US President Joe Biden raised eyebrows when he hinted that cannibals on the island of New Guinea might have eaten his uncle’s body after he was shot down during World War II.
The White House and official records on Thursday indicated that — as with many a family legend — the facts might indeed be a bit different.
Biden paid tribute to his uncle, Second Lieutenant Ambrose Finnegan, after visiting a war memorial during a campaign trip to the president’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday.
Photo: AFP
The 81-year-old president, who was aged one when his uncle died in 1944, reached out to touch Finnegan’s name which was engraved on the monument.
“He got shot down in New Guinea, and they never found the body because there used to be a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea,” Biden later told an audience of steel workers in Pittsburgh.
Biden also repeated the story to reporters, adding that “he got shot down in an area where there were a lot of cannibals in New Guinea” and that the US government had recovered parts of the downed plane.
The problem?
His account of his uncle’s death, and his possible cannibalization, differs from US defense records.
The official Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said that Finnegan’s plane was headed to New Guinea on a courier flight and was “forced to ditch in the ocean” off the island’s coast “for unknown reasons.”
The aircraft hit the water hard and three crew members failed to emerge from the sinking wreck, while one survived and was rescued by a passing barge, it said on its Web site.
“An aerial search the next day found no trace of the missing aircraft or the lost crew members,” it said.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed that Finnegan “lost his life when the military aircraft he was on crashed in the Pacific after taking off near New Guinea,” not over land, but she defended Biden, saying it had been “incredibly emotional and important” to the president to be able to honor his uncle at the memorial.
Biden “highlighted his uncle’s story” to show support for veterans and draw a contrast with election rival former US president Donald Trump, who reportedly disparaged military members killed in war as “losers” and “suckers” while president, she said.
Historically, cannibalism has been reported in Papua New Guinea, the nation that occupies the eastern half of New Guinea.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home