The Soldier Who Wouldn't Believe the War Was Over

In March 1974, Japanese intelligence officer Hiroo Onoda finally emerged from the Philippine jungle on Lubang Island, where he had been hiding for twenty-nine years. The Second World War had ended in 1945, but Onoda refused to believe it. Leaflets dropped from planes, newspapers left on trails, even family members calling through loudspeakers — none of it convinced him. The news was simply too large, too disruptive to the reality he had built around himself. Peace was more terrifying than war, because peace meant everything he had suffered and sacrificed for three decades had to be reframed completely.

The women who arrived at the tomb that first Easter morning carried spices for a dead man. They had watched Him die. They had seen where the body was laid. Death was the only reality that made sense. So when the young man in white told them Jesus had risen, Mark tells us something startling: "They went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid."

This was not doubt. This was the shock of a world turned inside out. Like Onoda standing in sunlight after decades of hiding, the women had to reckon with news so staggering it rearranged everything. The tomb was empty. The war with death was over. And sometimes the most overwhelming thing in the world is not bad news — but news almost too good to bear.