A Japanese soldier who refused to surrender after World War Two ended and spent 29 years in the jungle has died aged 91 in Tokyo. Hiroo Onoda remained in the jungle on Lubang Island near Luzon, in the Philippines, until 1974 because he did not believe that the war had ended. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25772192
I did read that with a morbid interest. Amazing sense of duty............. Cultural differences, huh...???
Back in 1994, a friend and I hired a Cessna 172 and had a day out; after flying over Taal (which really is best seen from the air) we decided to visit Lubang, The airport was... well... let's say we had to make a pass to encourage the carabao to get off the grass strip runway, and you could not get out of the airport by road because a farmer had spread his palay right across it to dry. We concluded that it was just the sort of place where Hiroo Onoda could easily have ignored the end of the War. He didn't just hide in the jungle; he did kill quite innocent people as his effort to carry on the War. Consequently he attracted rather mixed views - a hero to some Japanese but not so much to the people of Lubang.
