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believe it. He told Suzuki he would never surrender until he received specific orders to that effect from his superior officer.
    Only now did the Japanese government get involved in trying to bring Onoda’s war to an end. They managed to locate his previous commanding officer, Major Taniguchi, who was fortunately still alive. The major was flown to Lubang Island in order to tell Onoda in person to lay down his weapons.
    He was finally successful on 9 March 1974. ‘Japan,’ he said to Onoda, ‘had lost the war and all combat activity was to cease immediately.’
    Onoda was officially relieved from military duties and told to hand over his rifle, ammunition and hand grenades. He was both stunned and horrified by what Major Taniguchi had told him. ‘We really lost the war!’ were his first words. ‘How could they [the Japanese army] have been so sloppy?’
    When he returned to Japan, he was feted as a national hero. But Onoda disliked the attention and found Japan a mere shadow of the noble imperial country he had served for so many years. He felt sure that if more soldiers had been prepared to fight to the bitter end, just like him, then Japan might have won the war.

 
    8
    The Kamikaze Pilot Who Survived
    They were almost the same age – two young Japanese pilots who had joined the elite Tokkotai Special Attack Squadron. Now they had volunteered their services as kamikaze fighters prepared to sacrifice their lives for Japan.
    It was spring 1945. Shigeyoshi Hamazono and Kiyoshi Ogawa were about to embark on their final mission, a devastating attack on American warships based in the waters around Okinawa.
    Operation Kikusui was planned as a rolling wave of kamikaze attacks involving more than 1,500 planes. But the mission did not go entirely to plan, as Shigeyoshi Hamazono was soon to discover.
    Hamazono had volunteered to serve in the Japanese military after the bombing of Pearl Harbour in December 1941. His mother was appalled: ‘She wrote me a letter with the only words she could manage: “Don’t be defeated. Don’t die.”’ This injunction seemed a forlorn one, for Hamazono was selected to take part in Operation Kikusui.
    Service in the Special Attack Squadrons was supposed to be entirely voluntary. The pilots in Hamazono’s group had previously been given a recruitment form and told to mark it with a circle if they volunteered, or a cross if they declined.
    â€˜Three men marked a cross,’ recalled Hamazono, ‘and they were forced to go anyway. I felt hatred towards those officers who made them go like that.’
    Hamazono himself was given little choice when nominated for Operation Kikusui. He was called by the commander and told that he’d been selected for the following day’s attack.
    â€˜As a military pilot, there was no way to say no … It was my duty. That night, all I thought about was my mission.’
    He had already survived one abortive suicide mission: his plane had developed technical failure and he had been forced to return to base. Now he was despatched on what was supposed to be his final attack. He climbed into his Mitsubishi Zero fighter, knowing that he would never see his family again.
    Before heading out towards the US fleet, he flew over his hometown and dropped a hachimaki headband with the words: ‘Hope you are well, goodbye’. It was a symbolic farewell.
    His comrade-in-arms, Kiyoshi Ogawa, was rather more enthusiastic. He had been desperate to join the kamikaze squadron and was looking forward to the attack. He had no second thoughts as he climbed into his plane for his final mission.
    Ogawa was one of the first to approach the American ships. As he did so, his plane came under sustained anti-aircraft fire. Undaunted, he kept flying directly towards his target, the American aircraft carrier USS Bunker Hill . When he was overhead, he pushed his plane into a steep dive, simultaneously dropping a