Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - UNLOCKED: The Japanese Holdouts of WWII

Episode Date: October 31, 2021

WWII officially ended on September 2, 1945. It went on a lot longer for some people. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-japanese-wwii-soldier-who-refused-to-surrender-for-27-years-180979431/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/may/28/secondworldwar.japan https://archive.today/20130717075553/http://newspaperarchive.com/pacific-stars-and-stripes/1949-01-10/page-5?tag=kufuku&rtserp=tags/kufuku%3Fndt=by&py=1949&pey=1951 "Straggler Reports to Emperor", Pacific Stars and Stripes, p. 1, June 8, 1960 https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1368&dat=19800405&id=J3pQAAAAIBAJ&pg=6758,842754

Hello and welcome to yet another bonus episode. Nailed it baby! Fuck it, we'll do it live! We'll do it live. We'll just fucking go and we'll do it live. Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me today is obviously Liam of the Liam's Led by Donkeys podcast. Liam's Led by Donkeys. Yeah, I don't know if uh am i co-host what am i man yeah i would say you're a co-host yeah all right uh yeah hi you may also know me from uh well there's your problem uh the best podcast about engineering disasters that's not produced by those fuck what's over at npr

they they do a engineering disasters podcast dude Dude, they do 99% invisible. And like, we'll get YouTube comments that are like, Oh, why isn't this as well produced as 99% invisible or NPR podcast? It's like, cause it's fucking Roz doing it. Like Roz is editing.

NPR. Yeah. We don't have the budget for that. Like we have Roz, man. He does his best. Like he has to like go through line by line to be like oh liam threatened to like bleep somebody actionable violence allegedly like it's just

roz doing it we don't have a sound editor yeah i mean i do have a sound editor and bless nate's heart um like he has to deal with all of our bullshit all of his all of the time um so like we're not npr and also we would never make it on npr um no i i listen the one time we were featured in the boston globe i was just like oh you're in the boston globe yeah dude the chief ballet dancer no joke the chief uh male ballerina of the boston globe a man named Patrick Yocum, they did a little tiny write-up on us because he's the principal dancer of the Boston Ballet. And he was like, recommend this podcast. Well, there's your problem. And that was like a year ago.

I was just like some asshole at the Boston Globe with a journalism BA, to like sit through an episode and be like what the fuck is this that was uh that happened to us on um it wasn't gawker because gawker's dead but it was one of like the side websites of gawker i think it was uh io live or something like that io9 maybe gave us a shout out uh because of our episode on robert e lee and uh it was really weird uh because like that like some serious journalism boy had to sit through an episode which has happened before like the the once upon a time at the university of um north carolina chapel hill um our podcast was curriculum for for a class oh my god uh it was regarding the iran iraq war and uh so like i didn't know that yeah i'm still it's like that it's still the thing i'm not that

in the kamarou series are things i'm most proud of um but like i went there to like go on a book tour effectively and so it's like yeah to listen to your podcast for school. You're aware you're in college, right? Oh, dude. We've got people who are like, yeah, I'm an adjunct. I'm using Bhopal in my lecture or whatever. And I'm just like, okay, very discussion of like the evils of unchecked capitalism uh also baked in there are like jokes about my dick like yes like i i think i did some

of my best research in iran iraq um and soviet afghan but like also i think the iran iraq war series is where i came up with the like the local dick sucking factory joke yeah so it's like we've stolen that joke too we have stolen that joke yeah that's right it's the name of the union one big union baby uh speaking of one big union uh we're talking about japanese holdouts of world war ii oh that's that's a hell of a segue man i would like to think that they before they all died of old age i think uh they had a union uh to represent i don't know being weird and living in the jungle um oh yeah i'd like to take this to my union rep can somebody ask with my sword am i mark 99 back with my grandson on thursday back in my day when i was living in the jungle and living on uh like stolen rice and gunpowder

uh killing like 30 farmers i read that i read that today in prep he killed like 30 farmers and then fucking franco gives him a pardon anyway not franco uh fernan what is it marcos yeah yeah to be fair if anybody is on the side of killing 30 innocent civilians it's fernan marcos it is marcos that's not wrong uh so i think one of the reasons why i was so drawn to the story other than the fact that like people requested it all the time and it's interesting like it's weird it's funny uh like what and i think a lot of it is um misunderstood uh you know we want to look as you know these guys are so slavishly loyal to the emperor that they stayed um holding out in the forests in the jungles for weeks and months and years and decades after the end of World War II. I don't think it's that easy, especially which is why I chose two main people to talk about today

because they are polar opposites of one another. One is someone that you obviously looked up and I think most people immediately jumped to their mind. If you Google Japanese holdout of World War II, he's probably the first one that comes up. And his name is Hiro Odana. But this is not an isolated incident, just to be clear. If the Japanese invaded an island during World War II... There were dudes hanging out on it, yeah. There was probably people that stayed behind.

There were dudes hanging out on it. Yeah. There was probably people that stayed behind. Like there was some in Guam, which is not that far really where I am right now. Despite the fellow, we don't talk about him, but like he held out in Guam for,

for quite a long time. And then when he, when people found him, he knew the war had been over. He just didn't want to come out. He didn't want to go home. He was just like, fuck it, I'm a hermit now. Yeah, I guess.

