Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.

What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. You're listening to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me

Vicky Foncombe. I'm taking you back to 1974 when Hiru Onada became the last Japanese soldier to surrender nearly 30 years after the end of the Second World War.

It's March 1974 and huge crowds are waiting at Tokyo Airport

waving Japanese flags.

The plane doors open and a small wiry man appears waving at the spectators.

And at the bottom of the steps his elderly father and mother are waiting.

Thank God you've come back alive, she says.

The last time she saw her son, he was 22 years old.

Now he is 52.

Heu Onada has spent the last 29 years hiding in the dense jungle in Lubang Island in the Philippines,

refusing to believe that World War II was over.

Within a few weeks of his return,

Honoredo would receive a hundred proposals of marriage from awestruck women.

To a nation still coming to terms with the shame of defeat,

here was a man who had defiantly

proclaimed, no surrender.

For many years, Haru refused to give interviews about his time in the jungle,

...