Tales of Wartime Cannibalism

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I was once sent to a survival training course in 2013.

Lasted about three weeks.

And for the last week of the course, they didn't feed us.

They showed us how to start fires, how to find water, how to set traps for squirrels, rabbits, that kind of thing.

But honestly, we just didn't eat.

We were moving around a lot through deep snow, and it was cold.

So after a couple of days, yeah, we were all pretty hungry.

About three days into our starvation one of the instructors brought us a rabbit.

Now we didn't have any weapons with us so the instructor looks around the group and asks okay who wants to kill it?

I'm looking around at everyone else because I certainly don't want to kill it.

The look on everyone's faces was pretty priceless but the instructor made it clear that someone would have to do it.

And that's when everyone then looked at me, like Marines just kill rabbits for fun or something.

something.

So anyway, I said, sure, I'll do it.

I'd never killed anything larger than an insect with my bare hands before.

I'll save you the gory details, but basically I had to break its neck.

Then the instructor showed two guys how to skin it, and then he took the head off and said, who wants the eyeballs?

I had been told by a Marine buddy to make sure I volunteered for this part because the eyeballs have a lot of electrolytes and I was getting cramps.

I don't know if he was just setting me up, but I was too hungry to care at that point, so I said, I do.

Now everyone really looked at me like I was some kind of maniac.

But I thought, you know, we'd boil them or something first.

Next thing I know, the instructor tosses this thing's head at me and says, all right, go ahead.

And I look at him and ask, uh,

how?

And he says, just suck them out.

Let me tell you, there are a lot of things I will never eat under most circumstances.

But the fact that I followed that man's instructions just shows you how hungry we were after only a few days.

And the more I've studied war history, the more I realize what starvation can drive a man or woman to do.

I don't doubt that you or I are really any different from most people.

When we get to a point where we know we are going to die, if we don't eat something,

we might find ourselves having to make a very difficult choice to survive.

These are true stories of cannibalism during times of war.

I'm Luke Lamana,

and this is Wartime Stories.

Alright, boys.

Five minutes out.

Flight teams, maintain visual and keep this frequency clean.

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Alpha, you're going right.

Bravo goes left.

Enemy relay stations should be within a clear line of sight.

Roger, that lead 127 Charlie locked on Alpha.

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By June 1944, the Second World War had swung firmly in the Allies' favor.

In Europe, American, British, and Canadian forces had succeeded in pushing the Germans out of North Africa and much of Italy, destroying Mussolini's regime in the process.

As Allied forces hit the beaches during the D-Day landings and moved to liberate France, the Soviets pushed closer to Germany from the east.

Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the world, the Japanese Empire was also on the defensive in the wake of several major American victories.

Having first turned the tides in the successful defense of Midway in 1942, the Americans stayed on the offensive, pushing the Japanese out of their Pacific strongholds and doing major damage to the Imperial Fleet.

The Americans strategically hopped from island to island, steadily closing in on the Japanese mainland.

With each advance, American heavy bombers such as the B-17 and the newly introduced B-29 Superfortress were able to extend their reach deeper into Japanese territory.

Due to their incredibly long range, they were soon able to strike cities and industrial targets on the home islands themselves.

For both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, defeat was all but certain.

But for the Japanese, this made little difference.

Fueled by an intense hatred for their enemy and an unbreakable devotion to their emperor and samurai code, the Japanese fought to the death over every inch of their crumbling empire.

As American forces forces prepared to invade Japanese territory, they expected fierce resistance.

Iwo Jima, a tiny island located about 760 miles from the mainland, was seen as an ideal staging ground for B-29 raids over Japan.

Starting in June 1944, the U.S.

Navy and Army Air Forces would relentlessly pound the island and its garrison, softening the Japanese defenses for the Marine landings to come.

As part of the overall strategy to take Iwo Jima, the island had to be cut off from all outside support.

In the event of an American invasion, the Japanese base on Chichijima, only 150 miles north of Iwo, would be first to respond.

While hosting a seaplane base, weather station, numerous small naval vessels, and a garrison of 25,000 men, the base was also home to two radio relay stations positioned on top of its two mountains.

In order for Iwo Jima to be isolated, these transmitters needed to be destroyed.