I feel like at some point, you're just like, I can't go home to my family. Maybe I felt like I've derelicted my duty. I'm just going to stay on this fucking rock, bro. I get not wanting to go home. I get the idea that you had lived this life previously and now

whatever post-war japan is sort of a different animal and especially if you get so so far sucked into like imperial propaganda and then like you watch maybe newsreel footage of the atom bombs dropping like that's not gonna feel good like i'm not saying like you know fuck imperial japan obviously not an imperial japan defender but like that's not gonna feel good like i'm not saying like you know fuck imperial japan obviously not an imperial japan defender but like that's not gonna feel good to watch two of your home cities absolutely reduced to smoke god i really wish in response that i'd like the imperial march is like a drop but i don't have it uh you know and like that's that's true uh some of it is obviously imperial propaganda which is the case of hero odina we'll talk about. And a lot of it is the family shame aspect. When Hiro Odana surrendered, he still had a knife on him

that was given to him by his own mother to kill himself with. Yeah, I saw that. I saw that. So it's like a lot of these guys, there's a lot of POWs. Granted, there wasn't a ton of Japanese POWs in World War Two, but the ones that did go home, like, even though like, the imperial cult effectively had been kind of broken, people were given a little bit more freedoms, you know, the emperor kind of sort of said he was not in fact a deity, but he is, you know, language gymnastics to kind of get around that but like their families were still like no fuck you like oh shit okay um like that fucking sucks dude like you're just like i just want to go home and live a normal life and i can't because my own fucking family doesn't want to talk to me like that blows ass and so and that kind of happened in like on the allied side that happened in the soviet union World War II as well.

Oh, yeah. Though that was much more state-enforced shame culture than locally. It's different. Same, but different. Oh. Just, oh. So this happens so much in these outlying areas of the fallen Japanese Empire, or the crumbling Japanese Empire at this point,

that the Japanese coined a term for us, Zenryu Nippon Hai, which meant the remaining Japanese soldiers. Jesus Christ, it's like the Imperial Remnant from Star Wars. Come on, man. Now, I did, like I said, I picked two guys to talk about because the holdouts are not a monolith and I

really don't want, I really hate the concept that is very popular especially in the United States because propaganda that Japanese soldiers were some kind of robotic automatons and they just slavingly followed what they consider to be

the dictates of the empire. It's not that easy like we talked about during our Kamikaze series. And a lot of that same stuff will come up here. So Hiro Odana was born in 1922 in a small village called Kamikawa. Not a lot is known about his childhood, though it is kind of figured that he was pretty rich and well off and had a very good education. A lot of this is because his dad worked in import-export, which is a joke that I think I've said before. Whenever anybody says they work in import-export, they're either A, work for the British East India Company,

or they're a drug dealer. That dude is doing some shady shit. Yes. You can tell because he uses his connections he got through his job to get his son a job in Wuhan, China, a city that thankfully will never become important

again in any reason. Not newsworthy for any reason. Nope, don't look it up. Nothing bad has happened there. Everything's fine. And then Odina turned 18 and he went back to japan and this is where like depending on who you talk to uh he either voluntarily enlisted in the japanese imperial army or was drafted um i think he was on it he honestly enlisted because he became an

officer and he got into a very prestigious school which probably had a lot to do with his dad. He got into the Nakato School, which is kind of like a very specific officer's academy, but for intelligence nerds. Oh boy. And this was not a normal school. It was incredibly highly

selective and unique. It taught students survival skills, infiltration skills, airborne operations, seaborne operations, foreign languages, and guerrilla tactics. The graduates of the school were kind of like the Japanese equivalent of Navy SEALs, and I don't

use that comparison lightly because they also have the war crimes to pick. Is this a war crimes joke? I'm ready for it. Low-hanging fruit, guys. Sorry. Just to underline how selective

this school was, it's kind of hard to get an exact measure of how many people were in the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II because a lot of them were just simply never found. And a lot of the records were evaporated in firebombing and atomic hellfire.

What happened there? I was a completely natural fire. Yeah. It was weird. Tokyo burned down suspiciously. We don't know what happened. I was always interested that people had like, for good reason,

talk about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as war crimes. Yeah. But like, no one ever fucking talks about the fire bombings of Tokyo. They're just like, yeah, don't worry about that. This was always a sore point for my dad. He was just like, that

was a war crime. We're just not talking about it. So is the strategic bombing of Europe. But since the guys who won did it, it's just something we don't talk about. You can't do war crimes when you win. That's how it works. Yeah, that's right. Dresden was

that way when we showed up. But what we do know is... We think the cathedral looks better now. God damn it. By 1945 in World War II, there were at least 6 million people in uniform. So it's a lot.

