Cannibalism during peace and war.

Cannibalism in peace and war.

( all information collected here is from the various pages of internet, with hyperlinks given)

In our early school days, while learning Geography of Africa, my teacher used to tell us, that there are tribes in central African region, who eat human beings. We used to wonder how their tribe existed ?. If they eat their own people, then the tribal strength should come down. That is what we thought, but later found that, they used to eat people of some other warring tribe which lost their war, and the prisoners of the losing tribe, were consumed by the winning tribe.. There was no crisis for food. It was some firm belief or a ritual practised by certain tribes in Africa and other South American Amazon area tribes.

If you open a good dictionary for the meaning of cannibalism, then you end up finding the following:

What does cannibalism mean?

“ “ the eating of human flesh by another human being; the eating of the flesh of an animal by another animal of its own kind (dog eats dog); the ceremonial eating of human flesh or parts of the human body for magical or religious purposes, as to acquire the power or skill of a person recently killed.;”

In the present day commercial world, the definition takes a different meaning such as:

the removal of parts, equipment, assets, or employees from one product, item, or business in order to use them in another.;; and the acquisition and absorption of smaller companies by a large corporation or conglomerate.””

1. Peace time Cannibalism:

This was a community ritual/practice followed by Chinese, some African, North and South American tribals

(a) Beliefs, traditions and rituals: Cannibalism has re-emerged throughout eastern Congo as the last vestiges of colonial influence have been eroded during the war. Much of the vast forested area is controlled by the Mayi-Mayi, a loose grouping of tribal militias united by their magical beliefs and taste for human flesh (Year 2003)

' Members of the Kulina tribe have been accused of killing a man, variously reported as a handicapped student and cattle farmer, and eating his heart and thighs in a 'cannibalistic ritual'. The Kulina live in the remote Amazon forest – some in Brazil, others in Peru. (year 2009).

The Mohawk, and the Attacapa, Tonkawa, and other Texas tribes were known to their neighbours as 'man-eaters.'" The forms of cannibalism described included both resorting to human flesh during famines and ritual cannibalism, the latter usually consisting of eating a small portion of an enemy warrior.

Cannibalism itself had been common and practiced even in peacetime in China. It is an integral part of Chinese tradition, from which present-day organ trades from the dead seem to evolve. (Reference: Key Ray Chong. (1990). Cannibalism in China.) "As late as the 19th century, it was not unusual for Chinese executioners to eat the heart and brains of the criminals they dispatch. They also ate a portion of the human meat for health reasons, but when some extra meat was left, they sold it for profit." "Chinese often ate their enemies out of hatred or revenge during wartime."

"Cannibalism was also often involved as the punishment to criminals in Imperial China." "The most popular methods for preparing human flesh were broiling, roasting, boiling and steaming. Next was pickling in salt, wine, sauce and the like."

South Korean customs officials recently seized thousands of pills filled with powdered human baby flesh arriving from China. Since August 2011, South Korean officials have intercepted more than 17000 pills smuggled from China. South Korean officials became aware of a horrific practice of eating aborted fetuses after Seoul Broadcasting System showed a documentary on Chinese doctors who performed abortions and then ate the fetuses. One Chinese doctor on the documentary took out fetuses from his refrigerator

(b) Extreme and Famine conditions: Cannibalism can happen under extremely life-threatening conditions. China had widely practiced and institutionalized cannibalism in peacetime, which is more unique and exceptional.

From South America, we hear: 45 Members of the "Old Christians" rugby team, travelled in their Uruguayan Air Force F-227 plane. The plane crashed in the Andes mountains. There was no rescue possible for almost two months after it crashed while ferrying them to a match in Chile., Apr 3, 2016. Other than the snow at 15000 ft, the crashed victims could get nothing at that altitude, hence they had consumed all the available material of the aircraft, to survive with snow melted water. At last , the remaining group of these Christians had to take the last resort of eating their dead team members, with utmost regret for what they were doing. The flesh had protein and fat, which they needed, like cow’s meat. The decision to accept it intellectually is only one step. The next step is to actually do it. And that was very tough. Your mouth doesn’t want to open because you feel so miserable and sad about what you have to do. The living members shared a piece of their dead friends flesh not only materially but spiritually because their will to live was transmitted to us through their flesh. They made a pact that, if they died, they would be happy to put their bodies to the service of the rest of the living team. Of the 45 people on board, including five women, none of whom survived, only 16 walked out alive, after rescuers reached them, 72 days after the crash. After their rescue and knowing all details, their community and the Church exonerated them.

