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The one who didn’t rape and kill and pillage. Didn’t enslave workers to dig pits for war gold, then bayonet them when the work was done. (When treasure hunters on Halmahera find an Indonesian corpse or two, they know they’re getting close.)

In fact, Teruo met his wartime girlfriend when other soldiers were trying to mutilate her, and he recognised the magic which prevented them…

But this story’s not really about Maria. Though she’s alive, still. 105 years old, her magic as strong as ever, living the quiet life in Western Halmahera.

It’s about Teruo. Teruo Nakamura, the man who fought the Second World War until 1974.

He was famous once, Teruo. The last soldier, the absolute last soldier, of World War II. A man who never surrendered.

He outlasted the holdouts who fought on into the 50s, outlasted the stragglers into the 60s and carried on fighting his private war, deep in the crumpled forests of Morotai island, right up until 1974.

And, no, he didn’t surrender then, either.

How did they catch him? Well, there’s a story. And it’s not the one you’ll read in the books.

He was a simple guy, Nakamura. An aboriginal from the island we call Taiwan today. A farmer, basically. Raised in places like these. He was posted first to Halmahera, when things looked bright for the Imperial Army, then to Morotai as MacArthur’s troops steamed inexorably north, young men took to the sky in kamikaze planes, entire units blew themselves up with grenades rather than surrender…

And then he fought on. For decades.

Could he not believe that Japan would ever surrender? That the war would ever be over?

Could he really, really not have known the war was over?

It’s hard to imagine the carnage of his war. The Allies overran Morotai within a fortnight. Dropped thousands of tonnes of TNT on Halmahera within a single day. Nakamura was with a commando unit. They got separated. His last orders?

Fight on.

Which, in his way, he did.

The Allies weren’t bothered with mopping up holdouts, wasting manpower on suicidal crazies out there in the forest. They set up a command base for a while, then pushed onwards, northwards, to the Philippines.

The Japanese soldiers on Morotai, as on other islands in the Pacific, lost contact with Tokyo in January 1945. Fought on, with no radio contact, until — well, until someone came to tell them otherwise.

And Nakamura? He did the same, only for longer. Much, much longer.

Once he realised he’d be a long time waiting, he built a little shack, by a river, in a valley between two mountains. Scratched a crude map on a stone. Tamed a wild boar and a moleyu bird for company (and eggs). And farmed simple things: cassava, bananas, coconuts…

And waited. And waited. For almost thirty years, for the victorious Japanese Army to come and find him, and bring him home, a hero…

How did they catch him?

Well… An Indonesian airforce patrol flying over the jungle noticed his hut and his little farm, the story goes, and posted a reward for his capture.

But he was cunning, Nakamura. And whatever else happened, he wouldn’t be taken alive.

What did they do?

He told him! Many, many times he told him. But he never believed it. Never believed…

So they let him be, the folk from the village. This half-crazed, half-naked Japanese soldier out in the jungle, farming.

Until the reward, of course. Though nobody, to be honest, wanted to admit they’d known he was out there the whole time. Could be trouble, you see. Big trouble. Harbouring an enemy combatant for almost thirty years…

Nakamura was hard to catch. When anyone comes, he had a cave, a hiding place in the mountains. He would take the bird, call the pig, and run in there to hide.

They asked the guide. And he said, “The only thing you can do for Nakamura is this. Find yourself some Japanese uniforms and a Japanese flag. Learn to count in Japanese, like soldiers. And learn the Japanese anthem.”

So the Indonesian soldiers dressed up in Japanese uniforms, marched military style to a Japanese count, sang the anthem, raised the flag and Nakamura …

Of all this extraordinary story, this is the bit which really got to both of us.

I imagine him, when he heard the victorious army, marching to find him, after thirty years of solitary struggle. That utter, utter leap of delirious, disbelieving joy, when he heard the Japanese anthem. Running from his hiding place towards them, towards his army, his struggle justified…

And then?

Gotcha!

No Japanese. No victory. His home island a new country, now, an electronics mecca. His wife long remarried. His children adults…

And, no, no hero’s welcome for Nakamura, either. Quite the reverse, in fact. In the end, back in Japan, they damned him as a coward…

For a long while after this, they say, the patch of forest where he had his cave was off-limits. A restricted zone.