But of those during the entire war, only 2,500 people ever graduated from the school. Holy shit. Yes. How long was the school open for? The entire war, mostly. So are we talking like 41, 45 or like 33, 34 to 45? I think forties. Uh, I, I think they saw like the flaws that their training had in regards to the Sino

Japanese war. Uh, and it was like, Hey, we, we kind of need commandos too. And, you know, to be fair, most people don't think of Japan as like deploying commandos places. Um, I don't know why, i guess it goes against the the popular narrative of them attacking and screaming human waves and shit that they actually had some very highly trained secret squirrel people but you know whatever so that's 500 people a year roughly the thing is is is the the length of the school has never been quite nailed down

oh gotcha okay because he enlisted when he was 18 um and then graduated several years later so like i i think maybe it had like he was a futama class commando is what it was known as and there was other classes of commandos that probably didn't take as long to train but he was one of the best uh he graduated in 1944 which is damn near the end of the war um which like i guess depending on who you are good um but you know he unfortunately doesn't get to write out the entire war and uh he is sent to uh the island of lubang in the philippines to for a very specific reason uh in military terms you call these guys force multipliers uh what you're supposed to do uh that's actually what

the green berets are originally for uh like you send them to an area and they train locals to uh you send a very small number of them to an area to train locals to you know blow up the numbers effectively like you send one futama commando to the island of lubang which has a japanese garrison still very very small one but they still have one and you could take these you know five or six dudes and train them to be like jungle commandos, right? Because this wasn't normal training the Japanese army got. People like, oh, they were great jungle fighters. No, they were just defending and they happened to be in the jungle. They didn't get specialized guerrilla warfare training

unless they had a Futama commando nearby. So his job was to go to Lubang, turn these guys into a a hit and run master class of guerrilla warfare and then wait for the allies to show up sure but unfortunately lubang was considered a kind of an unimportant island in the grand scheme of the allied island hopping campaign so they kind of skipped over it um they did land there but it was more of like we're here you know um but they did fully invade the nearby island of mindoro uh which the japanese really didn't try to defend that hard they deployed a couple kamikazes uh at this point it was pretty obvious that they were fucked right

uh the the uh the american forces have already landed atte, and it wasn't going to be terribly too long until the Philippines as a whole would fall completely back into Allied hands. In February of 1945, American forces did land on Lubang, and Obdurant meant to grab his guys, scamper off into the jungle, and do all that cool shit he was trained to do.

But he was stopped by several officers who outranked him, him being only a lieutenant. They thought that fighting in such a way was incredibly dishonorable. Instead, they were either going to have to fight the Americans or do what else,

but kill themselves. Guys, you don't always have to resort to suicide. Like, they believe that, like, just seeing the Americans land on the island was like, oh, we failed. I guess we have to kill ourselves now. That doesn't even make any sense.

You know? You're just like, A, you're supposed to do some spook squirrel shit, so go do the spook squirrel shit. Or B, like, I don't know, have the decency to fight to the last man. You pussies. Remember kids at first,

you don't succeed to kill yourself. It doesn't happen again. Die for the emperor. Taking that knife. Your mom gave you to stab yourself with and like missing your artery. Just being like, what the fuck that reminds me of um it was uh hideki tojo the prime minister during most of world war ii shot himself in the chest and then survived that's just embarrassing man yeah he tried to kill himself uh as americans came to arrest him the americans gave him first aid because legally you have to, right?

Even if you fully plan on executing this man. They nursed him back to health and then hung him. You know. Owned. Fucking owned. Owned. Owned.

Owned. But seeing this, Odina's superior, a major Yoshimi Taniguchi, ordered his guys to stop fucking killing themselves. Guys, stop. Fucking kill them, not yourselves. Them?

Like pointing to a crudely drawn American diagram. Them, not you. Everybody. Them, not you everybody them not you the the arasaka rifle much like the ross rifle would sometimes fire directly backwards into their own face no i'm kidding um now the major knew that you know they had orders to hold this island as long as possible and the best way to do that would be to deploy guerrilla tactics and fuck up everybody's shit now him and the rest of the command staff uh tanaguchi and the command staff i mean left odina being the commando in charge of the island and the men that they would

give them and then they promised they would come back for him uh but until they got back that by no means were they allowed to kill themselves or surrender. They were given a very explicit order. And in case you're thinking that Odina was given charge of a platoon or a company, four guys. He was given four dudes. We're the four best friends that anyone could have. Oh, God.

Like, he's got a huge stockpile of ammo. So, like, credit where credit's due, I guess. But, yeah, that's it. Not great. Not great. I don't like his odds. He was then ditched by his commander on the random Philippine island of Lubang. Now, Odina, to to his credit at no point like

because he wrote a book i read translations of it it never really seemed like he was like yeah all this is hopeless fuck this i'm gonna go sit in the woods until someone comes and gets me he's just like immediately went to work he began reconning enemy forces and civilians in preparation for the coming attacks he was sure we're gonna come into the forest and try to get them out of there. And he was also planning for his attacks, which he did carry out. Unlike several holdouts, which is true, a lot of holdouts is like

fuck off, I'm sitting in these jungles until Japan comes back. He did not. He stalked through the woods and found targets and continued the war. One of the first things he did was decide that in order to keep the island in Japanese hands,

which, by the way, it was not anymore, he would need to deprive food from the enemy, which meant burning farms and rice fields to deprive them of food. Who's asymmetrical warfare now? Just running through rice paddies which is like a huge dick move if you happen to be the local philippine farmers if you're substance where am i supposed to eat

and like the japanese occupation the philippines is pretty fucking brutal already oh yeah really so like these guys are like, finally, I can rebuild and these assholes aren't going to come steal my crops. Why is everything on fire? Now, it did not take long for the few allies, Filipino cops and soldiers and civilians on the islands to figure out that, like, there's still Japanese soldiers out there somewhere.

