The fascination around Hiro Onoda has drawn in a cross‑current of perspectives from a German filmmaker like Werner Herzog and a French director such as Arthur Harari. Last year, a novel titled Twilight of the World, published in Spanish by Blackie Books, pays homage to this Japanese soldier who spent decades on a Philippine island. He grew convinced that World War II remained active and that a victory could still be possible. The book and the film share core themes, yet they tell the story from different vantage points.
Herzog’s admiration for Onoda stretches back to days long before Harari’s project. In his own writing, Herzog recalls the moment he refused an invitation in Tokyo to direct an opera in 1997, a choice he later says was tied to a longing to meet Onoda. The encounter did happen, and it sparked a creative exchange. Twenty years later, at a Cannes festival meeting, Herzog and Harari reportedly exchanged ideas about a figure as compelling as Onoda.
a mythic figure
Onoda resembles a myth brought to life on screen, akin to traits seen in directors output that evoke enduring legends. The narrative threads connect to figures who endured jungle isolation and the edge of civilization, where survival tests the limits of perception. Herzog chose to frame Onoda as the protagonist of a pseudo‑documentary, structured like the pages of a highly selective newspaper. Harari mirrors this approach, weaving a story that casts the soldier as a lens into a larger human struggle.
What makes Hiro Onoda such a magnet for writers and filmmakers is not merely his stubborn fidelity to a vanished war. The tale unfolds around a young man who, according to the film, faced a dead end in his personal development while being drawn into a mission assigned by General Yoshimi Taniguchi during the Pacific campaign. He was only twenty‑two when this path began.
an impossible assignment
Born in 1922, Onoda served as an intelligence officer who was tasked with a secret war devised by his superior. The assignment took root on Lubang, a Philippine island, in December 1944. The soldier remained there for nearly three decades, until mid‑1974. The goal was to organize a guerrilla campaign, though the mission faced immediate skepticism among many who believed the war had ended long before. Two months into the campaign, American forces took control of the island, and Japan signed its formal surrender in September of that same year.
Onoda watched his ranks dwindle as supply lines faltered, and his men succumbed to hunger, disease, desertion, or attacks by local groups and fishermen. Yet a deep conviction lingered that the war still raged. Harari presents scenes in which Onoda listens to a radio broadcast via a modest transistor radio found in a village, and he interprets the news as part of a larger disinformation strategy. Herzog, in the director’s view, suggests that wider geopolitical shifts—from China to Siberia and beyond—fed a narrative of new alliances that kept Onoda on the island vigilant. Leaflets announcing the war’s end went unread by him amid the forest canopy and the static of doubt.
the moment of change
The turning point arrives with the arrival of a Japanese student named Norio Suzuki. Suzuki reaches Lubang, establishes a camp, and sets up loudspeakers to broadcast Onoda’s favorite song. The sight of the officer emerging from the mountains prompts a rare conversation. After lengthy persuasion, Onoda surrenders, as ordered by his superior, Taniguchi, who would later leave the army and work as a bookseller. In a forest clearing, Onoda hands over his uniform, his sword, and his weapons. He was 28 years old when he finally gave up the fight, presenting his sword to Ferdinand Marcos, the president of the Philippines, in a ceremonial gesture unmistakably symbolic of the end of a long chapter.
Onoda lived on for decades beyond the surrender, passing away in 2014. Suzuki, who helped bring about the pivotal moment, died earlier in 1986. After returning to Japan, Onoda entered politics and published memoirs before spending his later years in Brazil tending cattle. The late soldier did not remain the only surviving figure from those events; another case, Teruo Nakamura, was captured on Morotai in 1974 after a prolonged period of hiding, underscoring the broader backdrop of a war that did not quietly disappear from memory.
Across both Herzog and Harari, the Onoda story is less a simple chronicle of a man fixed in time than a meditation on belief, isolation, and the persistence of a personal code in the face of overwhelming historical inevitability. The jungle’s hush and the distant sounds of civilization intersect with questions about loyalty, memory, and the unpredictable ways in which history revisits itself.