TOKYO (AP) — Hiroo Onoda, the last Japanese imperial soldier to emerge from hiding and surrender 29 years after the end of World War II, has died. He was 91. 
 
 FILE - In this May 20, 1996 file photo, former Japanese straggler Hiroo Onoda holds a picture of himself, taken for the first time when he came out of hiding from the jungle, during a news conference... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this May 20, 1996 file photo, former Japanese straggler Hiroo Onoda answers questions from media during a news conference in a Manila hotel upon arrival for a sentimental journey. Onoda, the... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this March 10, 1974 file photo, Hiroo Onoda, wearing his 30-year-old imperial army uniform, cap and sword, salutes to the Philippine Air Force on arrival at a radar site on Lubang Island, Philippines,... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this March, 1974 file photo, Hiroo Onoda, wearing his 30-year-old imperial army uniform, cap and sword, walks down a slope as he heads for a helicopter landing site on Lubang Island for a flight... (Associated Press) 
 
 Onoda died Thursday at a Tokyo hospital after a brief stay there. Chief government spokesman Yoshihide Suga on Friday expressed his condolences, praising Onoda for his strong will to live and indomitable spirit. 
 
 "After World War II, Mr. Onoda lived in the jungle for many years and when he returned to Japan, I felt that finally, the war was finished. That's how I felt," Suga said. 
 
 Onoda was an intelligence officer who came out of hiding on Lubang island in the Philippines in March 1974, on his 52nd birthday. He surrendered only when his former commander flew there to reverse his 1945 orders to stay behind and spy on American troops. 
 
 Onoda and another World War II holdout, Sgt. Shoichi Yokoi, who emerged from the jungle in 1972, received massive heroes' welcomes upon returning home. 
 
 In his formal surrender to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Onoda wore his 30-year-old imperial army uniform, cap and sword, all still in good condition. 
 
 After the initial sensation of his return wore off, Onoda bought a ranch in Brazil. He later was head of a children's nature school in northern Japan. 
 
 "I don't consider those 30 years a waste of time," Onoda said in a 1995 interview with The Associated Press. "Without that experience, I wouldn't have my life today." 
 
 Onoda worked for a Japanese trading firm in Shanghai after finishing high school in 1939. Three years later, he was drafted and trained at a military academy. 
 
 In December 1944, he was sent to Lubang, about 150 kilometers (90 miles) southwest of Manila. Most other Japanese soldiers surrendered when U.S. troops landed on Lubang in February 1945, though hundreds remained missing for years after the war. 
 
 As he struggled to feed himself, Onoda's mission became one of survival. He stole rice and bananas from local people down the hill, and shot their cows to make dried beef, triggering occasional shooting at each other. 
 
 The turning point came on Feb. 20, 1974, when he met a young globe-trotter, Norio Suzuki, who ventured to Lubang in pursuit of Onoda. 
 
 Suzuki returned to Japan and contacted the government, which located Onoda's superior — Maj. Yoshimi Taniguchi — and flew him to Lubang to deliver his surrender order in person. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writer Mari Yamaguchi contributed to this report. ||||| Hiroo Onoda, an Imperial Japanese Army officer who remained at his jungle post on an island in the Philippines for 29 years, refusing to believe that World War II was over, and returned to a hero’s welcome in the all but unrecognizable Japan of 1974, died on Thursday in Tokyo. He was 91. 
 
 His death, at a hospital there, was announced by the Japanese government. 
 
 Caught in a time warp, Mr. Onoda, a second lieutenant, was one of the war’s last holdouts: a soldier who believed that the emperor was a deity and the war a sacred mission; who survived on bananas and coconuts and sometimes killed villagers he assumed were enemies; who finally went home to the lotus land of paper and wood which turned out to be a futuristic world of skyscrapers, television, jet planes and pollution and atomic destruction. 
 
 Japanese history and literature are replete with heroes who have remained loyal to a cause, especially if it is lost or hopeless, and Lieutenant Onoda, a small, wiry man of dignified manner and military bearing, seemed to many like a samurai of old, ultimately offering his sword as a gesture of surrender to President Ferdinand E. Marcos of the Philippines, who returned it to him. 
 