Burning our shit like a bunch of dicks. Yeah. And when the war ended in August of 1945, Odunov found his first clue left for him that the war might be over. During a raid on a nearby farm with his guys, they killed a cow for food. And behind it on a farm,

they found a poster nailed to the wall. And it read, the war ended August 15th. Come down from the mountains. Now, if this seems like it might be a trap, congratulations, you might be a lieutenant in the Japanese Imperial Army. Oh, for God's sakes.

They picked a date and everything. Right, right. Now, Odada immediately began to doubt this flyer for reasons that are very stupid. That's convenient. Now, it's not... It's actually... This is the dumbest way he disregards this.

Later on, he might actually have some good reasons. But this is the dumbest flyer he disregards for the dumbest reason. So, remember, these guys are all armed with rifles and grenades. They're raiding local farms, setting shit on fire. This is happening so often that extra police have been stationed

nearby, which of course led to shootouts with the cops and armed civilians who had picked up discarded rifles. Odina, the ranking officer, decided the flyer had to be an enemy ploy because if the war was over why were people still shooting at him uh because you're in their house man you're stealing their shit yeah you're taking stuff that that's yeah people have the right

to self-defense my guy yes uh that. This is your braid on Imperial Japan shit. I assume that I'm shooting at the ghosts coming out of the jungle in the middle of the night and setting my rice crops on fire. But that was not the only time they were contacted. By late 1945, the knowledge of holdouts, just random soldiers at the edges of the fallen Japanese Empire became commonplace throughout allied occupied Japan. Allies got former Japanese generals to pen letters so they could be dropped from aircraft into areas where the soldiers were still hiding. Americans figured that if the soldiers actually got orders from an officer, they would listen to them because they believed, and they were mostly right, that not obeying would be considered dishonorable to them. Here's where they ran into a small problem. The generals were not writing these orders

themselves. Instead, they were dictated and then pumped out by American occupation forces via a translator. Oh no. Oh no. And then they were signed by these generals. Odunna was almost certainly the best trained Japanese soldier to be hiding out. There's little doubt of that. And he was naturally going to be suspicious about anything. So, say, a small error would immediately make him doubt everything he was being told. Which is what happened when a translator fucked up the flyers being dropped on his island. It left several spelling errors in place.

So, Odina took one look at it and figured this had to be made by Americans. fucked up the flyers being dropped on his island it left several spelling errors in place so odina took one look at it and figured this had to be made by americans therefore it's a trap well yes but no tracks yeah like that one is is makes the most sense yeah yeah like this is obviously like psyops before psyops are really a thing you know unfortunately for odina over the years all of the soldiers he was with would eventually leave him through running off into the jungle or would be killed in battle with the local cops uh one man yukuchi akatsu i tried guys sorry uh to our loyal japanese listeners you should expect this of me. Yeah, sorry everybody. Was with the group until 1949

until they had an argument and he went off into the jungle on his own. Now like, this seemed to be more the way that Odinus explains it, it really seems to be more of like they had an argument and Akatsu was like, fuck you, I'm going to go take a walk, I'll be back.

But Odinus saw this as a security lapse. So he uprooted the rest of the group's operation and moved it across the jungle. So Akatsu couldn't rat them out to the authorities. Then Akatsu couldn't find them. So he turned himself in in 1950. So he was out on his own for a year. Fuck that, man. You know, I get killed yourself at some point.

It's something new to do. I'm kind of bored. I guess I could shoot myself. All the officers did it. And at this point, the Philippine authorities were really sick of these guys for obvious reasons, right? Understandably.

And were like, look, man, leave a letter. We'll nail it to a tree or something that says, hey, surrender. Everybody's cool here, right? And so we did. And Odina immediately figured that he'd been turned and tortured and forced to make this letter.

So after that, Akatsu just went home. He was flown back to Japan. Understandably. He's like, nah, man, I tried. Fuck that. Give me my pension, yo. Now, the Japanese government tried harder and harder to get Odina to surrender. At this point, it was like, fuck, man, we still have

this guy out there. He's shooting at people. The Philippine government's pressuring them to do something about these guys that are out in the jungle. Come on, man, you drop this psycho out here. And he's still running around killing people decades later. For the love of God, come get him. Now, the Philippines military and police were also trying to find him independent of Japan. Japan is sending people to the Philippines to try to contact him.

