In 1950, one of the soldiers turned himself in to Philippine authorities. Several times they found or were handed leaflets notifying them that the war had ended, but they refused to believe it. The four ran into the hills and began a decades-long insurgency extending well past the end of the war. Allied forces overtook the island just a few months later, capturing or killing all but Onoda and three other Japanese soldiers. Onoda had been sent to Lubang Island in December 1944 to join an existing group of soldiers and hamper any enemy attacks. He handed over his sword (hanging from his hip in the photo), his rifle, ammunition, and several hand grenades. In March 1974, some 29 years after the official end of World War II, Hiroo Onoda, a former Japanese Army intelligence officer, walks out of the jungle of Lubang Island in the Philippines, where he was finally relieved of duty. (This entry is Part 20 of a weekly 20-part retrospective of World War II) Read more World War II was the biggest story of the 20th Century, and its aftermath continues to affect the world profoundly more than 65 years later. The growing tensions between Western powers and the Soviet Eastern Bloc developed into the Cold War, and the development and proliferation of nuclear weapons raised the very real specter of an unimaginable World War III if common ground could not be found. The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine paved the way for Israel to declare its independence in 1948 and marked the start of the continuing Arab-Israeli conflict. Allied occupations and United Nations decisions led to many long-lasting problems in the future, including the tensions that created East and West Germany, and divergent plans on the Korean Peninsula that led to the creation of North and South Korea and - the Korean War in 1950. Millions of Germans and Japanese were forcibly expelled from territories they called home. War crimes trials took place in Europe and Asia, leading to many executions and prison sentences. Efforts were made to permanently dismantle the war-making abilities of those nations, as factories were destroyed and former leadership was removed or prosecuted. Allied forces now became occupiers, taking control of Germany, Japan, and much of the territory they had formerly ruled. In less than a decade, the war between the Axis the Allied powers had resulted in 80 million deaths - killing off about 4 percent of the whole world. When the war began in the late 1930s, the world's population was approximately 2 billion. But the massive efforts to rebuild had just begun. Borders were redrawn and homecomings, expulsions, and burials were under way. At the end of World War II, huge swaths of Europe and Asia had been reduced to ruins.
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