Two Japanese soldiers hid in the Phillipine jungle for 60 years after WWII was over.

TWO men claimed to be Japanese soldiers who refused to surrender at the end of the Second World War could finally return home, 60 years later, after they were found living in the hills of a Philippine island.

The soldiers, identified as Yoshio Yamakawa, 87, from Osaka, and Tsuzuki Nakauchi, 83, from Kochi, apparently want to lay down their weapons - or what remains of them.

The two former members of the Imperial Japanese Army are believed to have spent the last six decades living in remote hills in the south of the Philippine island of Mindanao.

In his book, No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War, Mr Onoda told of being summoned by his senior officer in December 1944 and given his orders. "You are absolutely forbidden to die by your own hand," Major Yoshimi Taniguchi told him. "It may take three years, it may take five, but whatever happens, we will come back for you. Until then, so long as you have one soldier, you are to continue to lead him."

Lt Onoda followed his orders to the absolute letter and led a group of four men, disregarding as Allied propaganda the leaflets dropped over the jungle claiming the war had ended. https://www.scotsman.com/news/world/japanese-soldiers-60-years-jungle-2460652