(c) Perversion of the powerful: Idi Amin of Uganda., followed sadistically murdering people. Rumors spread that he kept human heads in his refrigerator. He reportedly ordered 4,000 disabled people to be thrown into the Nile to be torn apart by crocodiles. And he confessed to cannibalism on several occasions: "I have eaten human meat," he said in 1976. "It is very salty, even more salty than leopard meat."

2. War time Cannibalism:

This had never happened in First World War. But, showed up its ugly head in Second World War period both in the Asian and Pacific sectors of War. Shortage of food was the problem, the Imperial Japanese Army had crisis of food, as most of their supply lines were cut off by the Allied troops.

Many written reports and testimonies collected by the Australian War Crimes Section of the Tokyo tribunal, and investigated by prosecutor William Webb (the future Judge-in-Chief), indicate that Japanese personnel in many parts of Asia and the Pacific committed acts of cannibalism against Allied prisoners of war. In many cases this was inspired by ever-increasing Allied attacks on Japanese supply lines, and the death and illness of Japanese personnel as a result of hunger. According to historian Yuki Tanaka: "cannibalism was often a systematic activity conducted by whole squads and under the command of officers" is frequently involved murder for the purpose of securing bodies.

"According to Kunihiro Nakao's confession, in June 1942 in Jiangling County, Hubei Province of China, his companion "captured a 30-year-old Chinese man, bayoneted him to death cut off about 1.5 kg of flesh from his thigh, wrapped the flesh in cloth and brought it to me."

UK war crimes report "For the 10,000-odd soldiers of the Indian Army who endured extreme torture at the hands of their Japanese captors, cannibalism was the culmination. Evidence suggests the practice was not the result of dwindling supplies, but worse, it was conducted under supervision and perceived as a power projection tool. The Japanese Lieutenant Hisata Tomiyasu who was eventually found guilty of the murder of 14 Indian soldiers and of cannibalism at Wewak (New Guinea) in 1944 was sentenced to death by hanging."

Gen.Tachibana, along with 11 other Japanese personnel, were tried in August 1946 in relation to the execution of U.S. Navy airmen, and the cannibalism of at least one of them, during August 1944. Because military and international law did not specifically deal with cannibalism, they were tried for murder and "prevention of honorable burial". This case was investigated in 1947 in a war crimes trial, and of 30 Japanese soldiers prosecuted, four officers (General Tachibana, Admiral Mori, Maj Matoba and Captain Yoshii) were found guilty and hanged. All enlisted men and Probationary Medical Officer Tadashi Teraki were released within 8 years.

The Chichijima incident (also known as the Ogasawara incident ) occurred in late 1944, when Japanese soldiers killed and consumed five American airmen on Chichi Jima, in the Bonin Islands. Nine airmen escaped from their planes after being shot down during bombing raids on Chichi Jima, a tiny island 700 miles (1,100 km) south of Tokyo, in September 1944. Eight were captured. The ninth, the only one to evade capture, was future US President George H. W. Bush, then a 20-year-old pilot.

After the war, it was discovered that the captured airmen had been beaten and tortured before being executed. The airmen were beheaded on the orders of Lt Gen. Yoshio Tachibana (立花芳夫, Tachibana Yoshio). American authorities reported that Japanese officers then ate parts of the bodies of four of the men.

Incident #1, an Indian PoW, Havildar Chandgi Ram, testified that: "On November 12, 1944, the Kempeitai beheaded an Allied Forces pilot. 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."

Incident #2: In some cases, flesh was cut from living people: another Indian PoW, Lance Naik Hatam Ali (later a citizen of Pakistan), testified in New Guinea and stated:- ...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. The remainder of us were taken to another spot 50 miles [80 km] away where 10 prisoners died of sickness. At this place, the Japanese again started selecting prisoners to eat. 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.

Incident #3: According to another account by Jemadar Abdul Latif of 4/9 Jat Regiment of the Indian Army who was rescued by the Australian army at the Sepik Bay in 1945:- At the village of Suaid, a Japanese medical officer periodically visited the Indian compound and selected each time the healthiest men. These men were taken away ostensibly for carrying out duties, but they never reappeared. 