On September 2nd, aircraft from the carriers USS Enterprise and USS San Jacinto set out to do just that.

The mission consisted of a flight of eight aircraft, four F-6F Hellcat fighters from the Enterprise, and four TBF Avenger torpedo bombers from the San Jacinto.

Each plane carried a complement of four 500-pound bombs.

Seated in the cockpit of one of the Avengers was a 20-year-old pilot, Lieutenant Junior Grade George H.W.

Bush.

Before being known as the 41st President of the United States, Bush was just one of many young naval aviators serving in the Pacific.

Having only flown his first combat flights in May of that year, Bush was already a seasoned combat veteran of over 50 missions.

This day, sortie to Chichijima was just supposed to be another day at the office for him and his buddies.

It turned out to be anything but.

Oh, shit.

We just got hit bad.

Delaney, you see the target?

Yes.

Hold her steady just a few more seconds.

Make it quick.

Bombs away.

Direct hit.

Good effect on target.

Outstanding.

Boys, she's not gonna hold together.

I'll get us as far out to sea as I can.

I'll be ready to hit the silk as soon as I say.

As the eight planes flew into the skies over Chichijima, they faced heavy anti-aircraft fire.

Although the Japanese gunners were armed with outdated weaponry, they compensated by saturating the sky with as much fire as possible.

Flying through the barrage, the American planes split up, each wing assigned to destroy one of the radio transmitters.

As Bush lined up for his attack run, his Avenger was violently jolted, struck hard by Japanese fire.

Soon, smoke and flame started rising from the aircraft's nose.

Undeterred, Bush pressed home his attack.

He strained to keep the badly damaged plane steady just long enough for Radio Man second-class John Delaney to line up the target in his bomb sights.

He dropped the bombs and scored direct hits on the transmitter station below.

For Bush and his crew, there was barely even a moment to celebrate.

Smoke quickly filled the cockpit, and it was clear they had only a matter of minutes, if not seconds, until the plane lost power.

Using what energy they had left, Bush turned towards open water, hoping to to put some distance between themselves and the Japanese while giving them just enough altitude to safely bail out.

But it was too late.

Even though they were still dangerously close to the island, the plane was going to fall out of the sky or explode at any second.

Bush knew they couldn't wait any longer.

He called for his crew to hit the silk and bail out.

Fighting to keep the Avengers steady, Bush watched as John Delaney managed to get out of the aircraft.

But through the thick smoke now filling the cockpit, Bush lost sight of his rear gunner, Lieutenant Junior Grade William White.

Unfortunately, Bush couldn't wait any longer, only hoping that White had also made it out of the plane like Delaney.

Now it was his turn.

Grabbing an inflatable life raft, Bush popped open his canopy and jumped, his head painfully grazing the aircraft through a stabilizer on the way out.

As Bush tumbled down the length of the fuselage, his parachute got snagged on the tail of the aircraft and ripped.

While it opened, he was still falling at an alarming speed.

He slammed into the cold Pacific Ocean, but somehow the young aviator realized he had only suffered minor bruising from the impact.

After inflating his emergency raft and climbing aboard, Bush scanned the choppy waters around him.

As the battle still raged in the distance, a few Hellcats flew over his position, circling in order to fend off any Japanese ships attempting to capture the downed pilot.

Bush started calling out for Delaney and White, but was met with no response.

Aside from the planes overhead, he found himself all alone in the water and dangerously close to enemy territory.

What Bush didn't know was that both of his crewmen were already dead.

John Delaney had fallen to his death after leaving the plane.

His parachute failed to open.

The rear gunner, William White, had never made it out of the burning aircraft.

For four long hours, Bush drifted in the life raft, praying that help would come before the Japanese arrived.

Fortunately, the submarine USS Finback was nearby to rescue any downed pilots.

During that September 2nd raid over Chichijima, 10 naval aviators were forced to bail out over Japanese territory.

Bush was the only one to be rescued.

The other nine men would go on to endure the horrors of Japanese captivity, and only one would survive to tell about it.

For many American servicemen, the thought of death was almost preferable to being captured by the Japanese.

The Japanese Bushido Code, or Way of the Warrior, established by their samurai ancestors, viewed viewed surrender in any form as disgraceful.

