At the end of World II, Tsukasa Shimojo, a 93-year-old former soldier of the Imperial Japanese Army who fought in the Philippines, brought back a piece of bone from a fallen comrade to atone for the guilt he felt at having survived.
In April 1945, Shimojo from Rankoshi, Hokkaido, began to hide in a dense forest in Panay, an island in the Philippines, together with some 150 other Japanese soldiers and civilians after escaping from U.S. attacks on a town where they had been stationed.
They had to endure constant mosquito bites and fed themselves on frogs and whatever else they could find to survive. Some of the soldiers set out to try to steal rice from a camp for local guerilla fighters but never returned.