Meanwhile, the military and police and the Philippine intelligence and stuff are stalking this tiny... The island is not that big, looking for this guy. And getting in gunfights with Od odin and his men more and more uh and then like airplanes started dropping letters and pictures from the families uh again the group believed this to be like an american lie or propaganda somehow so they they had photos of the families though and were just like here's your family don't you want to come home and they said no we'd rather be difficult about it it's really hard to like pinpoint what he thought about like how they got these letters except that

the americans must have invaded japan um but like or that like the the the government that's now in japan is occupied and therefore illegitimate illegitimate yeah well it's really hard to pin down because odonin was under the impression that world war ii was still going on even though it's now the mid-1950s um it really seems now like when well he's dead now but like in his dying days and he's trying to explain is like i was confused man uh he he he's kind of inconsistent but like i don't fucking know the brain breaks at some point like you you can justify or or sort of excuse anything when you right right yeah if if i was him i would be worried about turning myself into the philippine cops at this point sure like i've

killed 30 people like yes i've been killing civilians and burning rice crop down for 15 fucking years i don't think these guys are gonna be nice to me um but as the 1950s wore on the group of now three men fought on in the jungle everyone on the island knew they're out there somewhere and attacks have become so commonplace over the years that fishermen wouldn't even go out to tend their lines without carrying a rifle with them. Like, this guy had fundamentally created, like, a Fallout universe where everybody has to carry a gun everywhere they're going or raiders will come and get them. I played New Vegas, you know. I just, I love the idea of, like, this sort of, like, not obviously in, like, a harmful, a harmless, mischievous way,

but sort of, like, peas from Harry Potter, like a poltergeist, and you're just, like, damn you on and on, just, like, shooting at the field. Clutching your fist and, like, shooting a Mark 99 just at this guy. Every time something

goes wrong around the field you just assume it's the guy in the jungle understandably you're trying to war you're you're turning it into like the uh oh god so it's like boogeyman myth keep your kids in line or odin i was gonna snatch you and odin i'll pop stop it's like you guys got rice let me get some of that rice bro can i get some of this you know honestly you're not too far off but we'll touch back on that towards the end right um eventually a fisherman shot a member of the team plugging corporal shiichi shimada on the leg during a firefight over some fish uh suddenly it it dawned on uh on me here right this guy is a corporal uh these guys think they've been fighting

at a front of world war ii for uh about a decade now but none of them have been promoted right i don't i don't know if odina had the authority to do this um i thought my army career is kind of bad but, Shimada here had been a corporal for like 12 fucking years. God damn, dude. Nobody's going to ask any questions. He was thrown into a special level of hell for corporals everywhere

who have angered the gods somewhere. But, Odona dragged Shimada away from the firefight and nursed him back to health. I assume by shoveling dirt or some shit into the bullet hole, But Odina dragged Shimada away from the firefighter and nursed him back to health. I assume by shoveling dirt or some shit into the bullet hole, because according to Odina, they did not have any medical supplies. They've been left behind all sorts of ammo and grenades and stuff, but like no medical supplies. That's a dick move.

Huge oversight, honestly. I mean, granted, medical supplies, even from World War II were just like here have a bandage I don't know there's not a lot there good luck yeah do drugs don't get shot um that's actually my life motto do drugs don't get shot by

farmers the only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon oh god Shimada recovered and eventually was killed at a shootout by the cops in 1953 oh my god he was 40 years old what a shitty 8 years

what a horrible way to end your life the group is now down to just odina i'm private first class kenichi kazuka uh despite this poor guy this yeah pfc it's like what am i doing here man i want to go home it is now the 1970s why can i at least be a corporal this is how i burnt my 30s uh despite the 50s turning into the 60s and then the 70s these two guys continued fighting the war the two men fought with cops snuck out at night to torch crops and still thinking they were hurting the enemy rather than just some farmers who are really just over their shit at this point

now uh during one of their operations that burned some rice in 1972, Kazuka was killed by police. He had been fighting World War II for 27 years and was 51 years old when he died. He left Odina all alone out in the jungle. So, by this point, the Japanese government

had assumed everyone they thought was holding out was dead. It had been nearly 20 years since the last holdout was killed and they declared Odina and the rest of his group dead 13 years earlier. The family had even a ceremony at the Yasukuni Shrine, a shrine that

is not problematic at all. Don't bother googling it. Don't worry about that. But when the cops discovered the guy they killed was actually a Japanese dude out in the forest, not just some bandit, it sparked new interest in the men. If Kazuka was still alive, they figured Odina might be too. So more search

parties were sent to look for him, including his own father, who like yelled out into the jungle with a bullhorn like, come back home! That's gotta be fucking depressing. Yeah, uh, and Odina said that his dad must be working for the americans

uh enter a college dropout named norio suzuki uh as all good things are uh that start college dropouts uh i assume if it wasn't the 70s uh suzuki could have just started a podcast um suzuki was a weird fucking guy uh he ran

away from school declaring it and Japanese society is fake, and decided in 1974 to dedicate his life to finding Lieutenant Odina, a panda, and a Yeti in that order. In that order. I read that. Yeah. Suzuki found Odina just four days after looking for him, and was almost immediately uh uh almost

shot right um Odana pointed his rifle at him and Suzuki called out Odana-san the emperor and the people of Japan are worried about you at which point according to Odana it saved his life because he was going to kill him oh Jesus now according to odin other two men became fast friends despite originally dismissing suzuki as quote a hippie kid um which is interesting that i'm assuming that he is uh he is taking some things he learned after moving back to japan later in life and then applying them to suzuki retroactively retroactively because how the fuck would he know what a hippie is that's a good question yeah uh as suzuki was a deeply weird man we can probably assume odina was just really fucking lonely and was fine sitting out in the jungle and talking to this guy uh after his last friend got shot by the

cops uh suzuki told odina that the war was over and for the first time it really did seem like odina believed it but according to odina a soldier could not leave his post without orders from a superior commander because if you remember tanaguchi was like do not fucking leave these jungle unless i tell you right um so suzuki snapped a couple pictures of the two men together which showed odina still wearing his Imperial Army uniform and carrying his standard issue air soccer rifle. What do you think that's all like?

