Show 62 - Supernova in the East I

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0:24December 7th, 1941. It's history. A date which will live in infamy. That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. The events.

0:49I take pride in the words, the figures. I've been a violiner. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this world. The drama. Game 6 to bad and urgent. Marine 6. Hour 2 has had a major explosion and what appears to be a complete collapse. The deep questions. I welcome this kind of examination

1:19because people have got to know whether or not their president's a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. If we dig deep in our history and our documents, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. It's hardcore history. We're not a steel cop. We're not a steel cop.

Hiro Onoda Story

1:37In 1944, when the Second World War is raging, especially in the Pacific, especially around the Philippines, a young Japanese soldier, a guy in his early 20s, is dropped off on one of the innumerable, heavily jungled Philippine islands and is told to do what he can to hamper allied activities in the area and to continue fighting until he hears orders to the contrary by the commanding officer

2:08who sent him on the mission.

2:11This soldier, Hiro Onoda, Asian Convention would switch that around and he'd be Onoda Hiro, will follow his orders until his commanding officer tells him he can lay down his weapons and he will eventually come out of the jungle into a clearing, hand over his sword, stand at attention while the guy who ordered him into that jungle in the first place formally dismisses him with honor.

2:41And this happened on the 9th of March, 1974.

2:481974. 29 years after the Second World War ended.

2:56This guy had been fighting, shooting at, being shot at, killing and injuring the locals for 30 years. 29 to be exact. When he came out of the jungle, he came out with hundreds of rounds of ammunition, a well-maintained working rifle, and hand grenades.

3:21The guy who dismissed him, his commanding officer, from 29 years previously, had to be flown in by the Japanese government. He was apparently a bookseller or something in civilian life. Now, imagine his surprise when a government official shows up at his offices and says, yeah, you know one of those soldiers you ordered into the Philippines 29 years ago? Yeah, he's still in there and he won't come out unless you come and tell him it's okay. He was found officially by like a kid, a hippie kid is what the soldier called him.

3:52Onoda called him a hippie kid who said he was looking for, I read somewhere he said he was looking for, wild pandas, meaning the existence of pandas in the wild, the abominable snowman, and Lieutenant Onoda.

4:06Now, lest you think that this is a once-in-a-lifetime Robinson Crusoe, shipwreck kind of anomaly,

4:16Hiro Onoda is not the only Japanese World War II soldier that surrenders in 1974.

4:24There's another one. In 1972, there was one. There were two in the 1960s. There were a bunch in the 1950s. And in the 1940s, after the war ended, sometimes whole units were still fighting. I believe it was almost three years after the war ended, a unit of a couple of hundred of these Japanese soldiers with their heavy weapons finally surrendered.

Japanese Culture

4:51What the hell is that? What accounts for that? And it's not just the Philippines. I mean, it was happening on places like Guam, for example, Saipan. I mean, there were people still running around the caves after the war in Iwo Jima. They were, I mean, it was fascinating that what you saw here didn't happen in the other theaters of war because the other theaters of war did not include the Japanese.

5:17One of the most fascinating, interesting cultures on the planet and what Japanese expert R. Taggart Murphy calls unquestionably the most distinctive of all modern industrial societies culture-wise. And it is a fascinating example of how we human beings can be molded and stretched and trimmed and shaved like a bonsai tree by the cultural influences into many different diverse versions

5:47of ourselves.

5:50Anyone who's a fan of National Geographic, for example, sees the many different colorful cultures and subcultures all over the world, right? The extreme differences of humankind and how wonderfully pliable we are to the cultural influences that, you know, determine how we like to dress, what we think is attractive, little marks of status, all kinds of things. Now, magnify that by all the eras humankind's ever been around, right? So not just the diversity of exotic different places

6:20all over the world, but all of those places all throughout history. And you can see that we've, well, probably tried just about everything as a species, wouldn't you think? And we've seen all kinds of different extreme versions of what we can become. I mean, take the physical version. I'm a fan of the people of the Eurasian Steppe and those tribes, as many of you know. Some of those tribes from time to time used to like to practice something known as head binding. It's sort of the counterpoint to foot binding in China, which was popular in some circles at some times, to keep the feet small

6:51and to have them develop a certain way. Well, same thing with heads. You see this in other parts of the world too, and sometimes cradles, for example, certain Native American tribes had cradles that would shape the head a certain way too. The point is, is that when the skull is pliable, when the person is young, you can shape that head sort of like a bonsai tree, if you will. And the Romans used to complain that the Huns looked monstrous to them. And I remember growing up thinking, wow, these Romans are really sensitive to seeing some people who maybe have slightly Asian features, thinking that that's monstrous.

