by EJ Hibbing
I got to thinking about Hiroo Onoda today. Onoda is not someone very well known these days and the fact that I think about him from time to time probably makes me somewhat unusual.
Onoda was a Japanese soldier who fought in the Pacific War. Along with three other members of his unit, he remained in the jungles of Lubang Island in the Philippines refusing to believe the war had ended even after Japan had surrendered. When the four stragglers discovered leaflets left for them explaining that the war was over and they should turn themselves in, they concluded that it was a trick and they continued to hold out.
In 1949, one of the four left the group and eventually surrendered. In 1952, when letters from home and family photos were dropped to them, the three holdouts still would not believe the war was over and Japan had surrendered. After one of the remaining three was shot and killed in 1954, Onoda and the other soldier, Kinshichi Kozuka, remained in that Lubang jungle for two more decades.
Kozuka was killed in 1972 and after his wartime commanding officer came to the Philippines to order him to surrender, Onoda finally gave up his sword and his rifle and returned to Japan.
Many people, particularly in Japan, seem to be impressed by Onoda’s loyalty to his commanding officer, to his country and to his cause, whatever that may have been in his mind. I am less impressed. I think his behavior was ridiculous. I think the man was a fool.
How was it possible that Onoda and the others did not know the war had ended? Even isolated in the jungle as they were, surely they must have known it was over. Reading about their suspicions of the leaflets they found or how they did not even trust the letters from their families, it his hard not to think they were crazy.
But I do not think they were crazy. Delusional, perhaps, and certainly in severe denial, but not crazy. Onoda appears to have been stable and sane as he lived out the rest of his fairly normal life in Japan and Brazil. He remained a nationalist and he gave money to Yasukuni Shrine, which might have demonstrated poor judgement but not mental illness.
How can a sane man spend twenty-nine years holding out in a jungle in the Philippines refusing to believe the war that was obviously over had ended and being unwilling to surrender and go home? I wish I had an answer to that question. If I did, my thoughts probably would not keep returning to the story of Hiroo Onoda.
While I feel confident saying Onoda was not crazy, following news about America’s foreign adventures leave me less sure about the sanity of members of the government and the mainstream media. Things that years of even months or weeks ago would have been considered mad are suddenly said regularly as if they are totally reasonable.
In Ukraine, we are told we must support the Kiev regime even though they are a corrupt government put in power by a US-sponsored coup, infested with Stepan Bandera worshipping neo-nazis that have been oppressing and even murdering ethnic Russians since 2014. Recently, laws have been passed banning the Russian language and the Russian Orthodox Church. Even praying in Russian has been proscribed.
We are also told that fearing the very real possibility that US provocation and escalation in Ukraine may lead to nuclear Armageddon is a sign of weakness. We are left with no recourse but to hope Russian president Vladimir Putin has the good sense and restraint not to retaliate with nuclear weapons even if America pushes his country to the brink.
Along with the Ukraine madness, we are being told that war with China is going to be necessary very soon. Australia, the Philippines and Japan are being prepared to fight. We can see the maps that show US military bases surrounding China. We can see America poking and prodding China every day. Yet, we are told we must be prepared to defend ourselves against “Chinese aggression” and people seem to believe this.
America’s determination to go to war with China by provoking a conflict over Taiwan has become something of an accepted fact among mainstream news sources and certainly by most American politicians. Having failed economically, war is the only way American can compete with China.
We are left with no recourse but to hope Chinese president Xi Jinping has the good sense and restraint not to retaliate with nuclear weapons even if America pushes his country to the brink.
How did this switch get turned on? How did people go from believing nuclear war is the most frightening and awful thing imaginable (and it is!) and must be avoided at all costs (it must!) to seeing it now as all but inevitable? Can this switch be turned off?
Americans may not be crazy, but like Hiroo Onoda in the jungles of Lubang Island they are in the grip of some overpowering propaganda and stifling groupthink that seem to be leading them toward a very, very ugly end. My greatest hope is that they do not take the rest of us down with them.