Oh, it had to be terrible. I mean, maybe he dried it or washed it and dried it on a branch while he just hung around naked. I don't know. His rifle was still flawless in perfect working order. We know this because Suzuki carried it around and he allowed him to shoot it. And he still had hundreds of rounds of ammunition how much did they have to start with i think thousands okay all right uh suzuki took the pictures as proof of life and found the lieutenant's

uh old uh commander major tenaguchi now Taniguchi at this point was very elderly and working in a bookstore because apparently the Imperial Japanese military's pension system fucking sucks. Like everyone else, Taniguchi thought Odina and all of the men that he left behind were long dead because Japan

lost just so many people during the war. What is four more, right? Sure. Using that is, what is four more, right? Sure. Using that photograph, Suzuki convinced Taniguchi to travel with him back to Lubang and officially order Odina to end his personal one man world war two. When they got to the Island, they met with Odina on 11,

March, 1974, who merged from the jungle in his dress uniform, wearing his ceremonial sword and carrying his rifle. Taniguchi read the following orders. In accordance with the Imperial Command, the 14th Area Army has ceased all combat activity. In accordance with Military Command Orders Number A2003, the Special Squadron Staff Headquarters is relieved of all military duties. Units and individuals under the command of special squadron

are to cease military activities and operations immediately and to place themselves in the command of the nearest superior officer when no officer can be found there to communicate with the American or Philippine forces to follow their directives. With that, Odina officially surrendered, turning his sword over to Filipino dictator Ferdinand marcos uh something that is captured on film and man does it look weird i saw a still from that i was just like what the

fuck yeah marcos uh also gifted odina with a pardon uh because over the years he was responsible for killing around 30 ish people on the island of lubez. What a dick! Not to mention, I assume, millions of dollars worth of property damage. This did not make the people of the island very happy. But, when he finally turned over his rifle, Odina cried over it uncontrollably.

I assume because, much like Wilson in Castaway, this is all he had left. That's fair. I think crying uncontrollably is fair yeah you've been you've been just up to your own dick and your own filth for 27 years like yeah yeah now you're damn near an old man and you're returning to a country that like i know like japanese people had to deal with a lot of shit after world war ii but like imagine skipping over all that and dropping into 1970s era Japan.

Right. That's why they have to put North Korean defectors in a special camp before they let them back out into South Korean society. Alright, good luck to you. When Odin returned to Japan, he was treated like a hero and was given decades of back pay. Now,

if that sounds great, I should point out that a lieutenant in the Japanese Imperial Army only made $16 a month and that sucked even for the time. For comparison, an American private made $50 a month. Cool. Yeah. Now, Odina refused his back pay

and when people gave him money, he donated it to the shrine that he was once honored at where they thought he was dead. The non-problematic shrine where nothing bad happened, yes. You can take that as, oh, he's helping do upkeep at a shrine that honors war criminals or

I took up space there and I shouldn't have some money. Though, remember Japanese people and society had decades to slowly pull themselves away from the philosophy, society, and government that led to their brutal spread of

imperialism and war throughout Asia. Odina didn't. He was dropped into hyper-capitalist Japan in the 1970s, fresh from what he thought was World War II. And goddamned, he fucking hated it. Yeah, I read that. He was just like basically the kids are all pussies and soft then he moves to brazil yeah i mean he he to be fair he hated um how like materialistic society had gotten but he also really fucking hated being

treated like a celebrity everywhere he went he could not go anywhere without people like running over and talking to him so he disregarded people begging for him to run for government and said fucked off to brazil where he raised cattle instead uh though he eventually did return to japan uh periodically he opened a survival and nature appreciation school for japanese youth uh because i mean he grew up in a pretty rural area an area that is now a rather large city uh so like you know people are losing touch with the wilderness i guess if you're him so i guess being in touch with the wilderness is all this dude knew so you know whatever now unfortunately his wife did get involved in politics uh she got she got involved with and joined the woman's wing of the Nippon Kagi, which is an

incredibly right-wing group dedicated to returning Japan to the times of the Empire. Shinzo Abe is one of their advisors. He made OMS former Prime Minister of Japan. Twice. He was Prime Minister two times.

And he only recently stepped down to the health concerns what a fun country yeah well odina probably agreed with much of this politics and all of the things they stood for he never participated in it uh which so like credit to him i suppose he absolutely could have used that to his advantage um Odina finally died in 2014 from a heart attack. Oh, so remember to Norio Suzuki, the guy who wanted to find Odina?

