One of our channel’s most watched videos is “Cannibalism – Are people tasty?”.
I would ask if you guys just really need a snack, but
“Industrial Accidents” is our most popular video, and I just don’t know what to make of that.
But there’s one thing we can say with certainty. --------------------------------------
If you study history for long, it becomes clear that people will eat other people if
they are hungry enough. The desire to survive is strong so this isn’t really surprising.
Sometimes people become a source of edible meat for more nefarious reasons. Hatred,
religious beliefs, and group cohesion are a few of the more common ones. �
The sad reality is that it isn’t hard to convince the average person to eat a fellow human.
World War Two is recent in a historical context, and it is also the last time
cannibalism was a widespread event. � It brought death, disease, and famine
to millions. And some of those people ate each other. The Japanese Imperial Army ate prisoners
for nearly every reason imaginable. Russians trapped in Leningrad did it just to survive.
Other than hunger, what drove them to do this? Today we will look at several
stories of cannibalism from World War Two to see if we can find an answer.
---------------------------------------- The Pathology Lab
Toshio Tono was a first-year medical student in 1945. He was attending Kyushu Imperial University
with the hope of one day becoming a doctor. One day he was standing in the halls when
he witnessed something out of the ordinary. � Japanese soldiers were leading two blindfolded
American prisoners into a nearby pathology lab. In 2015 Toshio said of the event,
“I did wonder if something unpleasant was going to happen to them,
but I had no idea it was going to be that awful.”
The prisoners were previously members of a B-29 crew. They were already wounded when
captured. The Americans thought they were being taken to a hospital for treatment. But their
captors saw them as little more than livestock. Toshio claimed that he could only watch
in horror at what happened next.� First researchers began a series of
cruel and pointless experiments. One prisoner was injected with seawater to see if it might be
suitable as a sterile saline solution. Another had a lung removed to see what happened.
The Japanese performed a lot of human experiments. So, the American prisoners were not unique
in experiencing inhumane treatment. � But the captors didn’t stop there.
During war crime tribunals that took place after the war, American lawyers discovered that one of
the American prisoners had his liver removed. It was cooked and served to the Japanese officers.
Why would they eat the liver and nothing else? Nobody knows for sure. The officers weren’t
starving. But there was a belief among some of those in the Japanese
Imperial Army who practiced cannibalism that eating a person’s liver gave one strength.
Being converted to food by a pathology lab was
absolutely civilized compared to how prisoners were treated elsewhere.
Chichi Jima Incident
A former United States President almost became a meal for Japanese soldiers.
Chichi Jima is an island about 600 miles south of Tokyo. During the latter part of the war, the US
didn’t want to risk an invasion. They frequently bombed the island to avoid risking American
casualties. This was convenient for everyone but the pilots and crew who didn’t return.
In September 1944, George Bush was flying a bomber when it was shot down
by the Japanese. Eight of the nine men were captured. Only George Bush escaped.
The former President, when recounting the event, said he was just lucky. His good fortune goes
beyond good luck. It was nearly unbelievable. He was the first to escape from the plane. He
found a life raft. And American planes provided cover fire to keep Japanese boats away from him.�
Had George Bush been just a few seconds slower he would have shared the fate of his crew.
The crew members that were captured during this event were all eventually killed. After being
captured they were beaten and tortured. � When the Japanese soldiers tired of this,
they killed the men. Depending on the mood of the executioner,
the victims would be beheaded, impaled, or beaten to death with a club.
Four of the airmen became the main dish in a feast for the Japanese officers. Meat was cut from
their thighs and the liver was also served. It was treated as a delicacy and carefully prepared. One
chef “had the liver pierced with bamboo sticks and cooked with soy sauce and vegetables.”
Horrible though it was, they weren’t special in receiving this treatment. From 1944 to
1945 at least 100 American airmen were killed and eaten by the Japanese.
We know about these events because of transcripts from War Crimes Trials that took place in 1947. �
The Japanese officers that consumed the flesh of their prisoners were convicted and hanged.
The Japanese officers at Chichi Jima did not eat
their prisoners because of hunger. But the exact reason isn’t clear.��
Could it be that Americans are especially delicious?
Suzuki Unit During World War Two, the Japanese assigned
a special unit to the Philippines. Their mission was to crush native and American resistance to
the Japanese occupation. The unit spent nearly all its time in the mountains and humid jungle.
At first, they survived from food rations.� When that ran out, they stole from locals. It
wasn’t enough. Men kept dying from malaria and dysentery. The humid climate and poor
food choices were too much. The men needed protein, which meant they had to eat meat.
They acquired their meat by slaughtering Filipinos and cutting them into small pieces. The meat was
brought back to the rest of the unit. They usually cooked the human flesh by boiling it.�
After the meat was cooked, it was served with vegetables.
The following testimony from a war crimes trial explains how
widespread cannibalism was among the soldiers:
“When Lieutenant Alejandro Sale captured the Suzuki Unit, he found human bones and human
flesh in the process of cooking, human skulls and fragments of the human body around the premises
of the camp of the Suzuki Unit in and around the houses occupied by the members of the Unit
and it can therefore be concluded that the killing of Filipinos and the eating of their flesh were
of common knowledge to all the members of the Unit who were encamped together in one place�”
When being questioned the leader of the unit claimed that they tried to avoid
killing people for the purpose of eating them. They preferred to scavenge and tried to only
take meat from those who died for other reasons. The judges did not believe the explanation. The
leader of the Suzuki Unit and nine other members under his command were sentenced to death.
