The Japanese Soldier Who Would Not Surrender

31"Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. 33In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple (Luke 14:31-33).

Some are waging a war of resistance against the Kingdom of God. They recognize His call on their lives, yet something within them wants to keep God at a distance. Some fear the changes that come with becoming a Christian. Yes, your life will change when you surrender to the King of Kings, but what is the alternative? Do you want your life to continue as it has? It would be wise to consider the option of surrender. How long will you resist what King Jesus desires to do in your life? Unconditional surrender is required. It is best to give up everything to become all you can be in Christ. Only when you surrender to Christ can He start transforming you into His image.

During the later stages of the Second World War, a Japanese soldier named Hiroo Onoda was ordered to conduct a guerrilla campaign against American forces on the island of Lubang in the Philippines. He had to persist in the fight until Japanese forces returned for him. When the island fell to the Americans, he adhered to his orders and continued battling alongside three other soldiers. They survived by eating coconuts and green bananas that grew naturally in the jungle.

Occasionally, they would emerge from hiding, killing one of the local villagers' cows for meat. During one such instance, they discovered a note left by a local resident, urging them to surrender, as the war had ended two years prior. The soldiers perceived it as a clever propaganda ploy meant to draw them out of the jungle for capture. They regarded the announcement of the Japanese surrender with skepticism and disbelief and continued to kill and wound the islanders whom they saw as the enemy. In September 1949, four years after the war ended, one of the soldiers stealthily left during the night without informing the others and surrendered. The remaining three believed he was weak-willed and coerced by the ‘enemy.’ They carried on with their guerrilla attacks for another three years until Corporal Shimada was shot in the leg during a confrontation with some fishermen. He died at the age of 40.

For nineteen years, Onoda and the remaining soldier, Kozuka, continued the fight, refusing to surrender. They believed that the Japanese Army would return, as promised, to recapture the island. Nineteen years after Shimada's death, in October 1972, 51-year-old Kozuka was killed by a Filipino police patrol, marking the end of his 27-year guerrilla war. Lieutenant Onoda persisted in the fight alone, dismissing any information that suggested the war was over and that he should surrender. The Japanese authorities dispatched search parties, but he evaded them all.

In 1974, Norio Suzuki, a Japanese college student, managed to track him down. Still, Onoda refused to surrender, explaining that he would only do so to his old commander, Major Taniguchi, who had given him orders to fight on and never give up. Major Taniguchi went to Penang himself and told him that Japan had surrendered many years earlier and that it was futile to continue fighting. When the reality of the truth sank in that peace had come and he had been deceived into fighting a war that was over, he broke down weeping. Onoda formally surrendered to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos in 1974. He was pardoned for his crimes under the false belief that the war was still being fought and that he should never surrender. He returned to Japan to receive a hero's welcome. His memoirs were entitled "No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War."

Lieutenant Onoda fought gallantly for a lost cause. Throughout his 30-year war, he killed 30 individuals and wounded over a hundred more. If only he had listened; if only his fellow citizens from Japan had gone to find him earlier, many families would not have been in mourning. Much pain was endured because he did not surrender. How about you? How much pain has your family suffered because you have been unwilling to yield to Christ? Can you hear the call to surrender? If so, today is your day to surrender fully to His grace. Keith Thomas

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