 And his homecoming, with roaring crowds, celebratory parades and speeches by public officials, stirred his nation with a pride that many Japanese had found lacking in the postwar years of rising prosperity and materialism. His ordeal of deprivation may have seemed a pointless waste to much of the world, but in Japan it was a moving reminder of the redemptive qualities of duty and perseverance. 
 
 It happened with a simple command. As he related in a memoir after he went home, Lieutenant Onoda’s last order in early 1945 was to stay and fight. Loyal to a military code that taught that death was preferable to surrender, he remained behind on Lubang Island, 93 miles southwest of Manila, when Japanese forces withdrew in the face of an American invasion. 
 
 After Japan surrendered, that September, thousands of Japanese soldiers were scattered across China, Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific. Many stragglers were captured or went home, while hundreds went into hiding rather than surrender or commit suicide. Many died of starvation or sickness. A few survivors refused to believe the dropped leaflets and radio announcements saying the war had been lost. 
 
 Lieutenant Onoda, an intelligence officer trained in guerrilla tactics, and three enlisted men with him found leaflets proclaiming the war’s end, but believed they were enemy propaganda. They built bamboo huts, pilfered rice and other food from a village and killed cows for meat; they were tormented by tropical heat, rats and mosquitoes, and they patched their uniforms and kept their rifles in working order. 
 
 Considering themselves to be at war, they evaded American and Filipino search parties and attacked islanders they took to be enemy guerrillas; about 30 inhabitants were killed in skirmishes with the Japanese over the years. One of the enlisted men surrendered to Filipino forces in 1950, and two others were shot dead, one in 1954 and another in 1972, by island police officers searching for the renegades. 
 
 The last holdout, Lieutenant Onoda, officially declared dead in 1959, was found by Norio Suzuki, a student searching for him, in 1974. The lieutenant rejected Mr. Suzuki’s pleas to go home, insisting he was still awaiting orders. Mr. Suzuki returned with photographs, and the Japanese government sent a delegation, including the lieutenant’s brother and his former commander, to relieve him of duty formally. 
 
 “I am sorry I have disturbed you for so long a time,” Lieutenant Onoda told his brother, Toshiro. 
 
 In Manila, the lieutenant, wearing his tattered uniform, presented his sword to President Marcos, who pardoned him for crimes committed while he thought he was at war. 
 
 He was already a national hero when he arrived in Tokyo, met by his aging parents and huge flag-waving crowds. More than patriotism or admiration for his grit, his jungle saga, which had dominated the news in Japan for days, evoked waves of nostalgia and melancholy. The 52-year-old soldier — a ghost from the past in a new blue suit, close-cropped military haircut and wispy mustache and chin whiskers — spoke earnestly of duty, and seemed to personify a devotion to traditional values that many Japanese thought had been lost. 
 
 “I was fortunate that I could devote myself to my duty in my young and vigorous years,” he said. Asked what had been on his mind all that time in the jungle, he said, “Nothing but accomplishing my duty.” 
 
 In an editorial, The Mainichi Shimbun, a leading Tokyo newspaper, said: “To this soldier, duty took precedence over personal sentiments. Onoda has shown us that there is much more in life than just material affluence and selfish pursuits. There is the spiritual aspect, something we may have forgotten.” 
 
 After his national welcome in Japan, Mr. Onoda was examined by doctors, who found him in amazingly good condition. He was given a military pension and signed a $160,000 contract for a ghostwritten memoir, “No Surrender: My-Thirty Year War.” As his story went global in books, articles and documentaries, he tried to lead a normal life. 
 
 He went dancing, took driving lessons and traveled up and down the Japanese islands. But he found himself a stranger in a strange land, disillusioned with materialism and overwhelmed by changes. “There are so many tall buildings and automobiles in Tokyo,” he said. “Television might be convenient, but it has no influence on my life here.” 
 
 In 1975 he moved to a Japanese colony in São Paulo, Brazil, where he raised cattle. The following year he married Machie Onuku, a Japanese tea-ceremony teacher. The couple returned to Japan in 1984 and founded the Onoda Nature School, a survival-skills youth camp. Mr. Onoda revisited Lubang, the site of his long holdout, in 1996 and gave $10,000 to a school there. In recent years he lived in Japan and in Brazil, where he was made an honorary citizen in 2010. 
 
