The purpose of this paper is to clarify the process by which holdout Japanese soldiers in Indonesia have become heroes since the 1980s. The majority of the holdout Japanese soldiers were young, low-ranking soldiers who were mobilized to the occupied territories of the Empire of Japan in World War II and did not return to their homeland after losing the war. Some 903 holdout Japanese soldiers participated in the Indonesian War of Independence (1945 to 1949), mainly in western Java and northern Sumatra. This paper classifies the reasons why they remained in Indonesia into 15 categories, based on the 47 cases confirmed by documents. It also points out that 324 of them wished to live there after the War of Independence, but the local government was hesitant to grant them nationality. When Fukushi Tomo no Kai (Yayasan Warga Persahabatan), a benevolent society, was established in 1979, led by some of the successful who had achieved economic prosperity through the re-entry of Japanese companies to Indonesia, they revealed that the holdout Japanese soldiers were opposed to being identified as war victims by the Japanese people over their “homecoming” to Japan, and instead represented themselves as “heroes of independence.” After tracing such backgrounds surrounding the holdout Japanese soldiers, the author examines the case of Ono Sakari, a holdout Japanese soldier who was called the “last hero,” based on description in his “battlefield diary” written during the War of Independence and the author’s interview with Ono and suggests that the reasons for the holdout Japanese soldiers for remaining behind were not uniform.
