O for me today is for Onoda. In case you don’t know who he is, I don’t blame you one bit. If you are a World War freak like me, you might remember that Hiroo Onoda of the Imperial Japanese Army was one of the last to surrender. Some days ago there was a discussion about the Second World War amongst my group of friends. The question of discipline, service to a cause, and patriotism as defined by themselves came up for discussion. When we spoke of the determination of the Japanese, for example, to fight to the very end, we had to talk about Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier who fought on long after Japan had officially surrendered. He finally surrendered in 1974.
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