 Hiroo Onoda was born on March 19, 1922, in Kainan, Wakayama, in central Japan, one of seven children of Tanejiro and Tamae Onoda. At 17 he went to work for a trading company in Wuhan, China, which Japanese forces had occupied in 1938. In 1942 he joined the Japanese Army, was singled out for special training and attended the Nakano School, the army’s training center for intelligence officers. He studied guerrilla warfare, philosophy, history, martial arts, propaganda and covert operations. 
 
 It was in late December 1944 that he arrived on Lubang, a strategic island 16 miles long and 6 miles wide on the southwestern approach to Manila Bay and the island of Corregidor. His orders were to sabotage harbor installations and an airstrip to disrupt a coming American invasion. But superior officers on the island superseded those orders to focus on preparations for a Japanese evacuation. 
 
 When American forces landed on Feb. 28, 1945, and the last Japanese fled or were killed, Maj. Yoshimi Taniguchi gave Lieutenant Onoda his final orders, to stand and fight. “It may take three years, it may take five, but whatever happens we’ll come back for you,” the major promised. 
 
 Twenty-nine years later, the retired major, by then a bookseller, returned to Lubang at Tokyo’s request to fulfill his promise. Japan had lost the war, he said, and the lieutenant was relieved of duty. The ragged soldier saluted and wept. ||||| Tokyo (CNN) As Japan prepares to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II , one of its largest corporations has given a long-awaited apology for wartime atrocities. 
 
 At a ceremony in Los Angeles on Sunday, a representative for Mitsubishi Materials Corporation apologized for using captured American soldiers as slave laborers. 
 
 Mitsubishi Materials is the first private corporation to express such remorse, although the Japanese government has made repeated apologies. 
 
 The solemn act of contrition comes far too late for most victims. Mitsubishi says it was only able to locate two living survivors. But former prisoner of war James Murphy warmly accepted the apology, which comes just weeks before the August 15th anniversary of Japan's 1945 surrender. 
 
 Murphy, a 94-year-old American, was in his early 20s when he became a Japanese prisoner of war during World War II. He said he was "elated" by the apology, which he had waited to hear in the seven decades since he was freed. 
 
 Murphy says he survived horrific conditions as a forced laborer for Mitsubishi Materials' predecessor Mitsubishi Mining Co., which supplied materials used to manufacture, among other things, Mitsubishi's feared Zero fighter aircraft used by the Japanese Navy from 1940 to 1945. 
 
