S2 E3. LAND PART I – The Pacific War

Casting Lots: A Survival Cannibalism Podcast

When Japanese supply lines to New Guinea get cut off, the troops are left to fend for themselves in the midst of World War II.

CREDITS

Written, hosted and produced by Alix Penn and Carmella Lowkis.

Theme music by Daniel Wackett. Find him on Twitter @ds_wack and Soundcloud as Daniel Wackett.

Logo by Riley. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @tallestfriend.

Casting Lots is part of the Morbid Audio Podcast Network. Network sting by Mikaela Moody. Find her on Bandcamp as mikaelamoody1.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Bradley, J. (2003). Flyboys. Boston, MA: Little, Brown.
• Drea, E. et al. (2006). Researching Japanese war crimes records: introductory essays. [n.p.]: National Archives and Records Administration for the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group. Available at: https://www.archives.gov/files/iwg/japanese-war-crimes/introductory-essays.pdf
• Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2020). ‘Pacific War’, in Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pacific-War
• Sayas, C. (2017). ‘Intro to Cannibalism in the Pacific’, Pacific Atrocities, 10 June. Available at: https://www.pacificatrocities.org/blog/cannibalism-in-the-pacific
• Sharma, M.S. (2014). ‘Japanese ate Indian PoWs, used them as live targets in WWII’, The Times of India, 11 August. Available at: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Japanese-ate-Indian-PoWs-used-them-as-live-targets-in-WWII/articleshow/40017577.cms
• Spencer, G. (1992). ‘Japan Hears of World War II Cannibalism A Half-Century Later’, Associated Press, 11 August. Available at: https://apnews.com/article/2e7e9a8dae17cc29862c4562b44c9225
• Tanaka, Y. (1998). Hidden Horrors. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
• UPI. (1992). ‘Documents claim cannibalism by Japanese World War II soldiers’, UPI, 10 August. Available at: https://www.upi.com/Archives/1992/08/10/Documents-claim-cannibalism-by-Japanese-World-War-II-soldiers/2568713419200/?ur3=1

TRANSCRIPT

Alix: Have you ever been really, really hungry?

Carmella: You’re listening to Casting Lots: A Survival Cannibalism Podcast.

A: I’m Alix.

C: I’m Carmella.

A: And now let’s tuck into the gruesome history of this ultimate taboo…

[Intro Music – Daniel Wackett]

C: Welcome to Episode Three, where we will be talking about the Pacific War.

[Intro music continues]

C: Alix, would you like to hear about the Pacific War?

A: Let’s tuck in.

C: For those people who, like me, maybe have a very European knowledge of the events of World War II: the Pacific War is the theatre of WWII that was fought in Asia, the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and Oceania.

A: Around Australia.

C: Yeah, which means that the main players in this area are the Japanese Army, the Allied forces – mainly Americans and Australians–

A: I’m really looking forward to Carmella’s Australian accent.

C: I will not be reprising that one. And of course, all the locals who just happen to live there and now have to deal with it being a warzone.

A: How very inconvenient of them.

C: For some background, the first draft of the Japanese war plan is submitted to Imperial Imperial General Headquarters in September 1941. Which, if you know your dates for WWII, puts it quite late in the war really, before they start getting involved.

A: The focus has been mostly with what’s going on with Nazi Germany.

C: But at this point, they decide they are gonna get in there. And, to be fair, there’s some big world powers to go up against and it’s a decision that you have to take seriously–

A: They had to weigh up the pros and cons of it.

C: Their war plan mostly involves occupying the Pacific, which is just what they start to do in February 1942 when they move their forces southwards and move into the Pacific – including New Guinea, which is where a lot of the cannibalism action is going to take place. Now, an interesting feature of the Japanese war effort at this time is that the army and the navy each has its own Supreme Command, and they’re both virtually independent of the civil government. So any cooperation in planning and execution only takes place at the very top levels, which maybe leaves some areas of oversight.

A: I’m seeing a few issues with communication going on.

C: Yep. For example, neither of them conduct an in-depth study beforehand of the geography, climate or environment of New Guinea before they send their forces there, and the divisions assigned to New Guinea have no experience of jungle warfare and aren’t given any training in it either.

A: ‘Off you go.’

C: The war goes on, and by March 1943, Japanese transport ships into the region are completely destroyed and it becomes extremely difficult to transport food and other supplies in New Guinea for the forces.

A: So Japan isn’t doing that well with its occupation of New Guinea.

C: No. In August, Imperial Headquarters implement a ‘self-sustaining’ policy, which is largely considered to mean that they’ve washed their hands of the troops.

A: Just ‘fend for yourself’.

C: Depending on a unit’s position. Some of them are very well-positioned – they can do as instructed and take food from the locals. Which, you know, civilian brutality isn’t great but they have food. Whereas other divisions that aren’t stationed in such agriculturally rich areas just have nothing to eat. A total of 157,646 Japanese troops were sent to eastern New Guinea; only 10,072 survived to the end of the war – which is a mortality rate of 94%.

