The past came back to haunt a Japanese World War II straggler on Tuesday when angry Filipinos demanded he pay families of people he allegedly killed while hiding in a jungle for 29 years after Japan's surrender.
Police seized placards from about 20 protesters as other residents handed out a manifesto branding ex-lieutenant Hiroo Onoda a "criminal" on his return to Lubang island for the first time in 22 years.A local council in the island's Looc township also passed a resolution demanding Onoda compensate families of several people he supposedly killed as a straggler hiding from capture.
In a dramatic moment in Looc, Onoda embraced a villager who officials said the Japanese had shot for straying near his jungle hideout. Onoda then frowned and turned away when the man, now 81, raised his shirt to show the old soldier his wounds.
"When I embraced him, I remembered the war. I shivered. It was just like a flashback . . . That should never happen again," Onoda, now 74, said through an interpreter after meeting 81-year-old Candido Tria.
"Maybe he entered the jungle, our hideout without precaution. It was so sudden. I feel very sorry for what has happened."
Onoda came to terms with history on March 10, 1974, when he emerged on a moonlit night from his hideout and, dressed in a crumpled Japanese army uniform, saluted a Philippine general and handed him his scabbard in a final act of surrender.
On Tuesday, Onoda came back dressed in a blue suit, armed not with a sword or rifle but a video recorder, a camera and an envelope filled with $10,000 in cash.
The money, he told West Mindoro provincial governor Josephine Ramirez Sato, was for the education of Lubanng children.
Sato had invited Onoda to visit Lubang as a sign of renewed friendship between the Japanese and Filipino peoples.
In Tilik village, where Onoda laid a wreath at a peace shrine celebrating friendship between Japan and the Philippines, about 20 protesters appeared with placards protesting his visit.
Police shooed them off and took their signs before Onoda arrived.
The manifesto from a group of Lubang residents denounced him as "a so-called hero (who) hid for a long time in our mountains and spread terror among our people."
"We know (him) to be a killer, a criminal, a thief but most of all a cowardly soldier of Japan," it said.
Onoda was the only survivor among a small group of Japanese soldiers on Lubang who failed to surrender as the war ended, claiming they had not heard of Japan's defeat. After his surrender Onoda returned to Japan, then went on to Brazil where he managed a ranch. Later, back in Japan, he opened a nature camp for children.