 38 photos: World War II in pictures German troops march through occupied Warsaw, Poland, after invading the nation on September 1, 1939, and igniting World War II. Hide Caption 1 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures German Chancellor Adolf Hitler speaks to Nazi party officials in 1939, the year of the German blitzkrieg into Poland. Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Belgium soon fell under German control. When France came under occupation less than a year later, Britain was the only remaining Western European nation fighting the Third Reich, and the United States had not yet entered the war. Hide Caption 2 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures In Asia, Japanese troops occupy a strategic point on Chusan Island on July 14,1939, during the Sino-Japanese War. Japan signed the Tripartite Pact in 1940, formally allying with Germany and Italy, and by 1942 most of the Asian Pacific Rim had come under its domination. Hide Caption 3 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures German soldiers on the Esplanade du Trocadero view the Eiffel Tower. In June 1940, German troops marched into Paris, forcing France to capitulate and establish the pro-Axis Vichy French government. Hide Caption 4 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures British Hawker Hurricanes fly in formation during the Battle of Britain in 1940. The planes were a first line of defense against German bombers attacking England. The battle, fought between July 10 and October 31, 1940, was the first major battle to be won in the air. The Royal Air Force's victory thwarted Hitler's plans for invading Britain. Hide Caption 5 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures Smoke rises behind Tower Bridge during the first mass daylight bombing of London on September 7, 1940. Hide Caption 6 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, left, with Hitler, center, and other leading Nazis, visits Germany during the war. Italy and Germany formed an alliance before the outbreak of war, but Italy remained a non-belligerent until June 10, 1940, when it declared war on Britain and France. Fighting spread to Greece and North Africa. Hide Caption 7 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures German tanks and infantry attack Soviet positions on the Eastern Front. On June 22, 1941, Germany broke its Non-Aggression Pact with the Soviet Union, launching the bloodiest theater of the war. Though the estimates vary greatly, Russia suffered the most war casualties of any nation in World War II -- as many as 13.8 million military deaths. Estimates of civilian deaths from military action, crimes against humanity, starvation and disease are as high as 9 million. Hide Caption 8 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures A view of U.S. ships in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, after the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941. The USS West Virginia and USS Tennessee are in the foreground. The attack destroyed more than half the fleet of aircraft and damaged or destroyed eight battleships. Japan also attacked Clark and Iba airfields in the Philippines, destroying more than half the U.S. Army's aircraft there. Hide Caption 9 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the declaration of war against Japan on December 8, 1941. Italy and Germany immediately declared war on the United States, and on December 11, Roosevelt signed the U.S. declarations of war against those nations. Hide Caption 10 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures British prisoners of war leave Hong Kong for a Japanese prison camp in December 1941. Hide Caption 11 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures Anti-aircraft fire glows over Algiers during a night raid on November 23, 1942. In 1942, the Allies stopped the Axis advance in North Africa and the Soviet Union. Hide Caption 12 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures Black smoke rises from demolished buildings after Japanese air forces attacked the U.S. Navy base on Midway Atoll during the Battle of Midway in June 1942. The four-day battle became a major victory for the U.S. Navy, which sunk four Japanese aircraft carriers, and it marked a turning point in the war in the Pacific. Hide Caption 13 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures Balloon operators from Britain's Women's Auxiliary Air Force, or WAAF, report for inspection in a hangar used to store balloons, at a facility in the UK. During World War II, women played a significant role in the war effort. They took jobs in "defense plants and volunteered for war-related organizations, in addition to managing their households," according to the World War II museum in New Orleans. Hide Caption 14 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures British troops land near Algiers, Algeria, during Operation Torch in November 1942. Operation Torch was the British-American invasion of Vichy-held French North Africa, and marked the first major action by the Western allies against the German army. Hide Caption 15 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures Soviet soldiers advance against the German army during the Battle of Stalingrad. The battle for the city on the Volga River (present-day Volgograd) was a major defeat for Germany and a turning point in the war. The battle lasted more than five months, ending in February 1943, at the cost of at least 160,000 German soldiers killed or captured. However, even conservative estimates of Russian casualties are much higher. Hide Caption 16 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures German prisoners captured at the beachhead of Anzio, Italy, leave a landing craft on their way to a prison camp in 1944. The amphibious landing and ensuing battle helped Allied forces break a months-long stalemate south of Rome and ultimately defeat the Germans in Italy. Hide Caption 17 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures French refugees live in a quarry near Fleury sur Orne. During the bombing in that area, 20,000 refugees lived in the quarries. Hide Caption 18 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures U.S. troops assault Omaha Beach during the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. On D-Day, Allied forces landed on five beaches -- Utah, Omaha, Juno, Gold and Sword -- taking the