How to Stop Fighting When the War Is Over
Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier, had been hiding for 29 years. He refused to believe WWII had ended. Until someone did something about it.
The War, the Panda, and the Abominable Snowman
Norio Suzuki was not what you might call a free spirit.
He’d dropped out of college, hitchhiked across Asia, and told his friends he was going to find “Lieutenant Onoda, a panda, and the Abominable Snowman—in that order.”
That was his mission.
Not exactly the stuff of national pride. But Suzuki was dead serious. Somewhere in his wandering soul, he knew there was a man still fighting in the jungle—a soldier who hadn’t heard the war was over.
And in 1974, he found him.
Hiroo Onoda had been hiding for 29 years.
He was a Japanese intelligence officer stationed in the Philippines during World War II. His final orders in 1945 were crystal clear: “Never surrender. Never die by your own hand. Keep fighting until Japan calls you home.”
And so, when Japan surrendered… Onoda didn’t.
Leaflets dropped from planes? Propaganda.
Search parties? Enemy traps.
Locals telling him the war had ended? Lies.
He patched his uniform.
He rationed bullets.
He woke up every day and fought a war that had already ended.
And then came Suzuki.
Not a soldier. Not a diplomat. Not a threat.
Just a strange, kind-hearted drifter with a backpack, a camera, and an open heart.
Onoda listened to him. Trusted him. Ate with him.
But still—he wouldn’t surrender. Not without orders from his commanding officer.
So Suzuki went home to Japan.
He tracked down Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, Onoda’s former CO—now a quiet bookseller living a peaceful new life. And he asked him to put on his uniform, fly to the jungle, and finish the mission.
Taniguchi agreed.
In March of 1974, stood face to face with his Commanding Officer for the fist time in three decades.
Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, now sixty and retired, stood in the Philippine jungle wearing his old Imperial Army uniform. Polished boots. Medals. Hat. The works.
He carried two things:
A printed copy of Onoda’s original 1945 orders.
And a new set of orders written just for this moment.
He read both aloud.
First, the words that had kept Onoda locked in survival mode for three decades—“You are to carry out guerrilla warfare and not surrender under any circumstances.”
And then, the new ones.
“The war is over.
You are to return to Japan immediately.
You are relieved of all military duties.”
Witnesses say Onoda stiffened like a statue.
Stoic.
He saluted.
Removed his sword.
Unstrapped his rifle.
Handed over his ammunition.
And then, quietly, he said:
“I am sorry that I took so long to carry out your orders.”
That’s when the tears came.
Historians will tell you that World War II ended on August 15, 1945—V-J Day—when Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s surrender.
And for most of the world, that’s true. The war ended that day.
But stories don’t always end at the same time for everyone.
Not in real life.
Not in the jungle of your soul.
For Hiroo Onoda, the war didn’t end until March 9, 1974.
Because that’s when someone finally showed up, looked him in the eye, and said:
“You can stop fighting now.”
The Battles We Won’t Stop Fighting
Sometimes we’re just like Onoda.
We keep fighting battles that ended years ago—old betrayals, old fears, old stories that once kept us safe but now just keep us stuck.
And we don’t stop because no one ever told us we could.
Because if we stop fighting… who even are we?
Here are three ways to know it might be time to lay down your rifle:
1. You Don’t Know What Year It Is Anymore
Onoda wasn’t completely delusional. He was just stuck in 1945.
He filtered all new information through the lens of a war that no longer existed. Everything confirmed his story: This isn’t over. Stay alert. Stay alive.
We do the same thing.
Someone just told me yesterday that the pandemic warped their sense of time. They still feel like it’s 2021. Like years were lost. Like something inside them froze.
I think we all feel that a little.
Ask yourself: What year is it in my soul?
If the answer isn’t now, the war might be over.
2. Your Enemy Doesn’t Exist Anymore
Onoda was still fighting the enemy that wasn’t there.
Still hiding from American patrols.
Still burning rice fields to stay sharp.
But nobody was chasing him.
Nobody was actually against him anymore.
We often do the same.
We keep hiding from enemies who have long forgotten we even exist.
We brace for attacks that aren’t coming.
We hold our ground in battles no one else remembers.
The only one still fighting… is you.
3. Peace Requires a New Identity
This is the hardest part.
Onoda didn’t just stop fighting—he had to stop being a soldier. And that meant becoming someone new.
Sometimes the reason we stay in the fight is because we don’t know who we are without it.
The pain gives us purpose.
The battle gives us clarity.
The identity of the wounded one, the fighter, the survivor—it becomes who we are.
We all think, If I move on from this… who even am I? What will become of me if I quit this fight?
The answer is clear in the story:
You’ll be liberated.
The Voice You’ve Been Waiting For
Onoda waited 29 years to hear the words that would set him free.
You might not need thirty years.
You might just need someone who sees the whole story—and isn’t afraid to say it out loud:
“You don’t have to keep fighting.”
“You’re not crazy.”
“It’s over.”
Maybe that’s what this post is.
Maybe I’m your Suzuki.
Or maybe you’re someone else’s.
Hear the truth: It’s okay to lay it down.
You can go home now.
What Happened After
Hiroo Onoda returned to Japan a national curiosity.
Some saw him as a hero. Others saw him as a bit of an embarrassment.
He struggled to adapt to modern life, eventually moved to Brazil to raise cattle, then returned to Japan and opened a survival school for teenagers. He died in 2014 at the age of 91.
He said this was his final mission:
“I consider it my mission to educate people about how to deal with difficulties and to value life.”
Norio Suzuki kept going.
He found that panda in the wild.
Then he set out to find the Abominable Snowman.
He died in an avalanche in the Himalayas in 1986—still searching.
One man needed to stop fighting a war that no longer existed so that he could live.
The other died searching for something that never existed in the first place.
Wonderful retelling. I remember hearing the news when Onoda emerged.
My father was on Guam when the war ended. Some weeks later, he was filling a water truck at the edge of the jungle when a Japanese officer walked out with his translator to surrender. About a dozen men followed behind them. My dad drove them back to base with the officer and translator with him in the cab, and the others stood on the floorboards and clung to a kind of bin that wrapped around the tank — the bin that held their rifles.
Their dignity made a deep impression on him. And he recounted the story to me again when Mr. Onoda's story hit the news. Perhaps that gave my dad permission to quit fighting his demons two months later when he died.
So many stories you share with us - yours and those of others - make me tear up and want to say WOW! This is one of them!
I wish I could have shared this one with my late husband. He had areas in his life where he was stuck in unresolved things in his past. Before I decide that this story is for other people, I feel certain I need to sit with it awhile myself. So much has changed in my life since December of 2021 when a fairly routine surgery caused a rare side effect that caused my husband to have a spinal stroke which put him in a wheelchair. I became a full time caregiver until he passed away quite suddenly last September. I feel that since then I’ve been adrift with my only safe harbor being my wonderful memories of our 53 years together. There was a time when I would have said that my faith was my safe harbor but now it seems more of a quest than an anchor. I don’t know if I’m Hiroo or Norio. Maybe both. Thank you Joe, for sharing this story!