The-Subtle-Art-of-Not-Giving-a-F-ck-EnglishPDF-Mark-Manson

CHAPTER 4
The Value of Suffering
In the closing months of 1944, after almost a decade of war, the tide was
turning against Japan. Their economy was floundering, their military
overstretched across half of Asia, and the territories they had won throughout
the Pacific were now toppling like dominoes to U.S. forces. Defeat seemed
inevitable.
On December 26, 1944, Second Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda of the Japanese
Imperial Army was deployed to the small island of Lubang in the Philippines.
His orders were to slow the United States’ progress as much as possible, to
stand and fight at all costs, and to never surrender. Both he and his
commander knew it was essentially a suicide mission.
In February 1945, the Americans arrived on Lubang and took the island
with overwhelming force. Within days, most of the Japanese soldiers had
either surrendered or been killed, but Onoda and three of his men managed to
hide in the jungle. From there, they began a guerrilla warfare campaign
against the U.S. forces and the local population, attacking supply lines,
shooting at stray soldiers, and interfering with the American forces in any
way that they could.
That August, half a year later, the United States dropped atomic bombs
on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan surrendered, and the deadliest
war in human history came to its dramatic conclusion.
However, thousands of Japanese soldiers were still scattered among the
Pacific isles, and most, like Onoda, were hiding in the jungle, unaware that
the war was over. These holdouts continued to fight and pillage as they had
before. This was a real problem for rebuilding eastern Asia after the war, and
the governments agreed something must be done.
The U.S. military, in conjunction with the Japanese government, dropped