To surrender was seen as cowardly and the ultimate form of dishonor.

As such, captured American soldiers, especially aviators, were treated very harshly by the Japanese.

Beatings, torture, and executions were tragically common in Japanese POW camps.

For downed pilots, death often came swiftly on the spot.

Bush, along with the friends and family of the eight missing aviators, thought that their loved ones would meet a similar fate.

The truth, however, was that the sadistic tendencies often displayed by the Japanese had reached a terrible new low on Chichijima.

By August 1944, the situation on Chichijima had grown desperate for the Japanese.

Constantly attacked by American air raids, the garrison's food supplies were running dangerously low.

with each man only having a small handful of rice per day.

When the nine American airmen were captured on September 2nd, the Japanese were more than eager to take out their rage on the helpless prisoners.

For an entire month, the captured men endured brutal beatings, starvation, and torture.

Then the Japanese commander, General Tachibana, in an act of retribution, ordered that all of the prisoners be executed.

In a gruesome public ceremony, eight of the men were clubbed, bayoneted, mutilated, or beheaded by their Japanese captors.

But the horror didn't end with their deaths.

After two of the prisoners were beheaded, Tachibana gave a very gruesome order.

Their livers were to be cut out, and the meat was to be prepared for a visiting delegation of Navy officers.

That night, Tachibana and his guests were treated to an appetizer of roasted human flesh.

While some officers in attendance were clearly disturbed and refused to partake, Rear Admiral Kunizumori of the Imperial Navy was especially enthusiastic, so much so that he wanted to treat the Army staff to a feast of his own.

Pulling from their own group of POWs, Mori ordered that the Americans be butchered, with the meat from their thighs and livers being boiled as part of a stew to serve to Tachibana and his fellow officers.

As the war came to an end in September of 1945, the hunt began for all Japanese officers and enlisted men wanted for various war crimes.

When a Marine Corps investigative committee set out to find the whereabouts of airmen downed over Chichijima and the Bonin Islands learned of the atrocity, they quickly apprehended General Tachibana and 30 other men connected to the cannibalistic acts.

In 1946, Tachibana and four others would be found guilty for the murder of American prisoners.

While they were found guilty for their murders, cannibalism itself wasn't covered under international law.

They were instead charged with prevention of honorable burial and sentenced to death.

The following year, Tachibana and four other officers were hanged.

The rest of the enlisted men charged in connection to the crimes were released from captivity within the next eight years.

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For over 60 years, the military kept all records of the trial and investigation sealed, likely believing that the truth would be too painful for the families of the missing missing airmen to hear.

Even throughout his long-spanning political career and presidency, George H.W.

Bush never knew what happened to his fellow aviators shot down over Chichijima on that September day.

It wasn't until he got his hands on a copy of James Bradley's book, Flyboys, a true story of courage, that he learned the horrifying reality of their deaths, a fate he himself narrowly avoided.

For Bush, the book reopened old wounds, the faces and names of his fallen friends weighing heavily on his mind.

Aviation Radioman Jimmy Dye, Navy Pilot Floyd Hall, Aviation Radioman Marv Mershon, Marine Pilot Warren Earl Vaughan, Aviation Radioman Dick Wollhoff, Aviation Gunner Grady York, Aviation Gunner Glenn Frazier, Navy Pilot Warren Hindenlang.

Of these eight airmen, Mershon, Hall, Dye, and Vaughan were killed for cannibalistic purposes.

A ninth prisoner, Navy pilot William L.

Connell, survived his time in Japanese captivity on Chichijima and was released at war's end in 1945.

For President Bush, the memories brought waves of intense sorrow and survivor's guilt, which he wrestled with for much of his remaining life.

In a later reflection, Bush stated,

I wonder why the chute didn't open for the other guy.

Why me?

Why am I blessed?

Why am I still alive?

That has plagued me.

While the cannibalistic acts seen in the Chi Chijima incident were born out of a sadistic cruelty, most historical instances are the result of desperation brought on by extreme starvation.

For millions of people around the world, the 1930s were indeed a bleak and desperate time.

The 1929 stock market crash plunged the world into an economic depression causing business closures, bank failures, and widespread unemployment across North America, South America, and Europe.

