop fighting for the Japanese. Basically, he didn't believe that the war had ended and he kept fighting as a guerilla for another thirty years.

How could someone refuse to believe the surrender of their country? How could someone, despite being the last soldier on the island, muster up the courage (is that the word we should be using?) and determination to continue to fight for an additional thirty years. And all this despite flyers being dropped down on the island telling him to come out.

It's really a fascinating story and I could have continued reading about his story. In fact, I would have read the original 2000 page debriefing he gave upon finally surrendering. Unfortunately this book only covers 200+ pages of his life and every page is riveting. You can't stop asking questions but he managed to answer all questions in such a succinct and non-delusional way. Other than the length, another unfortunate thing is that there is no writing about his life post fighting. I want to know about his adjustment to life, his charity work and just everything.

Really, just fascinating. I could read 2000 pages about him, I could write 2000 pages about him and still remain just as mesmerized.

And perhaps my review is more a review of his life and less a review of the book but I know that when I turned the last page, I wanted to start right up again and just couldn't stop churning his life in my mind. ( )

A lively and interesting read. The story moves at a good pace from his boyhood through enlistment, training and deployment to his time in the Philipines jungle and eventual rescue/surrender. The book gives a good insight into the lives of Onoda and the other couple of soldiers with him for a while as they move around the island to avoid the search parties and the local population and continue with their surveillance mission. It is staggering how they manage to convince themselves that the war is still on despite all the evidence to the contrary. It is also interesting how calmly Onoda looks back at those 30 years and can see where they made mistakes in their assumptions and interpretation of the information they were getting. The dedication to the cause was extraordinary. I highly recommend this work. ( )

Wars are big places, full of people and moving parts, where it's easy for things to fall through the cracks. But when they do, it's not a trivial matter; that little crack can end up being big enough to actually hold the content of someone's life. I think when I was growing up, I heard stories of the Japanese soldiers who didn't know World War II had ended until decades after. A whole life spent in not just a futile cause, but a cause that was already lost years ago. A very interesting concept, if a tragic one.

No Surrender is the biography of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese officer with spy training who ended up getting posted to the Philippine island of Lubang towards the end of the year in 1944, where the tide of the war had already turned. We do get some description of what his upbringing was like (mostly about some time spent working in China and dealing with his army brother), what training was like towards the end of the war for Japanese offices (much reduced in length, with everyone cramming in as much hectically as possible), and the state of the Japanese war effort when he arrived on Lubang (pretty damn bad, and people were rather ready to give up). But the meat of the story is about the years between his arrival in December 1944, and when he finally was relieved of duty in March 1974.

So this is essentially a survivalist tale of the small band of people Onoda lived with, down to two for a couple of decades, through his last months spent alone. Onoda gives good details about what life on the island was like for them, moving from place to place, storing ammunition away, finding food by taking it from the trees at different points and stealing rice where they could, the maps they had in their minds, the difficulties of maintaining their clothes. And how they still tried to carry out their mission, tracking the people and troop movements for when the Japanese made their counter-attack. They also carried out little operations that would harass the villagers on the island.

To me, beyond the survivalist stuff, the most interesting parts of the story were how Onoda and Kozuka, his last remaining companion for the last couple of decades, came up with ways to distrust the updates they were given trying to get them to surrender. And there were many - newspapers left for them, leaflets dropped, pictures and letters from home placed in the forest where they were likely to find them. But they built up their own whole narrative of how the world had come to function, Japan's new allies and how they'd been holding out, finding a place for their mission and their life until then, even if it meant distrusting pictures from home because someone had been referred to by a different nickname, or because a neighbor was in the picture. There was delusion here, but to the fervent end of keeping their belief alive, that they hadn't wasted their time.

It's really quite an interesting story, and Onoda writes it clearly; the translation carries this pretty smoothly, as well, with a clear voice, simply presented. Onoda wonders at the end what all the time he spent there was for, if the cause had already been lost, and you certainly wouldn't want to trade places with him. It's not too bad to wonder what it'd have been to be there, though, and the book's not too heavy to find out. ( )

4799. No Surrender My Thirty-Year War, by Hiroo Onoda Translated by Charles S. Terry (read 10 Feb 2011) One would think an account of jungle existence for 30 years would get to be tiresome, but I found this book consistently interesting. The author tells of his time from his birth on Mar 19, 1922, his entry into the Japanese Army after the war began, his being sent to Lubang Island in the Philippines, and his carrying on as a Japanese officer till 1974 when he finally came to believe the war was over. It is an amazing story, and held my attention throughout, even though one is dismayed by his refusal to believe what he learned in messages and radio broadcasts. He makes Robinson Crusoe seem like a piker. I came to admire some aspects of his character. Apparently he is still alive. This book was published in1974. ( )

One of my favourite books as a teenager. For those into survivalist stories, this in a great one. ( )