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.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
Two daughters of an Argentine mountaineer who died on an icy peak 40 years ago have retrieved his backpack from the spot — finding camera film inside that allowed them a glimpse of some of his final experiences. Guillermo Vieiro was 44 when he died in 1985 — as did his climbing partner — while descending Argentina’s Tupungato lava dome, one of the highest peaks in the Americas. Last year, his backpack was spotted on a slope by mountaineer Gabriela Cavallaro, who examined it and contacted Vieiro’s daughters Guadalupe, 40, and Azul, 44. Last month, the three set out with four other guides
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
DISASTROUS VISIT: The talks in Saudi Arabia come after an altercation at the White House that led to the Ukrainian president leaving without signing a minerals deal Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was due to arrive in Saudi Arabia yesterday, a day ahead of crucial talks between Ukrainian and US officials on ending the war with Russia. Highly anticipated negotiations today on resolving the three-year conflict would see US and Ukrainian officials meet for the first time since Zelenskiy’s disastrous White House visit last month. Zelenskiy yesterday said that he would meet Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the nation’s de facto leader, after which his team “will stay for a meeting on Tuesday with the American team.” At the talks in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, US
RSS