Many struggled to provide for themselves and their families.

It wasn't uncommon for households to resort to rationing or to go to bed on empty stomachs.

However, the hardships endured by those in the Soviet Union far surpassed that of the Western world.

Joseph Stalin's policy of forced collectivization, designed to rapidly industrialize the country, grouped independently owned peasant farms into large collective farms owned by the Soviet state.

The idea behind the practice was to boost food production for urban areas.

Most peasants, however, weren't enthusiastic about having to surrender their land, livestock, autonomy, and traditional farming practices to the government.

Ukrainian farmers were particularly opposed to collectivization, staging protests and armed uprisings that were immediately met with brute force by the Soviet government.

Instead of increasing agricultural output as intended, Stalin's collectivization initiative had the opposite effect, leading to a sharp decline in food production and widespread famine throughout the Soviet Union.

In what Ukrainians now know as the Holodomor, or death by hunger, this famine resulted in an estimated 3 to 5 million people dying of starvation.

In their desperation, many were reported to have turned to cannibalism, primarily consuming the flesh of those who had already died.

However, there are also grim reports of parents killing their own children, or even children being hunted down as food by packs of people driven mad by hunger.

The Soviet secret police, the NKVD, were told to keep an eye on local butcher shops for any suspicious meats, and by March of 1933, Kiev police were said to be receiving 10 or more reports of cannibalism a day.

It's likely that in the chaos of the situation, countless other instances went undocumented.

by both Ukrainian and Soviet authorities.

Instances of cannibalism like those seen during the Holodomor are a tragic reminder of what human beings are capable of when survival is on the line.

However, the terror experienced by millions of Soviet citizens throughout the 1930s was merely a precursor to what would happen during the Second World War.

By the summer of 1941, the Second World War was going very well for the Nazi Third Reich.

After their 1939 conquest of Poland, Hitler then turned his attention west towards Britain, France, and the dozens of smaller Western European nations.

In May 1940, the Germans, using their revolutionary blitzkrieg tactics, launched a sprawling offensive across the continent.

The Allies, relying on outdated strategies born out of the First World War, were completely unprepared for the lightning-fast German onslaught.

By the end of that summer, all of mainland Europe had fallen under the Nazi banner.

The only thing that stood between Hitler and total domination in the West was the defiant will of the British people.

With Britain's military defending their home island and fighting the Axis advance in North Africa, Hitler, emboldened by his success, began preparations for his most ambitious military campaign to date, the invasion of the Soviet Union.

Operation Barbarossa began on June 22, 1941, with a force of nearly 150 divisions, divisions, including 3,000 tanks, 7,000 artillery pieces, 2,500 aircraft, and over 3 million men.

It was, and still is, the largest invasion in military history.

Despite Britain relaying plenty of intelligence to the Soviets leading up to the German invasion, the assault caught the Red Army completely by surprise.

The ruthless purges ordered by Stalin throughout the 1930s had gutted the Soviet military of many of its competent leaders.

Though the Red Army, Navy, and Air Force were massive in number, they were poorly coordinated, lacking proper training, and being poorly equipped.

As a result, Soviet resistance to the initial invasion quickly fell apart as German forces advanced.

Driving deep into the heart of Russia, Hitler ordered his divisions to splinter into three groups, each with their own objectives.

Army Group Center would push into Belorussia with the aim of capturing Minsk and Smolensk.

before driving straight to Moscow.

Army Group South advanced into Ukraine, capturing Kiev before moving to the Crimean Peninsula.

Army Group North's task was to secure the Baltic states and the old imperial capital of Russia, now known as Leningrad.

Leningrad, once called St.

Petersburg, was second only to Moscow in terms of its strategic and symbolic importance to the Soviet war effort.

With its population of around 3 million people, Leningrad was a key manufacturing center in the Soviet Union.

By 1939, its 600 factories were thought to be responsible for around 11% of the nation's overall industrial output.

The city's location on the Baltic coast also made it a vital hub for the Red Navy, who based much of its northern Baltic fleet out of Leningrad's ports.

If the Germans managed to capture the city, then the Soviets would be completely cut off from the Baltic region and its critical seaways.

Leningrad was also of great symbolic importance to the Soviet regime and its people.

