Reddit reviews No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War

Hiroo Onoda's autobiography No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War is by far the most interesting biography I've ever read.

Seriously, it is fucking twisted and amazing.

I have a doozy of a really dumb question, not really about living in Japan at all.

TL;DR: Did Pandas used to be viewed as some kind of mythical creature in Japan (circa 1970)?

Context:

I recently finished reading No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War. The book about Hiroo Onoda, dude who continued fighting WW2 until 1974. Fascinating book, highly recommend it.

The book starts with a note from the translator, pointing out that Onoda was found by [Norio Suzuki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norio_Suzuki_(explorer), who dropped out of college to find, I shit you not:

> Lieutenant Onoda, a panda, and the abominable snowman, in that order

By this point Onoda had been reported dead and my understanding is that at this time in Japan, "They never found his body! Onoda is still alive!" was a pretty "Jet fuel can't melt steel beams" kind of statement.

The inclusion of "A panda" in the middle of Suzuki's mission statement confused me and has been bugging me for a while. Did Pandas used to be some kind of mythical creature? Like "nobody has ever actually seen a panda, its just Chinese propoganda".

I asked my wife and she has no idea and that he was probably just a little coocoo, or wanted a break between the two really hard tasks. Does anybody have any input on this?