Do you want to know how Onoda was finally convinced to surrender?

[Street Savvy]

Dear Otaku Illustrated Subscriber,

                                                                                                       

So continuing on with the different ways of saying goodbye in Japanese, I will now talk about using the polite level.  This is what you use when talking to someone that you're not very close to.  In which case you would say things like doumo or sayounara, but if you know you'll see that person again then you'll want to use dewa mata or mata kondo.  This is because mata is the Japanese word for "again."

                                                                           

So I will now continue on with the topic of the Japanese Empire.  When the United States realized that there was an active Japanese unit in the Philippines that clearly did not know that the war was over, they began dropping leaflets in the area to inform them that Japan had surrendered.  Onoda did eventually come across one of these leaflets, but because of his propaganda training he immediate assumed this was propaganda meant to lure out him and his men so they could be captured or killed.  Sure he knew Japan was being pushed back, but having been defeated was impossible.  The Japan he knew would never surrender, they would fight to the very last man, woman, and child.  Eventually they began dropping leaflets that had official surrender orders from Japanese generals.  Onoda looked over these and once again his propaganda training made him come to the conclusion that these were fake too.  But in 1945, one of his men decided to take his chances in agreeing that the war was over and left the unit to surrender to local Filipino authorities.  He informed Japan and America about Onoda, which made them ramp up their efforts by finding their family members and asking them to write letters asking Onoda and his men to surrender.  This backfired  however because when Onoda and his men found them, they thought that Japan, while still fighting to the very last man, woman, and child, had been invaded by the United States and their families had been captured and forced at gunpoint through torture to write those letters.  This only filled them with more resolve to continue fighting.  Eventually his other two men would be killed in shootouts with Filipino police leaving Onoda alone, but he still wouldn't surrender.  In 1974, a Japanese adventurer named Noriko Suzuka embarked on a trip around the world, and one of the highlights of his trip was to meet Leuitentant Onoda, who had become a celebrity in Japan by this point because of his refusal to surrender.  When he found Onoda in the Philippines in February of that same year, he informed the old soldier that his country was worried about him and that the war had been over for decades.  But Onoda told him that he would only surrender if relieved of duty by his commanding officer.  This made Japan go and track down his now retired commanding officer Major Yoshimi Teniguchi to fly him to the Philippines to find Onoda, still dressed in his service uniform and armed with his service rifle and service katana, to at last surrender.  And I'll go into the details next week.

                                                                           

When I first heard about this movie, I knew immediately that I wanted to check it out based on how much I loved the anime on Adult Swim, but I never actually got around to it.  But now that's being released, I do not plan to miss out my second chance.  If you're also getting your second chance to check out this movie, or even if you enjoyed it the first time and just want to add this release to your collection, then we can both pre - order ours below:

                                                                                                      

Street Savvy the Otaku Guy

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