Walking in circles under the dripping canopy’s leaves,
repeating a sentence someone gave him at twenty.
Terrorise your enemies.
The world moved on while he stood still,
saluting the old invisible flag.
Stand your ground.
Voices call his name from the edge of the trees,
but every kindness sounds like a trick.
Never surrender.
Counting the years by how many ghosts go silent,
the mission remains loud in his head.
Hold the line.
Set to starve than admit the hunger was pointless,
rather be feared than feel foolish.
Show no retreat.
It is not truth that convinces him,
but a formal command,
stepping out of the past.
“Lay down your arms.”
So, Onoda walks out of the jungle at last,
wearing three decades of orders as his only story.
His identity.
Hiroo Onoda was the last Japanese soldier to surrender, 29 years after the Second World War ended. He survived in the jungles of the Philippines, not believing that the war was over and only came out of hiding on his insistence that his commanding officer issued the order to stand down.
