Japanese soldier to return to hideout

TOKYO -- (AP) -- A Japanese soldier who refused to accept Japan's surrender and remained on a tiny Philippine island for 29 years after World War II ended is planning to revisit his jungle hideout for the first time.

Former army Lt. Hiroo Onoda decided to make the trip after repeated invitations by the local governor, said Ichiro Suetsugu, a World War II veteran who went to the Philippines in the early 1970s to try to persuade Onoda to leave.

The trip is scheduled for May 20-25.

Onoda, 74, directs a children's nature camp in northern Japan. Trained as an intelligence officer, Onoda was sent in December 1944 to Lubang, a tiny island 90 miles southwest of Manila, with orders to spy on the U.S. military.

He refused to believe Japan had surrendered when American forces landed on Lubang in 1945 and remained in hiding in the jungle until 1974.

After the war ended, Onoda and two other soldiers who remained with him occasionally skirmished with local villagers and Philippine troops.

One companion was killed by Philippine soldiers searching the island in 1945, and the other died in a gunfight with local farmers in 1972. That set off a series of search missions by Japan, but Onoda, believing it was an enemy ploy, refused to come out.

Finally, on March 10, 1974, Onoda, dressed in his Imperial Army uniform, stepped out of the jungle to receive the order to stop fighting from his former superior, who had traveled to the Philippines.

During his visit to the Philippines, Onoda is to meet with President Fidel Ramos in Manila and visit a children's camp on Mindoro island, Suetsugu said.

A Mindoro provincial official, David Colarina, said Onoda had expressed concern about local sentiment against him, but accepted the invitation when he was told most Lubang residents want him to come back.