It was here in 1917 that Vladimir Lenin signaled the beginning of the Bolshevik Revolution that that toppled the Tsar and ushered in a new era of communism.

Understanding the city's strategic and symbolic significance, the Red Army immediately began mobilizing it for the coming battle.

As Leningrad's men, women, and children dug trenches and constructed barricades and bomb shelters alongside 20,000 Red Army soldiers, the Germans began to envelop the city from the west and south.

Hoping to reclaim the territory lost to the Soviets during the Winter War of 1939 to 1940, Finnish troops, armed with German equipment, advanced on the city from the north.

Though the Finns refused to push beyond the boundaries of the pre-war Finnish-Soviet border, their presence in the north meant that the Soviet defenders were boxed in on three sides.

With the Baltic Sea to the west and Lake Ladoga to the east, the Soviet defenders hunkered down in their positions and prepared for the inevitable German assault.

But by November 1941, the attack had yet to come.

Poring over the maps in his command post, German Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Lieb, commanding the German forces around Leningrad, found himself in a frustrating position.

The planners of Operation Barbarossa, namely Hitler, had greatly underestimated how vast the Russian countryside was.

While his primary objective was to push the Soviets out of Leningrad, most of his available units were stretched thin along the lines surrounding the city.

He believed that in order to conduct a successful assault on the city, no less than 35 divisions would be necessary.

However, with fighting on the Eastern Front quickly becoming bogged down in the face of stiffening Soviet resistance and the coming winter, only 26 divisions could be mustered.

So, von Lieb opted for a different strategy.

Instead of directly assaulting the city and risking a costly urban battle, he would instead lay siege to Leningrad, weaponizing hunger in order to break the will of its defenders.

Beginning in September of 1941, the Germans launched constant air raids and artillery barrages on Leningrad, focusing their attacks on the city's water, heating, and electric infrastructure.

After destroying these vital utilities, the Germans shifted their focus to destroying the will of Leningrad's residents, indiscriminately bombing residential areas and shelters.

Though about a million of the city's residents had been evacuated before the siege began, around 2.5 million remained trapped, and it didn't take long for them to start feeling the strangling effects of the German siege.

Despite careful preparation of the city's defense, Soviet officials had somehow failed to stockpile sufficient amounts of food and fuel.

Now, as winter approached, the citizens of Leningrad were faced with the dire prospect of enduring the German siege without heating and on empty stomachs.

Realizing their error, the Red Army scrambled to get food and resources to the isolated city.

During late summer and throughout fall, convoys of barges traveled from the Soviet-controlled coast of Lake Ladoga, attempting to ferry supplies to Leningrad.

When winter finally set in and the lake froze over, these barges were replaced by dog sleds and trucks.

Despite these efforts, the German Air Force, or Luftwaffe, made these convoys priority targets.

With countless barges, trucks, and sleds now sent to the bottom of Lake Ladoga's frigid waters, Scarce amounts of food actually made it into the city.

The Germans predicted that it would only take a matter of weeks for the city to be on the brink of total starvation.

But as 1941 turned into 1942, Leningrad remained in Soviet hands.

Conditions inside the city were horrific.

Death was literally everywhere.

The streets littered with the bodies of soldiers and civilians cut down by bombs, shells, disease, and exposure.

The few hospitals that remained were overwhelmed.

Even if there were beds available, their supplies of medicine, bandages, and antibiotics were long exhausted.

To make matters worse, city authorities had reduced the daily ration of bread to 125 grams a day per person, often infused with sawdust to stretch the supplies.

Beyond the German attacks and frigid temperatures, thousands of people a day were now dying of starvation and malnutrition.

In January and February of 1942, over 200,000 Soviet civilians were thought to have been claimed by hunger alone.

The people were desperate.

With spring still a ways off, growing food in the form of vegetables or grain gardens was impossible.

With hardly any bread to go around, Leningrad's starving residents turned their hungry eyes to the countless unburied corpses scattered around their city.

They did what they needed to survive.

The first reports of cannibalism reached the city authorities on December 13, 1941, when the NKBD filed a report documenting the first nine cases of civilians eating human flesh.

About 10 days later, another report detailed 13 further cases.

As the winter of 1942 set in, those numbers steadily increased.

