Hiroo Onoda, the Japanese soldier who kept fighting on Lubang Island in the Philippines until 1974, is traced here from the Nakano School in Tokyo to Lubang's mountains and Manila's Malacañang Palace.
Sent to Lubang on 26 December 1944 with orders never to surrender, Onoda stayed in hiding for 28 years, 6 months and 8 days after Japan's surrender. The route follows his training, his years in the hills, his surrender in March 1974 and a disputed return visit in 1996. Several locations are approximate, and accounts of the violence on the island are contested.
The Boshin War ran from Kyoto to Hakodate in eighteen months: the battlefield at Toba, Edo Castle, the hill of Ueno, Aizu's castle and Goryōkaku. In January 1868 the young emperor was declared ruler in fact as well as name, ending more than 250 years of Tokugawa rule, and the last shogun's supporters fought on until a breakaway republic made its last stand.
The route follows that war in six places, all of them visitable: the battlefield at Toba, Edo Castle, the hill of Ueno, Aizu's castle and the hill where its teenage soldiers died, and Goryōkaku. Dates are given in the Western calendar, converted from the Japanese lunar dates used at the time.