A: Bloody hell.

C: Mostly due to starvation and tropical disease, rather than combat. Now, cannibalism was expressly forbidden within the Japanese Imperial Army.

A: I’m glad someone actually forbids it.

C: They had thought about it, and they said, ‘No, this is one of the most serious war crimes’. And that applies to whether you’re just eating a body that’s already dead, or whether you’re killing someone to eat them. However, it certainly happened. There’s even evidence from around 1944 onwards that some troop leaders had begun to override those rules and to officially permit eating of corpses as long as they were not Japanese. Presumably in an attempt to acknowledge what was going on but to limit the damage reputationally or with morale.

C: In an order issued by a Japanese general officer in New Guinea shortly before the Australians attacked, towards the end of the war, concern was expressed over a breakdown in discipline in the Imperial Army. And the officer blamed cases of cannibalism on a “lack of thoroughness in moral training” and urged military personnel to abide by Buddhist commandments.

A: So it had nothing to do with the lack of food or support.

C: Yeah, it was– It was just because people didn’t really have the right morals.

A: Bad Buddhists and bad judgement.

C: But whatever the edict, there are certainly many examples of Japanese troops who were forced to eat their own dead. For example, a Japanese veteran named Shōji Ogawa wrote in his autobiography about incidents occurring between December 1943 and March 1944 when Japanese forces were retreating through the Finisterre Mountains in north-central New Guinea: “Here I saw something genuinely horrible. There was the body of a soldier lying on the track, and a large part of his thigh had been hacked off”. Later, he then encountered five soldiers from another troop who “said they had a large cut of snake meat and invited us to join them. But we didn’t like the way they were smiling as they said it. We felt that they were not telling us something.”

A: Oooh.

C: “[We] said ‘no thanks; maybe some other time’”. After they’d left, Ogawa’s companion turned to him and said, “‘It’s very strange… If that had been snake meat they would never have given any to us. Don’t you think they were trying to drag us into the crime they had committed?’”

[Alix shudders]

C: In another case, a friend of Ogawa’s found human flesh in the mess tin of an officer who had become ill and died. The impression left is that the victims of cannibalism were Japanese soldiers who had been killed in battle or who had died of various illnesses.

A: I think there’s something interesting about that division between troops and different battalions. Sort of the not necessarily eating your own, but making sure there are still cliques and you’re looking after certain people.

C: Yeah. Loyalty within very small groups.

A: Yeah.

C: Rather than the army as a whole. In another wartime memoir, Nogi Harumichi, the chief of the Japanese naval police force in Ambon, wrote about an incident in the Philippines, where Japanese forces were retreating over the mountains: “There was absolutely nothing to eat, and so we decided to draw lots.”

A: Eyyyy!

C: “The one who lost would be killed and eaten. But the one who lost started to run away so we shot him.”

A: [Laughs] Oh fucking hell.

C: “He was eaten.”

A: Well, what did he think was going to happen?

C: Yeah, I guess you never think that you’re the one who’s gonna draw the lot.

A: But even running away, you will be killed and they will still eat you.

C: Guess he had to try… However, it wasn’t just their own forces that were eaten by members of the Japanese military. Allied soldiers and the indigenous populations were also eaten; there’s no real distinction between endo-cannibalism and exo-cannibalism in this story.

A: Nice reference to the technical specifications of cannibalism there.

C: As a reminder, endo-cannibalism means eating people within your own group or race or family, etc..

A: Or military troop.

C: And exo-cannibalism is eating outsiders. Due to the heavy Australian presence in the area, there are lots of reports in which Australian military personnel are cannibalised by Japanese forces. In the transcripts of the Australian War Crimes Section reports and the war crime trials, all references to the names of Australian victims of cannibalism have actually been removed, including dates and exact locations. Although not the case for the incidents in which Asian prisoners of war or members of the New Guinea population were victims – so they only extended the courtesy to their own soldiers.

A: Ah.

C: But that’s why in some of these sources I’m not gonna be able to give you names or dates or specific locations.

A: So it’s that it’s been redacted, not that it’s just scurrilous rumour.

C: Or that I didn’t do my research. [Laughs] For example, we’ve got a statement of Warrant Officer Class 2, C. Hugo, recorded in May 1945.

A: Sorry, is his name Sea.

C: It’s the letter C.

A: Okay.

C: It could stand for Charlie, or…

[Alix snorts]

C: Clive.

[Both laugh]

A: Or Cauldron.

C: [Laughing] It could be Cauldron Hugo. Shall I just say Hugo? In the statement of Warrant Officer Class 2, Hugo, recorded in May 1945, he reports that he recovered the body of a fellow soldier killed by enemy action. All the clothing had been removed; both arms had been cut off at the shoulder; the stomach had been cut out, and the heart, liver and other entrails had been removed; all fleshy parts of the body had been cut away, leaving the bones bare; and the arms, heart, liver and entrails could not be found.