Remember the last part of his thing that he wanted to find a Yeti? Yeah, did he find one? He died looking for a Yeti. He died in the avalanche in 1988. He died doing what he loved you gotta respect gay recognized game man he was nothing if not dedicated now most people think of odina when it comes to uh holdouts but there was one guy who lasts longer uh tahiro nakamura now that's not his

name uh he was born with the name asunio, and he was from Ami's descent, and he was indigenous Taiwanese. Yeah. So unfortunately for him, and all of the people of his island that fell under Imperial Japanese control, he was drafted into the Imperial Army. Like most non-Japanese people in the Empire, he was forced to take a Japanese name, which is why he comes up as Nakamura. He was shipped off to Morotai Island, which was now part of Indonesia. And he got to the island right before the Allies invaded and took the island in September

of 1944. The battle was pretty brutal, and the Japanese military simply declared all of the missing soldiers on Morotai Island to be dead, which included Sunio. Sunio said that he was pretty much immediately separated from his unit.

At no point, like the last guy, was he like, oh, we have to scamper off into the woods and live together. He never saw anybody else. Oh, God. So he was a monk. Yeah, he quite literally returned to monk.

He disregarded Bungern quite literally returned to monk he disregarded my journey returned to monkey and honestly it gets closer to that being the case as we go on so he had a rifle a cooking pot and a knife that's all he had he had no survival training like odina he was just a draftee just a guy literally just a guy yeah uh unlike odina it was not loyalty to his officers or the emperor that kept him hiding instead it was terror so like many soldiers uh he had been told stories that he believed of like the horrible torture and shit that would fall upon him if the americans got their hand on him and he surrendered. So he stayed hidden, cooking only at night so people couldn't see the smoke and in a deep hole so you couldn't see the flame. He says his upbringing in the mountains and relative poverty

provided him the will and ability to survive so long. He said, quote, I calmly stayed alive there. Although I didn't have anybody to talk to, I buried deep in my heart. There seemed to be a glimmer of hope and expectation the only trace of happiness during this time came from the fact i was still alive and i hadn't lost my sense of existence yet man that is dark right jesus that's dark can you imagine dude just fucking off through a jungle for 29 years and you don't see anyone and you're like oh better cook at night so like at some point i would start cooking a broad daylight just like shoot me or whatever at least it's another human being like i do not have the tenacity for that

no absolutely not i would have surrendered immediately that's like whenever i hear about these last stands and stuff yeah i'm a'm a huge pussy. Do what you do. Or the guys holding up to torture and not telling interrogators. You just have to threaten me with torture, man. I'll tell you everything you need to know. Now, Sunio's only clothes was the uniform on his back. And it deteriorated over time. So that ended with him literally running around the jungle naked.

Oh, so that answers that question. You know, know hey rock out with your cock out joe he's running around in the forest butt naked carrying an arisaka rifle though uh he did find a like a u.s army jacket like in a garbage can at one point and he used it to cover himself at night ah okay most of his time was devoted to finding food and farming he grew sweet potatoes beans bananas and sugar canes in a personal garden and gathered roots and fruits and trapped boar pheasant and other birds so like he's living his best life he's fully returned to monkey

good for him good for him quote not to lose my life became my only goal, and that exhausted most of my time. Fair enough. Now, he thought the war was still going on due to constant air traffic over the jungle. He thought that these were bombers or transport planes. Was this mostly freight stuff? It's actually worse than that. Oh, no. He had no idea that the place that he decided to pop up his camp was right next to an Indonesian Air Force base.

Oh, okay. You know what? I get the fear. I get the fear. So he thought that this random air base that's doing Air Force stuff for decades, like, oh, God, the war must be still going on. Look at all these planes. And he realizes that he fucked up. He said, quote, I made one simple simple wrong judgment and it cost me 30 years

fuck he accidentally thought the war was still going on oh buddy and he never gotten gunfights with anybody from all from what I can tell he didn't even use his rifle to hunt thinking of like the sound would carry yeah okay yeah

he didn't scamper off with an ammunition store either. He just had the ammo that was on him. Literally just surviving, yeah. Yeah. Eventually, reports of a crazy naked armed man running through the nearby jungle began to spread. Yeah, fair enough. Unlike Odina, he had no want or desire to continue the war.

He only used his rifle to hunt occasionally and never once attempted to hurt anyone. Unlike Odina, he had no want or desire to continue the war. He only used his rifle to hunt occasionally and never once attempted to hurt anyone. So nobody ever knew he actually existed. After reports of him got out, the Indonesian army sent a patrol out to find him chopping wood naked outside of the hut that he had built. Oh, what's up guys? Now here comes another problem. Nobody had any idea where the fuck to send him. The Empire of Japan didn't exist anymore,

and Japan did not exactly have a great relationship with its former colonial subjects, Korea. While they begrudgingly allowed him to come to Japan if he wanted, Sunyo turned them down and said to sign to go back to Taiwan, which was also not a great choice since the end of world war ii mao's communist forces had taken you know mainland china sending the nationalist forces of kumintang fleeing to taiwan once there those nationalist powers uprooted and treated the aboriginal population like fucking shit oppressing them and forcing them to take chinese names now

rather than japanese or their indigenous names cool another problem is they figured he must have been a japanese loyalist on top of being a race of people they saw below them despite the fact that he had been drafted because the formation he was a part of was called the volunteer army it was not volunteer no now japan also refused to pay him his back pay or a pension. Oh, suck a dick. Give the man his money. Give him his money. He just sucked.

