For the man who made the stunning film “Aguirre, Wrath of God”, the story of Hiroo Onoda seems a logical point of fascination. Isn’t the image of Onoda fighting and waiting for Imperial Japan’s triumphant reconquest of a Philippine island for 29 years after the war ended, ignoring all signs and common sense that should have led him to halt, fighting against the damp and rot of dense jungle as much as anything, comparable to Aguirre’s demented doomed march through the South American jungle in search of a city of gold… both men lost in their heads, at the near extremes of physical human experience in dense inhospitable jungle (all the cliches of the “dark forest” dialed up even more intensely), all for something completely imaginary.

Herzog thus returns to this “twilight world” of sense/nonsense between civilization and madness. It is part documentary and part act of imagination. He seems taken with Onoda’s impressively near-precise effort to keep track of the calendar date, turning out to be only five days off after 29 years. It is evidence of an exercise of human rationality in the midst of something that otherwise points to insanity. This contrast is highlighted in other ways as well, such as Onoda discovering and working out the existence of a satellite orbiting Earth that appears a couple of decades into his life in the jungle, at the same time as he also questions if what he believes is reality could in fact be a dreamworld.

Unlike Herzog’s fictional creation of Aguirre, the real Onoda is ultimately able to return to civilization and the world of everyday rationality. It would have been interesting to delve into that return, but Herzog again is only focused on the human experience of that in-between twilight world, and its fascinations. ( )

A little weird to read a fictionalization of a person who lived such an extreme life. This book consists almost entirely of psychological explorations of the reasons why a man would choose to carry on fighting a war for decades after it ended, despite every imaginable adversity and veritable evidence that it was over. There are also numerous passages where the historical figures it is based on are given specific, powerful dialogue, which I can only assume is based on absolutely no evidence and is an entire fabrication. It’s fitting that a book like this was written by a film director, as this treatment of the past is commonplace in that medium; and yet the obvious artifice of an actor delivering lines on a set signals this is a fabrication, no matter how closely the script follows the historical record. I’m less familiar with this conceit in literature, and it’s off-putting, especially when the author’s own life intersected with that of his subject, and as a reader, I have little knowledge of what actually happened going into the book. The natural question arises: how could Herzog ever hope to inhabit the mind frame of someone from such a specific culture as that of a soldier of Imperial Japan?

Thankfully this book is beautifully written. Herzog’s voiceovers for his documentaries have always mesmerized me, veering as they do between facts, conjecture, and the most wild fancies and speculation. Like those films, this book is imbued with a specific wonder at the world that makes a great artist.

Post-script: coming back a few weeks later to note down a story I came across while reading other information about Hiroo Onoda. After Onoda finally surrendered, he returned to Japan with a warm welcome. He was awarded a large amount of back pay which he at first refused, then donated to a Shinto shrine. He wrote a book about his experience on Lubang Island, which I can only assume was the main source of all the psychologizing in Herzog's book, which was very popular. He was called on to run for office by the Japanese right wing, though Onoda also turned that down. Eventually, fatigued by what he saw as Japan's ascendant materialism, he settled into a lifestyle where he would spend large parts of the year living with his brother on a cattle farm in Brazil. Eventually, he established a school for troubled Japanese youth to learn survival skills. He only died in 2014.