7:21Well, now we have skulls that have come out of the ground, some of these tombs, some of these Kurgans where they buried some of these Huns. And some of these Huns have skulls that look like they're taken right out of an alien movie. Big, elongated skulls that go way far to the back. You wonder what they must have looked like with hair and skin. The point is, is if you were a Roman looking at them, you might have thought that they looked monstrous. However, if you were a young, comely, Hunnic noblewoman, you might have thought that guy looked hot.

7:53So it's all a question, right, of the cultural carrots and sticks and whatnot. And sometimes it's not things that are so visible on the outside. I mean, I think we all recognize that the vast majority of our makeup in terms of our attitudes and the way we think and the way we organize reality is probably going to be culturally determined. Now, I am a fan of extreme situations in history. and the country that produced guys

8:23like Hiroo Onoda were extreme. And the cultural carrots and sticks were designed to take many of the, you know, civic attitudes that most societies consider to be positives and turn them up to such a high level on the dial of intensity that they took a bunch of things that might be considered good in another context and made them dangerous. And how can your culture impact things like duty

8:54and honor and patriotism and a willingness to sacrifice and lay down one's life for the greater good? I mean, these are all things that most societies, you know, would figure out all sorts of cultural ways to encourage. I mean, how about just recognizing it? I mean, take, for example, a medal ceremony that might happen in the United States or an award, a citation.

9:26Somebody was extra brave or extra heroic or did something out of the ordinary and maybe you get a medal and when you get the medal, the person giving the award will say something like, you know, for heroism or bravery or sacrifice above and beyond the call of duty. above and beyond the call of duty. That right there is a recognition, right, that there are limits to what normal people can be asked to do in normal times, right? And if you exceed those expectations, go above and beyond the call of duty,

9:57you get a medal. But what if the cultural carrots and sticks in a given society have evolved in such a way so that there's almost nothing that is above and beyond the call of duty where the culture expects, encourages, and only approves of a level of sacrifice on the part of every man, woman, and child in that society that most other cultures reserve for their most

10:29elite military units.

10:33Welcome to the world that famed Japanese holdout hero Onoda was raised in.

10:41When Onoda got back to Japan in 1974, a ghost-written book of his remembrances was created. It's called No Surrender, My 30-Year War, and in it, he describes the Japan he was raised in. He says, quote, At that time, if a soldier who had been taken prisoner later managed to return to Japan, he was subject to a court-martial and a possible death penalty, even if the penalty was not carried out. He was so thoroughly ostracized by others that he might as well have been dead.

11:11Soldiers were supposed to give their lives for the cause, not grovel in enemy prison camps. General Hideki Tojo's instructions for the military said explicitly, he's now quoting the instructions, quote, He who would not disgrace himself must be strong. He must remember always the honor of his family and his community, and he must strive fervently to live up to their trust in him. Do not live in shame as a prisoner. Die and leave no ignominious crime behind you. End quote.

11:43When he leaves to go off to war, one of the things he takes with him is a family dagger that his mother says, if you're captured, use this to kill yourself with. And I tried to think of any other mother sending her son off to war in any other major power in the Second World War with that kind of advice. It's interesting, isn't it? A very distinctive, different culture.

12:06Now, some might have a counter-argument to this point that the reason these Japanese holdouts were continuing to hold out was for duty, honor, country, the emperor, that sort of thing, by pointing out that a bunch of these people said they didn't know the war was over. So maybe it's more of a sense of being isolated and not getting the news. But the counter-argument to that has to do with the fact that these people were often told explicitly in many different ways that the war was over and they chose not to believe it and they chose not to believe it because it clashed

12:37with their mental indoctrination into all this. I mean, for example, Hiro Onoda, he had family members flown in at high expense to the Japanese government because Hiro Onoda was still killing people in the Philippines after the war, right? He's not just sitting up there in the mountains by himself not bothering anybody. He killed 20 to 30 Filipinos. So that makes you want to tell this person in no uncertain terms and spend a little money to make it happen. Hey, you're killing people and the war's over. But Onoda didn't believe it. They left him newspapers.

