MILITARY PERSONNEL

Hiroo Onoda

1922 - 2014

Photo of Hiroo Onoda

Icon of person Hiroo Onoda

Hiroo Onoda (Japanese: 小野田 寛郎, Hepburn: Onoda Hiroo, 19 March 1922 – 16 January 2014) was a Japanese second lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. One of the last Japanese holdouts, he continued fighting for decades after the war's end in 1945. For almost 29 years, Onoda carried out guerrilla warfare on Lubang Island in the Philippines, on several occasions engaging in shootouts with locals and the police. Onoda initially held out with three other soldiers: one surrendered in 1950, and two who were killed, one in 1954 and one in 1972. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Hiroo Onoda has received more than 5,527,044 page views. His biography is available in 55 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 53 in 2019). Hiroo Onoda is the 124th most popular military personnel (down from 83rd in 2019), the 42nd most popular biography from Japan (down from 26th in 2019) and the 6th most popular Japanese Military Personnel.

Hiroo Onoda was a Japanese soldier who was stationed on the island of Lubang in the Philippines. He was a member of the Imperial Japanese Army, and he was told that Japan had lost the war in 1945. He refused to believe this and continued to fight against the Philippine government until 1974.

Memorability Metrics

  • 5.5M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 69.11

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 55

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 5.14

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 4.34

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Among MILITARY PERSONNELS

Among military personnels, Hiroo Onoda ranks 124 out of 2,058. Before him are Gaius Julius Caesar, Erich von Falkenhayn, Jean Lannes, André Masséna, Hermann Hoth, and Michael Wittmann. After him are Nestor Makhno, Yakov Dzhugashvili, Werner von Blomberg, Yūsuf Balasaguni, Minamoto no Yoshitsune, and Bohemond I of Antioch.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1922, Hiroo Onoda ranks 19. Before him are Erich Hartmann, Gérard Philipe, Ava Gardner, Erving Goffman, Liliane Bettencourt, and Emil Zátopek. After him are Aage Bohr, Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Kerouac, Imre Lakatos, Philip Larkin, and Vittorio Gassman. Among people deceased in 2014, Hiroo Onoda ranks 13. Before him are Claudio Abbado, Luis Aragonés, Joe Cocker, Wojciech Jaruzelski, Eli Wallach, and Gough Whitlam. After him are Alexander Grothendieck, Nadine Gordimer, Maximilian Schell, Jacques Le Goff, Paco de Lucía, and Lauren Bacall.

Others Born in 1922

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Others Deceased in 2014

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In Japan

Among people born in Japan, Hiroo Onoda ranks 42 out of 6,245. Before him are Itō Hirobumi (1841), Isao Takahata (1935), Emperor Kōmei (1831), Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi (1894), Hiroshige (1797), and Gichin Funakoshi (1868). After him are Morihei Ueshiba (1883), Takeda Shingen (1521), Takeshi Kitano (1947), Minamoto no Yoritomo (1147), Minamoto no Yoshitsune (1159), and Yoshinori Ohsumi (1945).

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Among MILITARY PERSONNELS In Japan

Among military personnels born in Japan, Hiroo Onoda ranks 6. Before him are Oda Nobunaga (1534), Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542), Isoroku Yamamoto (1884), Hattori Hanzō (1542), and Saigō Takamori (1828). After him are Minamoto no Yoshitsune (1159), Chūichi Nagumo (1887), Akechi Mitsuhide (1526), Tokugawa Yoshinobu (1837), Date Masamune (1567), and Tōgō Heihachirō (1848).

Japanese born Military Personnels

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