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.
In 1613 a samurai from Sendai set out to Mexico in a galleon built for the mission to meet the King of Spain and the Pope. Hasekura Tsunenaga's embassy took seven years, crossed Mexico and the ocean, and came home to a Japan that was closing its doors to Christianity.
The route follows him from the port of Tsukinoura through Acapulco, Mexico City, Havana, Madrid, Saint-Tropez and Rome, then back via Manila to Nagasaki. Japanese dates are given in the Gregorian calendar. Most pins mark towns or harbours, not documented buildings.
On 20 September 1519 five ships and about 270 men sailed from Spain to find a western sea road to the Spice Islands. Magellan died in the Philippines, but Juan Sebastián Elcano brought the Victoria home three years later with eighteen survivors and 26 tons of spices, having sailed all the way around the world.
The route follows the voyage from the mouth of the Guadalquivir past Port St. Julian, through the strait and across the Pacific to the Moluccas, then home past the Cape of Good Hope. Anchorages are often unrecorded, so most pins mark the nearest known place; the dates come from Pigafetta's journal and modern accounts.