13:07Here's how he puts it in the book written with him. Quote, The search party left behind newspapers and magazines. Most of them were recent and a lot of them contained articles about the crown prince's marriage. The newspapers, which covered a period of about four months, made a stack nearly two feet high. We, meaning the two other holdouts with him, we thought they were reprints of real Japanese newspapers doctored up by the American Secret Service in such a way as to eliminate any news that the Americans

13:38did not want us to see. This was all we could think so long as we believed that the greater East Asia war was still going on. And in a way, he writes, the newspapers confirmed that the war was still going on because they told a lot about life in Japan. If Japan had really lost the war, there should not be any life in Japan. Everybody should be dead. When I arrived in the Philippines in 1944, the war was going badly for Japan, he writes. And in the homeland, the phrase, 100 million souls

14:10dying for honor was on everybody's lips. This phrase meant literally that the population of Japan would die to a man before surrendering. I took this at face value and I am sure many other young Japanese men my age did. He says, I sincerely believe that Japan would not surrender so long as any one Japanese remained alive. Conversely, if one Japanese were left alive, Japan could not have surrendered. He continues, After all, this is what we Japanese had all vowed to each other. We had sworn

14:41that we would resist the American and English devils until the last single one of us was dead. If necessary, the women and children would resist with bamboo sticks. Trying to kill as many enemy troops as they could before being killed themselves. The wartime newspapers all played this idea up in the strongest possible language. Now quoting some of the slogans, one was, Struggle to the end. Another was, The empire must be protected at any cost. Another one was, One hundred million dying for the cause.

15:12He says, I was virtually brought up on this kind of talk. End quote.

15:19When Onoda got back to Japan, some of the things that I read and some of his later actions indicate that he was less than happy with what had become of Japan after the war was over in terms of their national values, their intensity level and whatnot.

15:37Now, I can speak from experience that in the 1970s, the rest of the world thought that Japan was still a very distinctive culture and very committed to, shall we call it the above and beyond the call of duty ethic? They seemed very intense about that always. It was something that they took very seriously. They were known for. In fact, other people really liked things like Japanese products because you knew that they were going to be intense about getting it done right. But to a guy raised by the standards of Onoda's era,

16:07this was not good. They lost something. And let me tell you what they probably lost and the rest of the world would consider this to be a good thing and I think modern Japanese would for the most part too. They weren't all prepared, every man, woman, and child, to sacrifice themselves anymore to the level of, you know, the world's greatest military units, right? Act like Spartan hoplites, die on command of the emperor like Spartan hoplites. These people in the modern Japanese world were much more sensible. But in Hiro Onoda's world,

16:38there's a level of insanity that's starting to happen and it's really complicated, but it kind of explains why the Japanese are this very distinctive, different major power in the Second World War and why there's certain unique elements to the Pacific War against Japan that just wasn't present in the other theaters because as we said, the Japanese weren't. Quick little rundown might explain some important things and by the way, Japanese culture is much debated as you would expect, extremely complicated

17:09and definitely a place to be left to experts. But let's just say there were some pretty obvious things that we should take note of that might help explain how you get such a distinctive people. And let me use a word here that I like. I like the word intense. I will point out my stepfather's generation and he fought in the Second World War. He believed that this regime and this government and this society that turned out a guy like Hiro Onoda was turning out fanatics. And that's a word that was much used

17:40amongst Allied troops. Fanatics. They are automatons. They're robots. And I should point out that wartime propaganda played into this, but Americans kind of had this image of both the German opponent in the Second World War and the Japanese opponent as robots. But different kind of robots. The German robot was like the Vision in the Avengers. Cold, robotic, mathematical, efficient, precise, and deadly because of it, right? But there's a coldness and a logical nature there.

18:12The Japanese is the other side of the robot spectrum. They're like foaming at the mouth crazy robots. They don't stop. You have to, their little finger will come after you if you leave that alone. I mean, they're ready to die for the emperor, excited to die for the emperor. They're a cartoon character that's extremely dangerous. And the word fanatic is a wonderful way to avoid having to look beneath the surface at any of the human motivations that might be involved. Right? A fanatic is just an A to B sort of knee jerk in terms of, you know, the depth that they need

18:42to be examined. But real people that might be extremely motivated or feel extreme pressure and societal and cultural coercion to do something, for example, fly an aircraft piloted by them suicidally into an enemy ship. Well, those people might have some really interesting motivations too, some interesting points of view. What do they think they're doing? What sort of a range of options and choices do they think they have?