The details in these reports are horrifying, highlighting just how desperate some of these people were to ensure their own survival, as well as that of their loved ones.

In one instance, a mother was arrested for killing her 18-month-old child so that she could feed her three older children.

In another, a plumber resorted to killing his wife, then using the meat from her body to feed his sons and nieces.

While Soviet officials in Leningrad tried to suppress such stories, likely wanting to reduce panic among civilians, tales of cannibals quickly spread throughout the city.

Soon, cannibalism became a horrible, though accepted aspect of everyday life.

Dmitry Lazarev, a resident who kept a diary during the darkest days of the siege, recalled a particularly grim nursery rhyme being sung by his niece and daughter.

Sung to the tune of Mary Had a Little Lamb, Lazarev recalled the lyrics as follows

A dystrophic walked along

with a dull look

in a basket.

He carried a corpse's arse.

I'm having human flesh for lunch.

This piece will do

hungry sorrow

and for supper.

Clearly,

I'll need a little baby.

I'll take the neighbors,

steal him out of his cradle.

Throughout 1942, the NKVD arrested over 2,000 known cannibals, dividing the perpetrators into two distinct groups, corpse-eating and person-eating.

Corpse-eaters were defined as those who resorted to eating the bodies of those who were already dead and typically sent to prison as punishment.

Person-eaters were seen as the more nefarious of the two cannibal classes.

These people were those who murdered others in order to dine on their flesh.

Due to the severity of their crimes, person eaters were often swiftly tried and executed before a firing squad.

That being said, malicious cases like these were relatively rare.

Of the 300 people arrested for cannibalism in April 1942, only 44 were convicted of murder.

The vast majority of cannibals, both documented or undocumented, were likely just desperate people using the dead bodies bodies of their loved ones as a last resort for food.

Despite the strong cultural taboo surrounding cannibalism, the NVKD sometimes showed a degree of leniency for certain perpetrators.

Statistics showed that most cannibals were young, unmarried women with children and no previous criminal records.

Even the Soviet secret police, known for their cold-blooded, almost inhuman ruthlessness, understood that these people were just trying their best to survive.

1943 marked a turning point for the defenders of Leningrad.

While life in the city remained harsh, the citizens rallied together to dig massive vegetable and grain gardens throughout the city.

Though the improvised crops were often targeted by German artillery, they provided just enough food to make life a tiny bit more bearable for the inhabitants.

Elsewhere on the Eastern Front, the Red Army finally began to gain the upper hand against the Germans.

After emerging victorious from the hellish Battle of Stalingrad, Soviet forces put the Germans on the defensive.

They maintained their forward momentum and over the course of numerous bloody battles gradually pushed the Nazis back east towards the borders of Germany.

On January 27, 1944, after nearly 900 days of constant bombardment, Soviet forces finally arrived on the outskirts of the city, breaking the German encirclement and lifting the siege.

Of the over 2.5 million civilians that called Leningrad home at the beginning of the siege, it is thought that only 700,000 survived, emaciated, sick, and barely clinging to life.

The Eastern Front of the Second World War was known for its brutality and massive casualties.

Even among famous battles like Stalingrad and Kursk, Leningrad stands out as the deadliest siege in military history.

Estimates regarding the death toll vary widely, with some suggesting that a million and a half Soviets were killed alongside over half a million Germans.

Despite its grim place in history, the siege of Leningrad, now once again St.

Petersburg, stands as a terrifying testament to the extreme lengths people will go to in order to survive.

Wartime Stories is created and hosted by me, Luke Lamana.

Executive produced by Mr.

Ballin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt.

Written by Jake Howard and myself.

Audio editing and sound design by me, Luke Lamana, and Alex Carpenter.

Additional editing by Davin Intag and Jordan Stiddam.

Research by me, Jake Howard, Evan Beamer, and Camille Callahan.

Mixed and mastered by Brendan Kane.

Production supervision by Jeremy Bone.

Production coordination by Avery Siegel.

Additional production support by Brooklyn Gooden.

Artwork by Jessica Cloxen Kiner, Robin Vane, and Picada.

If you'd like to get in touch or share your own story, you can email me at info at wartimestories.com.

Thank you so much for listening to Wartime Stories.

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