He was just naked in a jungle for 30 years. But eventually they relented, paying him a few hundred dollars after people pointed out how shitty that was. People also donated thousands of dollars to him every year, enough of him to live off of and never needing another job unfortunately his wife had remarried and his parents were dead and

all of his children couldn't remember who he was oh Jesus and what is even weirder is like the guy who married his wife and his wife like oh I guess we have to get a divorce now and like they were getting ready to like separate and he was like no you you guys are fine I get it it's it's fine you don't have to like remarry me now that i'm alive christ that's depressing yeah um it's like he read he was

reading about himself in newspapers by a chinese name that he didn't know was his because like the the kumintang forced everybody to have chinese names and he's like who's this guy uh now uh despite the fact that sunyo came out of the jungle a few months after odana nobody in japan gave a shit and in fact sunyo never once visited the country this is almost certainly because he was not only an enlisted man or a drafted conscripted man but a racial minority in a colonial fighting unit of a horribly racist imperial power and odono was an officer and a japanese man even weirder is that like he managed to rent an apartment that was like down the street from his ex-wife and like he just he just like hung out over there all the time because he didn't know anybody else yeah and like what else is he supposed

to do he's been running around bright ass naked in the jungle for 45 years i would like to think when the sun went down in like taipei or whatever he just stripped naked and ran around for all time i was just like honey what are you doing just like grabs a rifle goes to the club he's not shooting anybody he just likes to to watch my man just wants to hang out uh then he died five years later after returning home from lung cancer sunyo's life is an unfortunate story yes now after this weird stories of possible holdouts continue to pop up from around the former japanese empire and as searches for them continued over the years they found evidence that some did exist but had died in some way like for instance

like there was two holdouts that went from being japanese imperial holdouts to joining a communist insurgency in malaysia as you do just you know it's like the checks with that train man just like oh i'll fight for whoever i don't give a fuck he's like wait we get to shoot british people still hell yeah sign my ass up yeah like it's you know, and it's so funny because of how much Imperial Japan fucking hated communists. And these guys are like, yeah, fuck it, whatever. What happens in the jungle stays in the jungle. And like we talked about before them becoming boogeymen, like that kind of happened where there was like bandits in certain areas. Like in 2005, in a remote area of the Philippines, they were reporting that there was there was bandits in certain areas. In 2005, in a

remote area of the Philippines, they were reporting that there was Japanese holdouts in the mountains. And there's no way this would have been fucking true. They would have been in their 80s and 90s at that point. Yeah, right. So that's pretty much impossible. Yeah, the concept of a Japanese holdout has gone from real thing to

weird human cryptozoology. Also, it's a weird minor plot point in just cause two i think is it yeah you like visit an island that might be uh occupied by uh it is just cause two by like a japanese holdout it's weird man That's so weird. I didn't expect that. And it's good. But like... And like... There were so many stories coming out that they were still sending teams out to look for these guys like

40 fucking years after the war was over. There's no way these guys are still alive. Or like 50, 60 years after the war. You're going to find, I don't know, a japanese retirement home deep into mora thai island like oh hi guys uh it's just weird uh but we do a segment on this show liam called questions from the legion and i one day i will have a drop for this and i don't so i'll just use this uh i was ready man today's question from the legion is if you could go to one time

period in all of history and you could give out an ak-47 and 10 000 rounds of ammunition where would you do it battle of antietam just give it to one guy who doesn't feel strongly one way or another and see what happens to history renaissance uh the red the high renaissance 1650s florence again just to see what happens i have to skip the easy question say 1915 armenia but uh warsaw ghetto yeah thanks we'll take it it's just you and me and it's a handshake meme just like look don't ask questions here's the ak here's a couple crates of ammo if you need me uh i don't know i'll be pooping click my heels together my fucking time machine and vanish

taking a flack from nazis with your uh as you disappeared to the air for some reason one of the most popular names like amongst jewish people is your first name now because you gave them an ak i have a fucking um righteous amongst nations and my statue's just holding an ak over my head yeah you gotta get it then you can emigrate to Israel if you want. You can go from one genocidal apartheid state to another. Oh, no. Nah, I gotta do it. You said genocide.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Alright, well, Liam, thanks for joining us on this bonus episode. Everybody, thank you for supporting the show. I guess until next time, just maybe listen to someone when they say the war's over. Yeah, also listen to Lions Led by... No, fuck! Listen to Well, There's Your Problem. Also listen to Lions Led by Donkeys.

Listen to Lions Led by Problems. Problems Led by Donkeys. Listen to Lions Led by Problems. Problems Led by Donkeys? Problems Led by Donkeys is just something that sounds like if you had a very specific animal-related therapist. Yeah, let's... Anyway, moving on. Anyway, the end.