Papua New Guinea We don’t know why the
Japanese military ate so many people during World War Two. But we have
to tell you yet another story about their short-lived love affair with human flesh.
During World War Two, the Imperial Japanese Army really wanted to invade Australia. As
part of that effort, they tried to occupy Papua New Guinea. It wasn’t long
before the Japanese soldiers started eating natives and enemy soldiers.
One group of Indian soldiers was captured in Singapore and brought
to the islands of Papua New Guinea. A soldier who survived later testified that
he witnessed at least one hundred prisoners who were killed and eaten by their Japanese captors.
In many cases meat would be cut from the bodies of victims while they were still alive. �
When the Japanese soldiers had butchered enough meat from the victim to make a suitable meal,
they would toss the victim into a ditch. � Death would arrive slowly and painfully.
If the Japanese soldiers started to run out of prisoners to eat,
they had a strategy for making the most of their meager rations. Rather than kill and butcher a
prisoner immediately, they might just take one limb at a time. Without a refrigerator the
only way to keep meat fresh for days was to make sure it stayed attached to a living organism.
The Australians had an encounter with the Japanese during which they had to retreat.�
Later in the day they returned and reclaimed the territory. Some of the wounded soldiers that were
left behind earlier had been butchered and eaten.� Even worse, it was discovered that the Japanese
who ate the Australians had rice and canned food. So, it wasn’t hunger that drove them to eat the
fallen soldiers. At some level, it appears they just really liked eating human meat.
Sometimes the Japanese soldiers couldn’t find an Australian or native to kill and
eat. When that happened, they would kill one of their own. There was at least one instance
where a Japanese soldier ran to allied lines and surrendered to avoid being eaten by his comrades.
In the end, there were many reasons Japanese soldiers ate the dead. Hunger and a desire
to survive drove many of them to do it. Some commanders liked to force their subordinates
to participate in cannibalism as a team building exercise. And less frequently hatred and a desire
for revenge made eating an enemy seem reasonable. The Japanese were not the only group to practice
cannibalism. Europe also joined the club before the end of World War Two.
Fall of Leningrad The Russians have a long
history of cannibalism. The experience has touched so many during Russian history that,
according to historian Guy Walters, the Russian language actually distinguishes
between two types of cannibalism. One type refers to simply eating the
flesh of the dead. The other is when a person is specifically killed for food.
When the German Army invaded Russia in 1941, they surrounded the city of Leningrad. Rather
than risk a costly battle the Germans put the city under siege and stopped supplies from coming in.�
After several weeks there was little food left in Leningrad.
People were given ration cards which could be redeemed for food. The rations were
small though. Civilians only received 150 grams of food per day. Manual workers received 250 grams.�
It isn’t surprising that people would steal ration cards to try and
increase the amount of food they received.�� Questionable methods were also used to extend
food supplies. Sawdust was mixed with bread to make it more filling. Nothing went to
waste where food was concerned. When a bomb destroyed some food stores and
melted sugar into the ground, people dug up the dirt and mixed it with flour.
It wasn’t enough to keep them alive. Eventually starvation took its toll
and bodies began to litter the streets. Those who were starving began eating the dead.
A special police force was created to try and stop cannibalism. They arrested some people,
but the practice was too widespread to control. In addition to eating corpses the citizens
began killing and butchering each other as well. Family members even began murdering each other for
food. One woman smothered her 18-month-old son so its meat could feed her three older children.�
A plumber reportedly killed his wife so that he could feed his nieces and nephews with her
corpse. One woman who couldn’t feed her daughter took the girl to an orphanage
then changed her mind at the last minute because she couldn’t stand to give away uncooked meat.
Since people were starving, they didn’t have the energy to bury the dead.�
And although the hungry masses were eating corpses, they didn’t get every morsel of meat
from the bodies. This meant that rats had a lot of food available to them.�
Their population grew, and before long they were eating all the food. The citizens of
Leningrad couldn’t keep any food in the city until the rats were under control.
Unfortunately, during the siege the starving people ate all the cats.
Thankfully, there were still felines elsewhere in Russia. When the siege ended a train full of cats
arrived. They killed the rats and food was finally delivered. Leningrad’s cannibalism outbreak
finally ended. And over 800,000 people were dead. ------------------------------
Most people who eat human meat do it to avoid dying from starvation. Sometimes it is done
for purely sadistic reasons. And there are undoubtedly those who simply enjoy the taste.
Is the practice of cannibalism actually natural?�
Is the modern world wrong to consider it forbidden?�
Maybe the question isn’t why people sometimes eat each other but rather why they mostly don’t.
Share your thoughts on cannibalism during World War Two in the comments
below. We haven’t been terrified lately.� Perhaps you can help end our dry spell.
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Thank you for watching Bad Things in History. Stay safe, and be delicious!
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