GONE BUSH

When World War II ended in 1945, hundreds of Japanese soldiers refused to put down their guns. Isolated on Pacific islands, they could not believe that their emperor had surrendered. They took to the jungle, living in huts and caves and raiding villages for food. These diehard warriors became known as stragglers. The most famous straggler was Hiroo Onoda, who hid in the forests of the Philippines’ Lubang Island for 29 years. Onoda surrendered only when his former commander, who had become a bookseller in peacetime Japan, visited Lubang to assure him that the war was over.

After both world wars New Zealand had its own strange stragglers. Whereas the Japanese stragglers refused to accept peace, our version hid from war.

In 1916, two years into World War I, New Zealand’s