Why?

Yes! That’s what they were hiding there. The gold.

In the village, they believe this. They hunt for it, the few who know the secret. And a second secret, too.

There was another one.

Still now?!

I run a calculation. Even a young commando from 1945 would be well into his 80s by now. And why, why on earth would he stay?

Not since April. The last time he came was April. They are worried about him. They think he might be dead.

And the location of the gold, if there were such a thing, will have died with him, claiming its last life.

Though it doesn’t stop them looking for it. Combing the tunnels and caverns which wind through the mountains, like the guys we met on the mainland, nothing more to their name than a bamboo ladder, a rope and some bamboo winding gear, a plastic bucket, a torch, a pickaxe and a shovel, digging their way down to unimaginable riches and, if they can conceal it from the government, a one way ticket out of here…

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When parties of twenty or thirty men from the villages on the coast, with their brushed-sand streets and corrugated iron mosques, would head upriver, panning for gold, like the San Francisco 49ers.

These guys? Well, they weren’t local, or they wouldn’t have made the mistake they made. Because to the Togutil people who still hunt and gather in the forest here, their dogs are almost as important as their children.

When other Togutil go to visit Togutil, they never bring their dogs. If they fought, there’d be trouble. Big trouble…

Dogs hunt down deer and wild boar. They guard both home and children. They breed unfettered and hoover up a diet of scraps: banana leaves thin and yellow from bamboo cooking, cassava peelings, the guts of animals they have helped to catch…

But they’re more than that. They’re part of the family. Far more than the scarlet parrots which adorn many a Togutil home.

But these seven guys didn’t know that. They were from Sulawesi, the big K to Halmahera’s little K, the sprawling island to the west, the nation’s mining capital. And they were here to make their fortune, not bother with the primitives.

In the Togutil norm, the code of the people, killing a dog, like shitting in a river, can be punishable with death.

So Gala-gala and Goyo-Goyo didn’t wait.

In the north of Sulawesi, folk will eat anything. Two legs, four legs, six legs, no legs: from bats to snakes to lizards, they’ll guzzle without a qualm.

And, yes, dogs too. (They call it RW back there.)

The brothers, Gala-gala and Goyo-goyo, nomadic Togutil, more hunters than gatherers, terrified even the folk around them.

Very tall and immensely strong, in muscles and, at least as importantly, magic, they’d approach strangers with a display that probably predates the war dances here: slashing down trees with their parangs, leaping higher and higher to cut the highest branches, making great leaps horizontally too.

The trick? Jump higher than them. Jump further than them. Cut more than them. And then, just then, they won’t come and kill you in the night.

They’d built little bamboo and fanpalm lean-tos as an overnight shelter, not far from where the treasure-hunters were panning the river for ingots. And when the dog came to the miners, begging for scraps, they were away in the forest, hunting.

Being from the north, the miners, well, they didn’t miss the opportunity.

They killed the dog.

They butchered it.

Then they ate it.

In the Togutil norm, the code of the people, killing a dog, like shitting in a river, can be punishable with death.

So Gala-gala and Goyo-Goyo didn’t wait.

In fact, they couldn’t wait.

They were in that white heat of rage which people unused to the kind of every-day accommodations one makes in towns, cities, even villages, let alone this grotesque provocation, unfamiliar with any law other than the norm, slip into from utter calm in less time than it takes a toddler to throw a tantrum.

They came to them. Right there, in the broad daylight. In their bark-leather loincloths and magic rattan bands, with spears, bows, arrows and parangs.

And they massacred them. Just the two brothers.

They killed all seven men.

They learnt for the first time about both guns and the rule of national law when armed police came out in force to track them down.

Now, the nation of Indonesia is a patchwork of islands, stitched together from the old Dutch possessions. There are plenty of islands where the Dutch never ventured to enforce any law at all.

As, in fact, with much of Halmahera, an island larger than all Hawaii State, where nineteen separate cultures nestle in its crumpled innards and along its rocky coasts.

So in the badlands, tribal norms still function. And the national courts look leniently on folk who knew neither national law nor nation.