It's hard not to have a begrudging respect for this man, despite the violence he committed on the local population of Lubang Island for decades, which of course went completely unpunished. But I think the romanticization of the Japanese "code of honor" and bravery during WWII can often edge into a kind of orientalism - westerners can be so awed by the soldiers commitment to the war effort that they can forget the outrageous brutality the Japanese carried out on the populations of their colonized territory in the name a kind of racial superiority that is more similar to Nazi Aryanism than not. If we are to combat against the racialized dehumanization committed against Japanese-Americans imprisoned in internment camps, or the propaganda depicting Japanese soldiers as subhuman pests or beasts, we must also reckon with the societal factors and war tactics that they built their empire upon. In this book, Herzog is notably agnostic on this point, and I think that's understandable - he was interested in the man, not the nation. But I do think there is a story from the same period of history that is instructive and gives a clearer frame of reference for the line of thinking that made both Onoda's incredible tenacity and his reception upon returning to Japan possible: that of Teruo Nakamura. Onoda was actually the second to last Japanese soldier to surrender, Nakamura beat his record by a few months, giving up in 1974. Nakamura was actually a member of the Taiwanese aboriginal tribe the Amis, Taiwan at that time still under Japanese colonial control. Having been stationed on an island in Indonesia when the Japanese surrendered, Nakamura lived a solitary life on the island for 30 years before he was discovered and decommissioned. He chose to be repatriated to Taiwan instead of Japan, logical considered that had been his home before the war. He was given a Chinese name which he only learned upon returning to Taiwan, and was initially ignored by both the Japanese and Taiwanese governments. To Japan, he was a colonial grunt who wasn't even Japanese; to the Taiwanese he was a collaborator with their former colonizers and aggressors in the war. In contrast to the lavish treatment given to Onoda upon his return to Japan, Nakamura was given a pittance in backpay equating to only a few hundred US dollars, and certainly no pomp and circumstance. The Taiwanese government and public worked together to donate money to Nakamura, perhaps seeing that the moral imperative to help this man fell upon them, the former colonial subjects of Nakamura's imperial employer. Nakamura died in 1979.

It's important to consider the treatment of these two soldiers 30 years after the war because it tells us a lot about the way we view history. Was it wrong for the Japanese to celebrate this man who was a kind of living fossil of the imperial era, a man who had killed innocent people in the name of an effort that was bloodcurdlingly brutal? Is it possible to revere historical figures for their bravery and commitment to the national cause, even when that cause has long been discredited? If the attraction of Onoda is based on his tenacity and sacrifice, why wasn't Nakamura afforded the same treatment? The clear answer is because he wasn't "really" Japanese. Thirty years after the fact, some of the same psychology that put the imperial system in place still held sway. I'm not here to demonize the Japanese - atrocities are committed by all sides in a war. Rather, I think the afterlife of this story can tell us as much as the story (as compelling as it is) that Herzog set down in this book. ( )

Wener Herzog ontmoette in 1997 de hoogbejaarde Hiroo Onoda, die vocht in de Tweede Wereldoorlog als luitenant in het Japanse leger. Omdat hij niet wist dat Japan zich in augustus 1945 had overgegeven aan de Verenigde Staten bleef hij nog dertig jaar lang een Pilipijns eiland, grotendeels bestaand uit jungle, in de Stille Oceaan verdedigen. Omdat Herzog een goede band ontwikkelde met Onoda, - beiden weten wat het is om te overleven in de jungle, - tekende hij Onoda's herinneringen op. Hij zegt er dit over:
"Veel details kloppen, veel kloppen er niet. Iets anders was belangrijk voor de schrijver, iets wezenlijks, zoals hij het tijdens zijn ontmoeting met de protagonist van dit verhaal meende te zien". Het is een fascinerend verhaal over overleven in een niets ontziende natuur. Daarvoor moet je ontzettend veel moed hebben en ontzettend slim en sterk zijn. ( )

Written with a perfect economy of words, this is a quietly absorbing story based on a true and extraordinary situation. ( )

This is Werner Herzog's telling of the fascinating true story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese World War II soldier who defended Lubang Island in the Philippines for decades after the end of the war, unaware that the war was over. Herzog met Onoda and, over the course of many meetings, learned the complete story of Onoda's experience. In this book Herzog takes what Onoda shared with him first-hand and depicts Onoda's decades-long campaign with such detail and imbues it with such atmosphere that the reader can feel the humidity of the jungle, see every drop of rain on every leaf, and hear the slopping of military boots trudging through mud.

Onoda's story is a tale of loyalty and duty, of what gives life meaning and how that differs for each person. This quick read only made me want to find a biography of Onoda and delve into his life even more. It is absolutely fascinating. ( )