first step in establishing the Western Front in Europe. The landing included more than 5,000 ships, 11,000 airplanes and 150,000 soldiers. More than 35,000 Allied troops were killed during the Normandy Campaign, which lasted till the end of August 1944. Hide Caption 19 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures A crowd gathers to cheer Gen. Charles de Gaulle at the Place de la Concorde on August 26, 1944, a day after the liberation of Paris. Hide Caption 20 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures Soldiers of an infantry division move into the mist over a snow-covered field near Krinkelter, Belgium, on December 20, 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, a surprise German counter-offensive against Allied forces as they closed in on German soil from the west. It resulted in more combined U.S. losses (nearly 90,000 killed, wounded or captured) than any battle of the war. Hide Caption 21 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures U.S. Marines of the 28th Regiment, 5th Division, raise the American flag atop Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima, on February 23, 1945. Strategically located only 660 miles from Tokyo, the Pacific island was essential to launching land-based bombers against Japan. It was the bloodiest battle in the history of the U.S. Marine Corps, which suffered more than 27,000 casualties. Of some 18,000 Japanese soldiers defending the island, 216 survived. Hide Caption 22 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures German prisoners captured at Friedrichsfeld march through a town in Germany after the crossing of the Rhine River by the U.S. 9th Army on March 26, 1945. Hide Caption 23 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures From left, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Russian Premier Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference on February 1945. Hide Caption 24 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures Prisoners line block 61 of Buchenwald concentration camp in April 1945. The construction of Buchenwald started July 15, 1937, and the camp was liberated by U.S. Gen. George Patton's troops on April 11, 1945. Between 239,000 and 250,000 people were imprisoned in the camp. About 56,000 died, including 11,000 Jews. Hide Caption 25 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures President Franklin D. Roosevelt's funeral procession goes down Connecticut Avenue on its way to the White House. Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, in Warm Springs, Georgia, just weeks before Germany's surrender. Hide Caption 26 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures Harry S. Truman takes the oath of office on April 12, 1945, as he becomes the 33rd president of the United States. Standing beside him are his wife, Bess, and daughter Margaret. Hide Caption 27 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures The bodies of Benito Mussolini, left, and his mistress, Clara Petacci, second from left, hang from the roof of a gasoline station after they were shot by anti-Fascist forces while attempting to escape to Switzerland on April 28, 1945. Hide Caption 28 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures Russian soldiers wave their flag, made from tablecloths, over the ruins of the Reichstag in Berlin on April 30, 1945. That day, as the Soviets were within blocks of his bunker at the Reich Chancellery, Adolf Hitler committed suicide. Hide Caption 29 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures British Prime Minister Winston Churchill addresses the celebrating crowds from the balcony of the Ministry of Health in Whitehall, London, on V-E Day, May 8, 1945. The war in Europe was officially over. Hide Caption 30 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures Soldiers rush an injured U.S. Marine from a battlefield during the Battle of Okinawa in June 1945. The battle, the bloodiest of the war in the Pacific, raged for nearly three months and heightened U.S. concerns for the enormous casualties that could be anticipated in the planned invasion of Japan's main islands. Hide Caption 31 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures A photograph on display at the Bradbury Science Museum shows the first instant of the first atomic bomb test, on July 16, 1945, at 5:29 a.m. at Trinity Site in New Mexico. The Potsdam Declaration, announced 10 days later, called for Japan's unconditional surrender, threatening "prompt and utter destruction." It did not, however, specifically mention the bomb. Hide Caption 32 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures Col. Paul W. Tibbets Jr., center, stands with the ground crew of the B-29 bomber "Enola Gay," which Tibbets piloted on August 6, 1945. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, that day killed an estimated 130,000 people. Hide Caption 33 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures Hide Caption 34 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures A patient suffering severe radiation burns lies in the Hiroshima Red Cross hospital in August 1945. Many of those who survived the initial blast on August 6 died of severe radiation-related injuries and illnesses. Hide Caption 35 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures A dense column of smoke rises more than 60,000 feet into the air over Nagasaki, the result of an atomic bomb dropped on August 9, 1945. An estimated 60,000 to 70,000 were killed in the Nagasaki blast. Six days later, a little after noon local time on August 15, Emperor Hirohito's announcement that Japan had accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration was broadcast on radio. Japan had surrendered. Hide Caption 36 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures A jubilant American sailor kisses a nurse in New York's Times Square on August 14, 1945, as he celebrates the news that Japan has surrendered. (Because of the time difference between the two nations, the surrender occurred August 15 in Japan). Hide Caption 37 of 38 38 photos: World War II in pictures Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signs the Japanese Instrument of Surrender on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945, officially bringing World War II to an end. Overseeing the surrender is U.S. Gen. Douglas McArthur (right, back to camera). Hide Caption 38 of 38 
 
