Free No Surrender by Hiroo Onoda Page A

mile or two west of Tilik. Just before they reached Vigo, they split into two units. One unit continued westward toward the town of Lubang, while the other started advancing toward our base. I decided on a retreat. If we dug in and made a stand where we were, we did not have the remotest chance of winning. I figured that the only chance left was to go up into the mountains and carry on a guerrilla campaign.
    The intelligence squad and the coastal attack squads did not agree. They said they would hold out to the end where theywere. I tried to tell them that with no more armaments than they had, they would be sitting ducks for the enemy, but they would not listen.
    Enemy shells began to fall, and I ordered the wounded soldiers who were able to walk to move deeper into the mountains. Picking out five or six strong-looking men, I ordered them to carry as many provisions as they could, and we started off.
    We had not walked for thirty minutes when we heard guns from the direction in which we were moving. The enemy had apparently cut off our retreat. I had been afraid of something like this. Some time before I had told the Ōsaki outfit that instead of waiting around for planes to come to the rescue, they should get busy and move provisions to the rear, so that when the attack did come they could fall back and make a stand.
    If they had paid any attention then, we would not be in the position we were in now. I sent a lookout ahead, then set out myself with a small force. Before long we met the lookout, limping back with a bullet wound in his leg. He had been spotted by an enemy scout. It was now certain that our retreat was cut off, no doubt by the troops who had landed in Tomibo the day before.
    In front of us, the enemy’s mortars were coming closer. We were trapped! Suddenly I noticed blood on the path; bending down to take a look, I sighted two Japanese soldiers lying on their stomachs a little ahead of us. They were Private First Class Kinshichi Kozuka and Private First Class Muranaka. I called to them to creep forward a little farther. Muranaka looked at Kozuka for a moment, then for some crazy reason stood straight up. Instantly a shot rang out, and he fell. The bullet had hit him in the head.
    Shouting to Kozuka to stay down, I crawled backward a little, and feeling around with my foot, I found a ditch. Suddenly, the light-footed Kozuka was up and running towardme. He jumped over me into the ditch, just as another shot rang out. I slipped back into the ditch before noticing that my right hand was covered with blood. The bullet had sliced off the tip of my little finger, leaving only a little of the nail.

    On the following night I resolved to carry out a raid on the troops blocking our retreat.
    Lieutenant Ōsaki had been killed yesterday, Lieutenant Tanaka today, both by mortar shells. Together with Lieutenant Suehiro, we had lost three officers, and another, Lieutenant Tategami, was missing, having gone off in pursuit of enemy scouts (he was later found dead). With no commanding officers, the troops lost all sense of organization. They were firing willy-nilly, as the spirit moved them. Unless something was done soon, they would all be destroyed.
    A mountain range, about eighteen hundred feet high at its peak and covered with dense forest, ran down the island from northwest to southeast. My idea was to retreat along the ridge, offering resistance when necessary. I thought that if we could reach a certain point I had in mind, some of us could then double back along the skirt of the mountains to our former base, where provisions had been hidden, and then dive back into the forest.
    To carry out this plan, it was essential to wipe out the enemy troops to the rear. I waited until the night of March 2, because Captain Tsukii had promised to rendezvous with me by that time at the latest. His squad had almost no weapons; I did not want to retreat ahead of them, leaving them defenseless.
    Holding up under sporadic mortar