No Surrender by Hiroo Onoda

“And now I alone was returning, leaving the spirits of my two irreplaceable comrades on this island. Returning to a Japan that had lost the war thirty years earlier. Returning to my fatherland for which I had fought until the day before. If there had not been people around, I would have beat my head on the ground and wailed.
”Ten minutes later the helicopter I had boarded rose off Lubang, flailing the grass around it. Through the windproof glass I could see Kozuka’s grave, and gradually the whole island, grow smaller and begin to fade.
”For the first time, I was looking down upon my battlefield.
”Why had I fought here for thirty years? Who had I been fighting for? What was the cause?
”Manila Bay was bathed in the evening sun.”

-Hiroo Onoda, 1974