 Mitsubishi has admitted to holding nearly 900 American prisoners-of-war when allied forces liberated its labor camps in 1945 during the final days of the war. 
 
 Today we apologize remorsefully for the tragic events in our past, and expressed our profound determination to work toward a better future. Hikaru Kimura 
 
 Twenty-seven Americans died in the camps and others complained of lifelong health problems from grueling conditions, frequent beatings, poor sanitation, and lack of food and medical care. 
 
 Mitsubishi Materials lists among its corporate philosophies as being a company "for people, society and the Earth." 
 
 "In keeping with the spirit of our company's mission statement, today we apologize remorsefully for the tragic events in our past, and expressed our profound determination to work toward a better future," said Hikaru Kimura, a senior executive officer of Mitsubishi Materials. 
 
 Kimura also gave a customary deep bow of remorse to Murphy, who appeared visibly moved. 
 
 World War II Fast Facts 
 
 "I've listened very carefully to Mr. Kimura's statement of apology and found it very, very sincere, humble and revealing, and this happens to be the first time that we've heard those words and they really touch you at the heart," Murphy said. 
 
 12,000 Americans kept in forced labor 
 
 The high-profile and long-awaited apology happened during a news conference at the Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. 
 
 Public relations director Avra Shaprio told CNN the Wiesenthal Center's associate dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, is planning a late-July visit to the sites of former Japanese mines. He claimed a wartime labor shortage prompted the Japanese government and private companies to put 12,000 Americans into forced labor, of whom more than 1,100 died. 
 
 The American POWs worked alongside British, Chinese, Korean and Filipino prisoners. 
 
 Mitsubishi has not offered financial compensation for forced laborers, but the company has faced lawsuits in South Korea and China. 
 
 The 1951 Treaty of San Francisco, the peace treaty that officially ended World War II, did not allow American POWs to file lawsuits seeking compensation. 
 
 "Here we are in the 21st century. It's time for Japan to help its victims turn the page on the past. And in order to do that, Japan must squarely face its history," said Jeff Kingston, Director of Asian Studies at Japan's Temple University and author of Nationalism in Asia Since 1945. 
 
 Kingston called the experience of POWs in Japan "a horrific nightmare" and said Mitsubishi's apology should have happened "decades ago." 
 
 "This is an issue that hasn't gone away for Japan," he added. 
 
 Japan expands military reach 
 
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 Mitsubishi's move comes as the Japanese government attempts to move past the nation's war crimes and expand the role of its military for the first time since the war. 
 
 Last week, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pushed a controversial security bill through Japan's lower house of Parliament, which gives the army and navy limited powers to fight abroad under certain conditions. The bill now moves to the upper house, where it is also expected to pass. 
 
 Thousands of protestors stood outside the parliament building in Tokyo to protest the legislation, deemed a "war bill" by critics fearful of a return to the days of Imperial Japanese aggression. 
 
 Abe's approval rating has plunged below 40%, the lowest since he was elected in 2012.
– Former Japanese Imperial Army soldier Hiroo Onoda has died at the age of 91—roughly 40 years after he stopped fighting World War II. Onoda, the last Japanese soldier to surrender, hid out in the jungles of the Philippines for almost 30 years after 1945, only coming out of hiding in 1974. The straggler formally surrendered—still wearing his uniform—to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos after his former commander flew out to rescind his 1945 order that Onoda stay there and spy on American forces, the AP reports. The New York Times reports that Onoda was with three comrades on Lubang Island when the war ended; believing leaflets attesting to the war's end to be Allied propaganda, they lived off bananas, coconuts, stolen rice, and cows they killed, and constructed bamboo huts. One of the men surrendered five years later; the others were shot and killed by police, the last just two years before Onoda emerged. The Guardian reports that he "wept uncontrollably" when he eventually gave up his rifle—still "perfectly serviceable" after all those years, and one he may have used to kill as many as 30 locals that he mistook for enemies. A Japanese government spokesman praised Onoda for his unbreakable spirit: "After World War II, Mr. Onoda lived in the jungle for many years and when he returned to Japan, I felt that finally, the war was finished. That's how I felt." After the war finally ended for him, Onoda bought a ranch in Brazil before returning to Japan to run a children's nature school. "I don't consider those 30 years a waste of time," he said in a 1995 interview. "Without that experience, I wouldn't have my life today." (In other WWII news, the game Monopoly actually helped POWs escape.)