Norio Suzuki (鈴木 紀夫 Suzuki Norio, born 1949 Chiba, Japan - died 1986 Himalayan Mountains) was a Japanese explorer and adventurer who became famous for finding Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese straggler who resisted to surrender after the end of the World War II.
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He studied economics at a university, but he left school in 1969 to begin traveling. He explored Asia, the Middle East and Africa. In 1972, after four years of wandering the world, he decided to return to Japan and found himself surrounded by what he felt as “fake”.
Two years later, the Japanese media reported that a Japanese imperial soldier Kinshichi Kozuka a partner of Onoda was shot to death on an island in the Philippines in October 19, 1972 Kozuka and Onoda burned rice that had been collected by farmers, as part of their guerrilla activities. The news prompted series of search efforts to find Lt. Onoda who was once considered missing and was supposed to have been staying with the deceased Japanese soldier.
Susuki then decided to search the officer. He expresed his decision in this way: He wanted to search for "Lieutenant Onoda, a panda, and the Abominable Snowman, in that order".[1]
After extended searching by others, Suzuki independently encountered a Japanese soldier after four days of searching. The Japanese soldier, Hiroo Onoda, was wearing a tattered military uniform on Lubang Island in the Philippines in 1974. It was the missing Lt. Onoda. He had survived a solitary life for 20 years after he lost the last of his two colleagues. When Susuki found Onoda he was about to shoot the young man, Norio Suzuki. But fortunately, Suzuki had read all about the fugitive and quickly said: "Onoda-san, the emperor and the people of Japan are worried about you."
Onoda would not be relieved of his duties unless officially ordered to do so. After extended conversations, Onoda accepted to wait for Suzuki to return with his former Commander (he was now an old man working in a bookstore) to give the order to surrender. Onoda said, “I am a soldier and remain true to my duties.”
In March, 1974, Suzuki returned with Onoda’s Commander who officially ordered him to surrender; he was free to return to Japan.
Suzuki became famous in Japan but instead of settling down with his fame, he left to explore his next passion – finding the snowman (the Yeti). In 1986, at age 38, Suzuki died during his exploration in search of the snowman on a Himalayan mountain.
Onoda called Suzuki, “A True Hero.” Suzuki’s mother remembered her son as a boy who was as magnanimous as the Sun, and said, “He had met many people who helped him along his way, and who also may have been troubled by my son, and it is these connections with such people that I was fortunate to receive through my sons endeavors.”
Suzuki commented in his book, “When I heard of news of Apollo’s first landing on the Moon, I didn’t feel as excited as when I saw the scenery of Europe with my own eyes … No matter how extraordinary the event was for human history, I felt that my own hardships and achievement to reach my own destination was greater.”