The year was 1944 and nine U.S. navy pilots were on a bombing run over the small island
of Chichi Jima, which lies about 700 miles (1,100 km) south of Tokyo city in Japan.
One of those men was the future president of the United States, George HW Bush.
His Avenger Torpedo Bomber was hit by flak and he had to abandon it, but lucky for him
he ended up in the water where American planes protected him from being captured by Japanese
boats.
After a few hours in that water he was pulled out by the surfaced submarine, the USS Finback.
What happened to those men on the raid that were captured though, is nothing short of
stomach-churning.
The young man that was rescued we all know would become the 41st president of the United
States.
Many years prior to that posting just after he had his 18th birthday he would join the
U.S. Navy.
This was right after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.
When he was just 19 he joined the Torpedo Squadron and soon got the name “Skin”
due to his slim physique.
In the year of 1944, Bush now 20-years old, was promoted to lieutenant and joined the
attack against the Japanese in the Bonin islands.
Soon after things would take a turn for the worse for Mr. Bush, because as we said his
plane was hit by flak and caught fire.
When he was rescued from the sea he later said he thought he was hallucinating.
The submarine picked him up and he was bleeding, vomiting, and weeping all at the same time.
His only words were, “Happy to be aboard.”
There were three crew in that plane, and the two others didn’t make it.
Those guys were Radioman Second Class John Delaney, seated right in the plane’s belly,
and just behind Skin was the turret gunner Lieutenant Junior Grade William Gardiner “Ted”
White.
In interviews in the 1980s Bush would say that he saw at least one man parachute out
of the plane, but he wasn’t sure what happened to him.
During interviews for the book, “Flyboys: A True Story of Courage,” Bush said this
about his fellow crew, “It still plagues me if I gave those guys enough time to get
out.”
All we know is that both men didn’t make it, but it seems their fate wasn’t as bad
as some of the other guys that got shot down that day.
We should say there are conflicting stories as to what happened to those two men in the
Bush airplane, because sometime later Bush would say, “I looked back and saw that my
rear gunner was out.
He had been machine-gunned to death right where he was.”
He would also say that he saw one of the men parachute out, but the chute didn’t open.
They died, that is for certain.
Some men were captured, though, and the future president should have been very pleased he
wasn’t with them because their fate was a lot worse than sudden death.
On his survival, years later Bush would say, “Why had I been spared and what did God
have for me?”
What happened to those other men might seem unbelievable, but we have at least seen the
official war crimes document issued by the USA.
It doesn’t tell all, and we’ll get around to the rest later.
Their fate has become known as the “Chichijima incident.”
Incident in this case somehow feels like the wrong word, and that’s because of the brutality
regarding what happened to the captives.
The document we talked about is titled: “Results of war crimes trials on Guam 11 April to 22
July 1946.”
The first paragraph tells us what happened to the Japanese men accused of those war crimes.
It reads, “As of August 1st 1946 there have been five trials on Guam since 11 April with
15 convictions.
Five death sentences have been imposed while three of the accused received life imprisonment,
one was sentenced to 25, two to 15, three to ten, and one to five years imprisonment.”
It then goes on to say what those accused men had done, and it tells us that some of
the guys that were handed a death sentence, either by firing squad or by hanging, was
for beheading US servicemen or ordering the machine gunning of American soldiers.
But it seems some of the captured US servicemen were not just beheaded or shot to pieces with
machine guns.
Of the accused Japanese men, some would be accused of cannibalism.
We say that, but there is no explicit mention of the deed, and those men were just tried
for murder and something called “prevention of honorable burial.”
But what actually happened?
According to that book we mentioned, Flyboys: A True Story of Courage, which includes interviews
with Japanese war veterans who were around for this conflict, five of the eight men were
cannibalized.
The author, James Bradley, claims some of the men had their livers removed.
He also says that some of those Japanese men kept their prisoners alive and over the course
of a few days or weeks chopped bits of them off and ate them.
They wanted the meat fresh, and so that’s why they kept the men alive.
This wasn’t for ritualistic purposes according to Bradley, or out of sheer sadism, but because
those Japanese soldiers needed food.
We can assume that those men must have been on the edge and starving to death.
But what else do we know about this “incident.”
Well, one of the Japanese soldiers who was on that island and survived to tell the tale
many years later said that surgeons cut out the livers of the captured US soldiers and
then cut massive chunks out of their thighs.
He said some of these rather hefty bits of thigh were then cooked with soy sauce, eaten
and washed down with the drink sake.
If it sounds over-the-top, it has been reported by media such as Newsweek.
That magazine writes this about those captured men: “They were beaten, tortured, beheaded
and then several were eaten by the Japanese soldiers, according to evidence pieced together
later during war crimes trials on the island of Guam.”
While researching his book Bradley came across a man who said he had something very interesting
to show him, and that was the transcript of declassified documents describing what happened
on that island.
He writes that everyone knows the story of that island, and that it was heavily defended
by Japanese troops, but what most people don’t know is that the nearby island of Chichi Jima
was even more heavily defended.