 

Japanese soldiers also ate thousands of Indians during the war.
( Ref: ibtimes(dot)co(dot)uk/war-crimes-wwii-japanese-practised-cannibalism-indian-soldiers-1460601)

 

The Japanese though, were always dismissive of these charges. Then in 1992, a Japanese historian named Toshiyuki Tanaka found incontrovertible evidence of Japanese atrocities, including cannibalism, on Indians and other Allied prisoners. His initial findings were printed by The Japan Times.Aug 11, 2014

 

 

War Crime:  Deaths caused by the diversion of resources to Japanese troops in occupied countries are also considered war crimes . Millions of civilians in South Asia - especially in Vietnam and Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), who were major producers of rice - died during an avoidable hunger in 1944–45.

There was a similar case of several thousands of citizens of Bengal, another rice bowl of India,, who died of a near famine condition, when the plenty of food items available were shipped by the British to their troops in Europe. This was as per W Churchill’s orders. In India, people perished, and there was no cannibalism due to famine.

3. War time medical experiments:

In the European area, the Germans had done a lot of experiments on Jewish people during the Second World war under the Nazi regime lead by Adolf Hitler and his army of third Reich.

Nazi human experimentation was a series of medical experiments on large numbers of prisoners, including children, by Nazi Germany in its concentration camps in the early to mid 1940s, during World War II and the Holocaust. Chief target populations included Romani, Sinti, ethnic Poles, Soviet POWs, disabled Germans, and Jews from across Europe.

The table of contents of a document from the Nuremberg military tribunals prosecution includes titles of the sections that document medical experiments revolving around everything human and poisons.

According to the indictments at the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials, they included the following: Experiments on twins, Bone, muscle, and nerve transplantation; Head injury, freezing, Malaria , Immunization, Epidemic jaundice, Mustard gas , Sulfanilamide , Sea water , Sterilization and fertility, Experiments with poison, Incendiary bomb , High altitudes , Blood coagulation , electro shocks, and phlegmone. ( details of all the above experiments are given in Wikipedia under “Nazi Human Experimentation” )

Apart from conducting various experiments on the PoWs and others, the Japanese had conducted vivisection, amputations without anaesthasia, amputtations on frozen arms, limbs and torso. They had even planned the biological weapon of using plague.

Special Japanese military units conducted experiments on civilians and POWs in China. One of the most infamous was “Unit 731” under “Shirō Ishii”. Unit 731 was established by order of Hirohito himself. Victims were subjected to experiments including but not limited to vivisection and amputations without anesthesia and testing of biological weapons. Anesthesia was not used because it was believed that anesthetics would adversely affect the results of the experiments.

To determine the treatment of frostbite, prisoners were taken outside in freezing weather and left with exposed arms, periodically drenched with water until frozen solid. The arm was later amputated; the doctor would repeat the process on the victim's upper arm to the shoulder. After both arms were gone, the doctors moved on to the legs until only a head and torso remained. The victim was then used for plague and pathogens experiments

One case of human experimentation occurred in Japan itself. At least nine out of 11 crew members survived the crash of a U.S. Army Air Forces B-29 bomber on Kyūshū, on May 5, 1945. (This plane was Lt. Marvin Watkins' crew of the 29th Bomb Group of the 6th Bomb Squadron.) The bomber's commander was separated from his crew and sent to Tokyo for interrogation, while the other survivors were taken to the anatomy department of Kyushu University, at Fukuoka, where they were subjected to vivisection or killed.

During the final months of World War II, Japan had planned to use plague as a biological weapon against U.S. civilians in San Diego, California, during Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night, hoping that the plague would spread terror to the American population, and thereby dissuade America from attacking Japan. The plan was set to launch at night on September 22, 1945, but Japan surrendered five weeks earlier.

Among the hundreds of thoroughly documented events of cold-blooded slaughter of noncombatants, perhaps none is more revealing of Imperial Japanese intent and behavior than the exploits of their Unit 731. This unit was a vast network of medical research activities that harnessed the best and brightest medical and scientific minds in Japan. Their work is very thoroughly documented because the record of it became the instrument of liberty for those who carried it out – they bartered those records of biological weaponry experiments with the Americans, who gave them immunity from prosecution and cash in return. Unit 731 scientists conducted the most macabre and sadistic experiments on human beings in the known history of medicine or warfare. Thousands died at their massive laboratory at Pingfang near Harbin, China. Tens of thousands died in their field experiments, including the dropping of canisters containing plague-carrying fleas onto uncontested Chinese towns and villages. They exposed subjects to deadly infections, and then surgically observed the course of infection without anesthesia. These people, their subjects, were not human in the eyes of the scientists, but laboratory guinea pigs. Their treatment reveals the Imperial Japanese view of the lives of the peoples they had conquered – valueless.