One example? In the code of the Tobaru tribe of Western Halmahera, the sultan of Ternate’s soldiers since time immemorial, the punishment for adultery is for the cheated partner to kill both the straying partner and their friend.

So when a woman caught her husband and his girlfriend in the act, and hacked them to death with a machete, she served six months.

Gala-gala and Goyo-goyo?

They learnt for the first time about both guns and the rule of national law when armed police came out in force to track them down.

They served six years, in Ternate prison, in the city, on the little island.

Long enough for Gala-gala, at least, to learn that slaughter isn’t necessarily wise.

Goyo-goyo?

To this day, nobody knows why, though one of their teenage sons watched the whole thing from hiding. The best guess is they broke the norm. Anywise. He killed them, Gala-gala did.

Not a good learner.

There was a Togutil couple, in Buli, where the mining is. To this day, nobody knows why, though one of their teenage sons watched the whole thing from hiding.

The best guess is they broke the norm.

Anywise. He killed them, Gala-gala did. Both of them.

The son?

Well. It’s not easy to take vengeance on a man like Gala-gala. Not with his physical prowess and powerful magic. Not on a man who has already killed nine people: seven of them healthy, well-armed men.

But when some folk from a timber company asked him to guide them in the forest, the son (his name, they say, is Matthius) asked his brother to come too. And between them, they formulated a kind of plan.

Gala-gala, you see, didn’t know them.

Though they knew him. Everybody did.

They found him, in the forest. They hired him, as a porter.

Offered him sugar and clove tobacco to carry a heavy – very heavy – sack of rice.

And bided their time in quiet terror, waiting for a chance, as they tread, barefoot, with the timber company officials in their jungle gear, along the forest’s narrow trails and river beds.

Then they see their opportunity. A big, heavy tree trunk blocks the way. Gala-gala, burdened with his large and heavy sack of rice, will have to bend down extra-low to get under it.

He bends. They scramble over the top. Commando-style, like lightning.

And as he emerges, bent more than double under his burden, they slit his throat. Just like you’d kill a chicken.

And here, in that fine mist of arterial blood, Gala-gala’s story, were this not Halmahera, would have ended.

He started walking. Like something else, though. Not entirely human. Both more than and less than human. So they killed him again.

But no.

He opened his eyes.

He stood up.

He started walking. Like something else, though. Not entirely human. Both more than and less than human.

So they killed him again.

And this time they did it properly. They cut off his hands and legs, and put them in the river to float away.

Without his limbs, Gala-gala’s corpse, or whatever it was, stayed dead.

The timber company guys?

Well, when the brothers came clean and told the story of what had happened to their porter, they decided that some things are best left alone. The forest was a safer place for them. And, y’know, no police report, no crime.

They turned, as one might, a blind eye. And, as one might not, carried on their explorations with the avenging brothers.

And when the large, strong, well-muscled leg came floating down the river, not yet too grey nor bloated, barely nibbled, he recognized it at once.

Meanwhile, down the river, one of Gala-gala’s brothers was fishing.

And when the large, strong, well-muscled leg came floating down the river, not yet too grey nor bloated, barely nibbled, he recognized it at once.

There was, of course, no question in his mind, or anybody’s, who would have done the deed. (The seven miners? Well, they were from Sulawesi.)

Fortunately, he didn’t know the brothers by sight.

So when he comes to Matthius, he explains that he’s looking for Matthius. Matthius thinks on his feet and denies he’s ever met himself.

“But he’s a strong man,” he says. “Very big, very powerful magic. Can jump very, very high, leap very, very far… Strong magic. Not a man you want to fight with…”

The brother hears this. And, since they killed the mighty Gala-gala, he figures it might be true.

So he runs to Goyo-Goyo, now living peaceably in a village, resettled, as one might say, successfully into a community. Says, we have to kill the brothers.

And Goyo-goyo?

To his eternal credit, he puts the brakes on. Stops the cycle.

He tells his brother about police and guns, about courts and prison, a world with not only walls but bars, a place where you cannot see the sky, a place in the city, a world away from here. They put you there, he says, and you cannot get out.

They think again. They let it lie. And, right now, at least, they live in peace.

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