Onoda
You may have heard of Hiroo Onoda, although you may not recognize him by name.
From Wikipedia:
Hiroo Onoda (Japanese: 小野田 寛郎, Hepburn: Onoda Hiroo; IPA: [o̞no̞da̠ çiɾo̞ː]) 19 March 1922 – 16 January 2014) was a Japanese soldier who served as a second lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. One of the last Japanese holdouts, Onoda continued fighting for nearly 29 years after the war's end in 1945, carrying out guerrilla warfare on Lubang Island in the Philippines until 1974.
Oh, right. That guy.
His story is a tale of honor, or false honor, or murder, or stupidity, depending on who you believe. Most likely, it's all of them. Rashomon in real life.
I've always been fascinated by the psychology behind someone who would fight a war for decades after it ended, ignoring every bit of evidence indicating he could go home. There aren't any deep dives into his life available in English, though, so it's always been one of those bits of my information in my attic.
What I never, ever expected was that someone would make a board game about him.
This review is a brilliant look at the game: On Banditry. Here's the final paragraph:
In the end, that’s where I sit with Onoda, in tension with myself and this artifact on my table. Pako Gradaille has fallen for the myth, but only in part, and his reservations have translated into intriguing tensions within the game, raising questions about duty, shouganai, masculinity, and the permeable boundaries between banditry and war. In Onoda, you play as a bandit who thinks he’s the hero, and thinks it so hard that artists keep stepping over the corpses he left in his wake. It’s a fascinating and tragic portrayal.
If you want to read a fantastic piece of game writing, read the whole review.
Moral ambiguity in games is something we need, and it encapsulates Onoda's life as well.
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