72: Last Man Standing: Hiroo Onoda Finally Surrenders (Part 3)

An Old Timey Podcast

True Crime, History, Comedy

4.9 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 17 September 2025

⏱️ 85 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It took countless efforts and nearly three decades to convince Second Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda that World War II was over. When those efforts finally paid off, Hiroo Onoda went home to Japan. He received a hero’s welcome. But did he deserve it?

Remember, kids, history hoes always cite their sources! For this episode, Norm pulled from:

Allyra Crowdfunding. “Donation Page by Searching For Onoda.” https://searchingforonodadoc.allyrafundraising.com/campaigns/9769.

“Bushido and Japanese Atrocities in World War II.” Michael Fassbender, May 2, 2015. https://michaeltfassbender.com/nonfiction/the-world-wars/big-picture/bushido-and-japanese-atrocities-in-world-war-ii/.

“Domitable Myth: Three Depictions of Japanese Holdout Soldier Hiroo Onoda | International Documentary Association.” May 17, 2023. https://www.documentary.org/online-feature/domitable-myth-three-depictions-japanese-holdout-soldier-hiroo-onoda.

New York Times. “Hiroo Onoda, Soldier Who Hid in Jungle for Decades, Dies at 91” March 28, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/18/world/asia/hiroo-onoda-imperial-japanese-army-officer-dies-at-91.html.

Onoda, Hiroo. No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War. Naval Institute Press, 1999.

“Onoda: The Man Who Hid in the Jungle for 30 Years.” April 14, 2022. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220413-onoda-the-man-who-hid-in-the-jungle-for-30-years.

Sims, Watson. “You’re a Better Man, Hiroo.” Battle Creek Enquirer, March 17, 1974.

The Record (New Jersey). “‘I Have Done My Best,’ Japanese Holdout Says.” March 11, 1974.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hear ye, hear ye, you are listening to an old-timey podcast. I'm Norman Caruso.
0:06.8	And I'm Kristen Caruso. And on this episode, it's the finale of my series on Hiro Onoda,
0:12.7	the Japanese soldier who wouldn't surrender. Okay, Norm, I'm excited. Oh, and just a quick word
0:18.9	to anyone who has the video version of this podcast.
0:22.1	You know who you are.
0:23.0	You're on Patreon, like a smart person would be.
0:27.0	We appear to be recording this in an interrogation room.
0:31.4	Or from heaven.
0:32.8	Do you think this is what heaven looks like?
0:34.3	Well, it's very white down here.
0:36.3	Your grandparents' basement is what heaven looks like. My God. Well, anyway, we are recording from Michigan. And Norm, I'm not even going to let you talk about your series yet. I'm going to jump straight to the Patreon plug because I have something urgent to say. Okay. All right. Beep, beep, beep, did, you know, this is breaking news. Oh, wow. Yeah,
0:55.9	I don't know if you can help me out. Can you throw a sound bite in there? Oh, yeah, okay. Breaking news.
1:01.7	What do you got, Kristen? Listen, everyone, if you're driving, you might want to pull over because you're
1:06.9	going to shed a tear. Okay. When we packed to come to Michigan, I knew we'd be here
1:12.2	for a while and I thought, you know what? I'm going to pack carefully and smartly, brilliantly.
1:19.2	At one point in my packing, I looked at my jeans and I thought to myself, I've got to figure out
1:25.2	which pair of jeans I'm taking up with me to Michigan. Guess what,
1:29.0	listener? I ended up taking zero because that's as far as the thought process went. I could
1:34.4	have sworn I made a decision. I didn't make a decision. Now, you're asking yourself, why is this
1:38.6	relevant to me? I'll tell you why. My husband's not allowing me to buy new jeans in Michigan. He says, he says, we have to use
1:47.7	the money from new Patreon sign-ups to afford a new pair of trousers for me. It's true and it's sad,
1:56.2	and it's making you go over to patreon.com slash old-timey podcast. This is why you had people pull over on the highway. That's why they're pulled over. They're crying now, but now they have a solution to this problem. They feel so bad for me. They're like, is she just porky pig in it? Basically. She might be in Michigan. It gets cold sometimes. They don't want that. they want to go to patreon.com slash old-timey podcast where they will get a monthly bonus episode. They're going to love it. It's a video episode. Plus they can get ad-free episodes of the podcast, video episodes of every single episode of this podcast. They can get a card with our autographs. Oh, and a sticker. Where will you put it?
	...

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