Army Second Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda (Nakamura Shido) has been fighting guerrilla warfare in the jungles of Lubang Island in the Philippines with his subordinates Corporal Shimada (Yanagiba Toshiro) and Private First Class Kozuka (Nishijima Hidetoshi) since the end of the Pacific War, without knowing the war had ended. Eventually, the two men die, unable to fulfil their duty to their homeland, and Onoda is left alone, but when a rescue team is sent out from the home country, he does not obey the order to return, believing it to be a diversion by the enemy, as the form of the return order is different. However, an encounter with adventurer Norio Suzuki (Masato Sakai), who has come from Japan to look for Onoda, leads to Onoda's return to his homeland in March 1974, 30 years after the end of the war, after completing his intelligence work on Lubang Island.