19:12This becomes a much more human story when we realize two things. One, any of us could have been born there. There's a certain randomness, even if you believe in, you know, a deity selecting everything about you, they could have selected that you end up in Japan in the 1920s and go to school with Hiro Unoda. Besides that, there's a certain understanding that what happened in Japan can happen again. It will happen differently. It never looks the same. But look at the elements involved and wonder

19:43if you can't imagine them being filtered instead of through a Japanese cultural filter, the cultural filter of your society, but used the same way and turned to the same kind of uses and maybe turning out the same kind of intensity that the Japanese really seem to exude all throughout this story. Now, let me point out there's a wonderful phrase that was used by a rabbi to describe the Jewish people once, but I love it because I think it's a wonderful shorthand phrase that applies

20:14to a bunch of different, very distinctive people on the planet and the Japanese are certainly one of those. So I'm going to substitute the word Jews with Japanese for this, but the rabbi said the Japanese are like anyone else, only more so. Don't know if I got the exact wording correct, but the line is perfect because it denotes a level of intensity, right? They have all the same human qualities as you do, they just have them at a higher intensity level, right? You think you're a good gardener and your garden looks dumb when you're done, you know, raking it and taking care of it?

20:44Well, go look at a Japanese garden, you'll feel like you didn't do anything, right? The intensity with which they pay attention even to the little lines in the dirt. I mean, what happens if you take this intensity too far? Dial it up too high? Even if what we're talking about being intense about are things that you normally consider to be positives in a, you know, less intense level. I mean, you got patriotism, you got duty, you got love of country, sacrifice for the state, I mean, all these things that so many people today would consider positives.

21:15How high do you have to turn the dial up on the intensity level though before they backfire on you? I know we already have one superhero reference in this conversation because it just happened, didn't it? But I got another one only because the Japanese holdouts to me, isn't that sort of like a Japanese version of the Captain America backstory, right? He goes, he's a second world war person from the 40s, gets put to sleep essentially, gets awakened in the modern world and is continually contrasting, you know, the last thing he sort of remembered

21:46in his mind, it was like last week he was in the 40s with the world he finds now and the values and all these modern different things. Well, aren't all these holdouts who are like gone for decades, aren't they all like Captain Japans in that sense?

21:58I mean, the Japan of the 1970s, despite the rock music, the blue jeans and the longer hair that would have been on display for this Japanese war veteran, but the Japanese of the 1970s were still like everyone else, only more so, but in the eyes of someone like Onoda, it seems his attitude was not more so enough. Now,

Comparing Eras

22:22let's acknowledge a few things right away. The first thing is it's one of the oldest tropes in history that people look back and pine away for a golden age that they missed that really never existed, and old people do this anyway, so you've probably got some of that going on. Let me also say that I know from personal experience, because it's the era I grew up in, that in 1974, there were a lot of World War II veterans from the United States of America that didn't look too fondly on the direction American culture was going, or think that the

22:52intensity level of devotion to ideas like duty and honor and patriotism and self-sacrifice was strong enough in the American culture of those days, so in a funny way, these bitter opponents in the Second World War, the Japanese Imperial Army, and the U.S. military would have had something in common if they were reminiscing about the kids today, you know, in the early to mid-1970s, and yet on the surface, there does seem to be a little something different, doesn't there, from the Japanese to the Allied perspective?

23:24If you're pining away for the Golden Age on the Allied side, you're pining away for the things that brought you victory, right? If the kids today, you know, had more honor, patriotism, love of country, you know, we could do great things, remember what we did in the war, we won the war, but the Japanese didn't win the war. The war was a tragedy for them on so many levels, so why would you look back on the values that kind of made you the kind of country you were that you could fight a war like that fondly if

23:54that's what it led to?

23:57Well, perhaps the devil's advocate counter-argument here is that, yes, while these specific values and the intensity of the era, you know, on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being most intense, the Japanese during the era, Hiro Onoda's growing up in, are at an 11, and yes, that got them into trouble eventually and led to, you know, Japan's downfall as a great power, but the counter-argument that could be made is Japan never would have been a great power had it not been for the very specific, distinctive nature of

24:28the Japanese, and let's understand, this is a people not quite unique, but darn near unique in the period of colonial domination by the colonial powers of the Western world that managed to avoid that. they did not avoid it because anybody was going soft on anyone else, or because Japan wasn't a tempting target to snap up, they avoided it because they created the kind of society and military that made it impossible for somebody to snap them up, and they did this while

24:59coming from way