Free No Surrender by Hiroo Onoda Page B

fire, we waited and waited, but no Captain Tsukii. I finally decided we could wait no longer. Taking fifteen men with me, I set out to attack the enemy troops who were blocking us. The path along theridge was fairly straight, and if we were to run into the enemy, the men in the vanguard would certainly be wounded or killed. Still, I figured that if we resigned ourselves to sacrificing three or four men, the rest of us could get through to the enemy camp. I was confident that in hand-to-hand combat we would beat them.
    The airfield had been captured intact by the enemy. The pier had not been blown up. I had, in short, allowed the enemy to land without accomplishing either of the specific objectives I had been assigned by division headquarters. I had disgraced myself as a secret warfare agent. Deep down I felt that we would not be in the predicament we were in if I had been more forceful and aggressive as a leader. The only way I could see now to discharge my duty to those who had died so tragically was to carry out this desperate night attack on the enemy. I would lead the way into the enemy camp and slaughter as many Americans as I could.
    When we reached a certain point, I took a deep breath and looked around behind me. The men’s helmets dully reflected the moonlight. I breathed again and drew my sword, discarding the scabbard by the wayside. From now on I would not think of anything. I grasped the sword tightly and started forward. I had nothing to rely on but my own strength.
    When I threw away my scabbard, I was disobeying the orders I had received from General Yokoyama. I was also ignoring all I had been taught at Futamata about the duties of a secret warfare agent. I was reverting instead to the suicide tactics I had been taught at officers’ training school. I was young; I had lost my head!
    If the enemy had been waiting for us at that moment, I would probably have been killed. As luck would have it, however, they had found out about our night attack and withdrawn far to the rear. I was both crestfallen and relieved. We moved quickly back the way we had come.
    On the way we found the body of Private First Class Muranaka. With the dagger my mother had given me, I cut off his little finger, which I wrapped in paper and placed in the inner pocket of my jacket. I also recovered my scabbard. As I picked it up, I remembered the division commander’s face as he ordered me to stay alive. I was ashamed of myself.
    On the morning of the third, Captain Tsukii and his men finally arrived at our base. I decided to check our path of retreat once more, and I took Corporal Shōichi Shimada with me. As we started to leave, Lieutenant Ueno told me he had also sent out a scout and asked me to bring him back if I saw him.
    Then, just as we were setting out from the base, a messenger came from the sick tent asking for explosives. I went to the tent to see what the situation was. A young man with a very pale face looked up at me from his cot and mumbled, “We can’t move. Please let us kill ourselves here.”
    The rest of the twenty men in the tent, all gravely wounded, stared pitifully at me.
    I suppressed my emotions and said, “All right, I’ll do it. I’ll attach a fuse to set off the dynamite, but just in case it doesn’t, I’ll leave a cannister, which you can throw into the dynamite to ignite it.”
    I looked at each and every face, twenty-two in all. They were all resigned to death, ready to make the sacrifice they had been brought up to make. With difficulty, I continued.
    â€œAlso, in the event that your matches don’t light, I’m leaving a piece of long-burning incense to light the fuse with. One way or another, you should be able to achieve your wish. There is one thing, however, that I must ask you in return. It is hard for me to give you an assignment when you have already made up your minds to die, but I ask you one more time—just one more time—to serve your