It was not a place you’d want to attack from the sea due to its geography, and that’s
why Bush and his friends were up in the skies bombing it.
In his book, Bradley talks about how he researched what happened to those guys and also says
he talked to the families and friends of the men.
About that he wrote, and this is right from the book, “None of them - not even the next
of kin or the bunkmates who served in the Pacific with them - knew exactly what happened
to these eight on Chichi Jima.
It was all a dark hole, an unfathomable secret.”
But then he writes that he met with some of the Japanese soldiers who had been with the
captured before they were killed, and he said some of them said they lived as captives for
weeks.
He writes, “I heard stories about how they were treated, about their interrogations,
about how some of the Flyboys had lived among their captors for weeks.
I met soldiers who swapped jokes with them, who slept in the same rooms.”
In that book it’s written that some of the Japanese soldiers were ordered by their officers
to cannibalize the bodies, but disgraced after the war some of them came out and explained
in gory detail what they had done.
It’s not something they were proud about; they were merely following orders.
Bradley has backed this up in an interview he did, talking about those soldiers he talked
to in Japan.
In one such interview he said, “Every single Japanese soldier ordered to kill a flyboy
refused, and only did so when their own life was threatened.
One of the executioners ran away, they couldn’t find him at the appointed moment.
Another executioner disemboweled himself.
He committed suicide over what he had done.”
He also says that the families of the deceased were never told the truth about what happened
to the men; it was too much of a gruesome story to tell and the U.S. Navy kept it under
wraps.
Later a lawyer who was at the war crimes trials would say, “'The Navy didn't want people
back home to know that their sons were eaten.”
What else do we know?
Well, from interviews pieced together with official transcripts that were once secret
we know about the fate of one captured man called Marve Mershon.
He was a radio operator.
At the war crimes trial a soldier called Iwakawa testified that this soldier was marched to
a freshly dug grave and told to bend over it.
Then he was beheaded.
The Japanese soldier said this at the trial, “When the flyer was struck, he did not cry
out, but made a slight groan.”
It’s said that the next day Major Sueo Matoba wanted to put on a feast for a General Yoshio
Tachibana.
That’s when the gruesome stuff happened.
A Japanese medical orderly who was told to help the surgeon create this disgusting dinner
would later testify and he would say this, "Dr Teraki cut open the chest and took out
the liver.
I removed a piece of flesh from the flyer's thigh, weighing about six pounds and measuring
four inches wide, about a foot long.”
Others met a similar fate, such as a crewman called Floyd Hall.
Admiral Kinizo Mori, the senior naval officer on Chichi Jima, would testify that one evening
Major Matoba came to his tent and said he had brought some delicacies with him as a
treat.
What he was talking about was the liver of poor Mr. Hall.
Mori said he was told to eat it in very small pieces and that it was good for health.
He also said, “I had it pierced with bamboo sticks and cooked with soy sauce and vegetables.”
Another victim had been working with the Japanese as a translator and he must have thought he
wasn’t going to die, but he was wrong.
His name was Jimmy Dye, and after a few weeks a Captain Shizuo Yoshii ordered that his liver
should be eaten and that’s how he ended his days.
Another man was eaten, too, but the others were just executed.
Not in the best way apparently, as it’s said that at least one man was clubbed to
death.
The officers we mentioned who gave the orders were the ones who were executed after the
trials.
George HW Bush didn’t know anything about this and was only told when he was an old
man.
The author of the book said he confronted Bush about it and this is what that author
said, “There was a lot of head-shaking, a lot of silence.
There was no disgust, shock or horror.
He's a veteran of a different generation.”
It wasn’t only American men that were eaten by the Japanese, with other POWs from different
militaries saying later that they saw the same thing.
This is the testimony of an Indian POW, “I saw this from behind a tree and watched some
of the Japanese cut flesh from his arms, legs, hips, buttocks and carry it off to their quarters
... They cut it into small pieces and fried it.”
Another Indian POW called Lance Naik Hatam Ali said this in his testimony, “The Japanese
started selecting prisoners and every day one prisoner was taken out and killed and
eaten by the soldiers.
I personally saw this happen and about 100 prisoners were eaten at this place by the
Japanese…
Those selected were taken to a hut where their flesh was cut from their bodies while they
were alive and they were thrown into a ditch where they later died.”
As we said, it’s thought this wasn’t out of sadism, but more a matter of getting some
sustenance.
It’s grim to say the least.
And so we should finish this with a more positive ending, if that is possible, and we’ll tell
you what Bradley said about the men who were beaten, mutilated and finally eaten.
Bradley says he was told by those Japanese soldiers he interviewed, “I found they did
not plead for their own lives.
They did not give up any secrets.
They went to their deaths with honor.”
What do you think about all of this?
We did look for an official Japanese version of events but couldn’t find one.
Could you add to the story?
Tell us in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other video Mad Jack - A Real Life World War 2 Mad Man.
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time.