The Japanese Army were known during the Second World War for being brutal war criminals who
carried out large scale executions of civilians.
On the run up to Nanking even before the war broke out in Europe, two Japanese officers
had a race to see who could execute 100 people quicker than the other using their swords.
In reality these men were just executing unarmed civilians and leaving a sea of devastation
wherever they went.
But there is one story which has lived in infamy during the Second World War, and it’s
how towards the end of the conflict in 1945 during the battle of Ramree island, a number
of Japanese forces were attacked by crocodiles and inside of the infected swamps they were
mauled by the salt water crocodiles, some of which measured over 20 feet big.
But what is their story of this?
Join us today as we look at the horrific death of the Japanese soldiers eaten by the crocodiles.
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It was in 1945 that the war came to an end in Europe and the Pacific.
Hitler had been defeated in the May taking the easy way out inside of his bunker, but
the war still continued in the Pacific.
But as the year began, one of the deadliest battles the Japanese soldiers endured was
the Battle of Rammer which was an island in Myanmar or Burma.
But the Japanese had to deal with another kind of predator as well as dealing with the
British Army.
The British ruled over Burma from 1824 to 1948, and it was for decades a British colony,
and it was ruled as part of India following World War 1.
It was also made a crown colony, but as the Japanese sought to expand across Asia during
the Second World War, they turned their attention to Burma.
The Japanese had helped in forming the Burma Independence Army, and the Burmese hoped to
get the support of the Japanese to try and expel the British so the nation could become
independent.
Japanese Burma was an independent state on the 1st August 1943 but many Burmese believed
that the Japanese would go back on their word regarding independence.
But Rammer Island is found on the south coast of Burma, and the Japanese occupied it in
1942 after defeating the British navy.
However in 1945, the British then fought back and there tried to recapture it.
British soldiers arrived to retake Rammer Island on the 26th January 1945, and they
were planning to build a new airbase there.
However they first had to get rid of the Japanese that were on the island and clear it.
The assault troops landed unopposed on the beaches to the west and secured the beach-head,
and the next day more troops landed and then the 71st Infantry Brigade travelled south
down the west coast.
They continued to occupy different settlements and travelled towards south.
Also a Royal Marine force landed on the island next-door, and found it unoccupied.
But the Ramree Japanese garrison fought very hard and tried to resist the advancing British
forces as much as they could.
The British managed to outflank a Japanese stronghold and then the defenders abandoned
the base and tried to link up with a bigger Japanese army across the island.
But this route took the Japanese through 10 miles of mangrove swamp, and they struggled
through it and the Brits encircled the area.
The Japanese became trapped in the deep mud filled land, and they also suffered from tropical
diseases, but inside of the swamp were saltwater crocodiles.
The mangrove forest on Rammer Island is home to a large amount of Saltwater crocodiles,
which are considered the biggest giant reptilian killer in the world.
They can grow to a length of well over 20 feet in length, and can weigh up to 2000 pounds
and if a human went up against them they would not last very long.
Crocodiles this big are rare, but a normal sized one could in seconds kill an adult.
Humans who have ventured in to crocodile territory for years have a deep history with being attacked,
and the crocodiles on Ramree Island saw the Japanese forces as prey.
In the swamp things were already bad, with the soldiers dying from dehydration, malnutrition
and illnesses and they had to try and deal with mosquitos’ venemous spiders and snakes
as well as scorpions and these were considered another killer.
The wounded and ill soldiers were the first to be eaten by the crocodiles in the swamp
as they fell behind, and then at times the crocodiles appeared from nowhere and they
would steal their victims and drag them under the water.
A number of British soldiers would report that the crocodiles attacked the Japanese
in the swamp.
One written account came from a British soldier who said, ‘“That night [of Feb. 19, 1945]
was the most horrible that any member of the M.L.
[motor launch] crews ever experienced.
The crocodiles, alerted by the din of warfare and smell of blood, gathered among the mangroves,
lying with their eyes above the water, watchfully alert for their next meal.
With the ebb of the tide, the crocodiles moved in on the dead, wounded, and uninjured men
who had become mired in the mud…
The scattered rifle shots in the pitch black swamp punctured by the screams of the wounded
men crushed in the jaws of huge reptiles, and the blurred worrying sound of spinning
crocodiles made a cacophony of hell that has rarely been duplicated on Earth.
At dawn, the vultures arrived to clean up what the crocodiles had left.”
It was reported on the 24th February that the Japanese whilst trying to escape had been
forced by hunger out of the mangrove swamps with many being killed by the crocs.
The crocodiles in the Ramree swamps made many other soldiers to believe that the animals
had a significant role in the battle of Rammer, and one soldier said ‘when the army landed
they drove the Japanese into the swamps and the crocodiles killed hundreds of them.
They used to call the crocodiles the allies.’
Another man recounted the event and said, ‘Over a 1,000 soldiers of the Japanese garrison
retreated into the crocodile-infested mangrove swamps.
We went in with boats and interpreters using loudhailers asking them to come out.
Not a single one did.
Salt-water crocodiles, some of them well over 20 ft (6.1 m) long frequented these waters.
It is not difficult to imagine what happened to the Japanese who took refuge in the mangroves!’
Another veteran would recount the battle and he said, ‘"after a few weeks we managed
to push [the Japanese] to the swamp on the other side of the island, which was full of
crocodiles.
They decided to take their chances in the swamp rather than surrender.
Only a handful came out alive"
It’s believed that around 500 Japanese soldiers entered the mangrove swamps, but only around
20 of them came out after being captured by the British, meaning that around 500 never
made it out of the swamp alive.
A special military tribunal was set up to investigate what had happened, and it was
confirmed that the victims of the attack were Japanese soldiers, and it was said that within
every 3 metres of the swamp, there was 24% human blood inside of the water.
Some even estimated that up to 1000 could have been attacked by the animals.
There have been some historians who have tried to question the events inside the swamp.
One said ‘if thousands of crocodiles were involved in the massacre, as in the much,
how have these ravening monsters survived before and how erred they to survive later.
The ecosystem of a mangrove swamp, simply would not have permitted the existence before
the coming of the Japanese.’
Another said that, the event ‘unanimously discounted ay suggestion that large numbers
of Japanese fell prey to crocodiles, saying that ‘the only crocodile related deaths
occurred when 10 to 15 soldiers were killed trying to ford Min Chaung, a tidal creek.’
But after the war had come to an end, the Allies did speak to the Japanese War office
about this, and this body did not say if it happened or not.
But in 2016 a historian found documentation stating that the Japanese soldiers had drowned,
and many had also been shot, but then the crocodiles scavenged on the bodies after their
deaths.
One man would arrived on Ramree island following the end of the main battle, and he spoke to
other members of the Sea Reconaissance Unit that were based there, and he wrote how at
one point the men had to abandon their paddle boards during the battle and climb up a mangrove
tree to avoid a saltwater crocodile.
It was said they then heard ‘shouting and rifle fire during the night far from the allies
position, and ‘vultures often appeared over the areas that the British forces had never
reached.
This historian concluded that the Japanese died from many other factors and reasons,
but the crocodiles did play a part.
That is most probably the likely outcome of what occurred on Ramree Island.
The Japanese were driven into the swamp, and many would have succumbed to disease and bites
from mosquitos and other animals including scopions and snakes.
It was very dangerous territory, and they cut across the swamp to try and outmanoeuvre
the British, but inside the swamp many died and in my opinion I believe that the crocodiles
did attack, or feast on the bodies of those who succumbed to the conditions of the swamp.
But it’s more probable that they attacked a select number, and did not kill 1000 soldiers,
but the story continued to captivate still to this day.
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