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Thread: Hiroo Onoda - Jap who refused to surrender for 29 years dies

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    Walking Dead Legion2213's Avatar
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    Hiroo Onoda - Jap who refused to surrender for 29 years dies

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25772192

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroo_Onoda

    Always fascinated by this guys story and his 29 years of living off the land and believing he was still fighting WWII for all that time.

    Anyway, his war is finally over...
    Oblivion gallops closer, favoring the spur, sparing the rein - I think we will be gone soon

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    Just Married AcesandEights's Avatar
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    Read about this on the paradox forums this morning. I thought Onoda passed away a year or so back. Glad that he got a number of years back in society, after losing so many.

    And, yeah, his is a crazy story.

    "Men choose as their prophets those who tell them that their hopes are true." --Lord Dunsany

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    Feeding shootemindehead's Avatar
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    I remember reading about this chap a few years ago. His story is truly remarkable. Dead at 91? Seems living off the land and isolated from humans isn't such a bad thing after all.

    I'm runnin' this monkey farm now Frankenstein.....

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    Twitching krisvds's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by shootemindehead View Post
    I remember reading about this chap a few years ago. His story is truly remarkable. Dead at 91? Seems living off the land and isolated from humans isn't such a bad thing after all.

    "I got an alternative, yeah, yeah, I got an alternative. Let's get in that old whirly-bird, find us an island some place, get juiced up and spend what time we got left soakin' up some sunshine! How's that?"

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    Webmaster Neil's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Legion2213 View Post
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25772192

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroo_Onoda

    Always fascinated by this guys story and his 29 years of living off the land and believing he was still fighting WWII for all that time.

    Anyway, his war is finally over...
    Didn't he (needlessly) kill about 30 more people over those 29 years?
    Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. [click for more]
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    Just Married AcesandEights's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Neil View Post
    Didn't he (needlessly) kill about 30 more people over those 29 years?
    He definitely killed some people and even got into a firefight with local police where his last companion was killed, IIRC.

    Needlessly? Well, yeah, just about all the killing done by the IJN and IJA could be considered needless, but this guy wasn't supposed to surrender, or throw his life away. He was supposed to stick around and cause problems and supposedly didn't believe the war was over or that any government in Tokyo was likely to be anything other than a puppet.

    "Men choose as their prophets those who tell them that their hopes are true." --Lord Dunsany

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