A: I think we can probably guess what happened to those.

C: He also found “A Japanese mess tin which appeared to contain human flesh was lying four to five yards from [the body] between two dead Japanese soldiers.”

A: Yup, that answers that quite succinctly. How was Australia doing when it came to rations and food? I suppose they’re being supplied by mainland Australia?

C: They’re the ones who’ve cut off the Japanese supply lines, so presumably they’re doing fine.

A: They’re doing alright. It will be the Japanese and, I suppose, the local population that are suffering the brunt of the enforced famines.

C: There are many reports along the same lines from Australia, and also reports from the Americans which are very similar. For example, we have the testimony of American [in an American accent] Major W.A. Tebbutt.

A: Ate A Butt?

C: W.A. Tebutt.

A: Okay.

[Both laugh]

A: That’s a bit on the nose.

C: [Laughing] W.A. Tebbutt.

A: Ate a butt. I’m like, ‘sorry what?’

[Carmella laughs]

A: That’s the only bit of humour that we get in this episode. With a name like Ate A Butt, you’ve not got much hope.

C: [Laughs]. Major Tebbutt states [in an American accent]: “Sgt. H.B. reported missing in action on 19 January 1943 was found in a mutilated condition on 23 January 1943… The flesh part of the thigh and each leg had been cut away. The abdominal cavity had been opened by cutting away the skin and flesh under each lower rib. The face had not been mutilated, thus making identification possible… a stew pot in a nearby Japanese bunker contained the heart and liver of approximate size of that [of a] human.”

A: We don’t tend to hear about this side of warfare. Well, we do when it’s Tudor and Medieval, but there tends to be this idea that war is very heroic and noble. This detail doesn’t seem to come out.

C: And there’s very good reason for that, which I’ll get to later.

A: Oooh.

C: There are many other cases and reports that refer to the fact that Japanese cannibalism extended to entrails and genitals and even brains, which just shows immense desperation.

A: I think people, again, like this idea that cannibalism is something vindictive and cruel, and only evil people would resort to eating brains. But that’s just not the case – it is a case of desperation. And if your food is being blockaded, you will eat what there is to be eaten.

C: Yeah, it’s desperation, but it does seem to be well-organised desperation. From the reports, it seems like there’s very strategic removal of bodies from areas of combat, which are then cooked and consumed while other members of the same troop hold back Allied forces, in order to prevent them recovering the bodies.

A: Ew.

C: And it indicates that these instances aren’t opportunistic or isolated, but part of what had to become an organised process to survive.

A: They’re anticipated.

C: Part of the reason that these cases were difficult to report on – and therefore that we might not have heard about them – is just that people weren’t likely to confess. So Australian military officials interrogated a number of Japanese forces after the war, and all denied any knowledge of or participation in the practice of cannibalism. So it was very difficult to establish accounts from their side, which is why most of these accounts are Australian and American.

A: And the evidence being the state that the bodies were left in. I suppose it’s very different from situations of survival cannibalism after unanticipated disaster, because for the most part, people are able to – how shall I phrase it? – walk out with their heads held high, and there’s an element of understanding. Rather than warfare where they weren’t there accidentally.

C: And also where the people that are interrogating you, or that you’re reporting to, are your enemies from the war. And you don’t want to make yourself look bad; you want to defeat them still.

A: You want to represent yourself and your people with honour.

C: But it’s not just the Australians and the Americans who have made these reports – and of course the earlier Japanese memoirs that I mentioned – the indigenous population of New Guinea also reported cases of their own people being eaten by Japanese forces, to the Australian forces who interviewed them later.

C: In one case, on the 12 of April 1945, a group of Japanese forces attacked a New Guinea village and stole yams, copra and other foods as well as cooking utensils. Most of the villagers hid, but two were abducted, and when the bodies were found, “Flesh had been cut from the chest, thighs, calves, buttocks and back… The top of the head had been cut off, and the brain removed… Near a small fire which the Japanese had used for cooking [they] found the bone from a man’s forearm… There were scrapings of taro and yam around the same fire.”

A: I don’t know if you’re going to cover this later, but it feels like a big part of this narrative of cannibalism in the Pacific is almost balancing survival cannibalism against intentional brutality or cruelty, and which stories have been exacerbated to make the enemy look bad – and finding that balance in between war crimes and desperation.

C: Exactly. That’s a real difficulty in researching this particular topic, especially researching it as someone who speaks English and not Japanese. In an attempt to counteract that, one of the main sources I’m taking this information from is a book called Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II, which was originally published in Japan by a Japanese author called Yuki Tanaka. So I’m hoping that that gives a more balanced perspective from two sides of the war. And also I’m focusing on stories that were brought to trial in the war crime tribunals, and therefore have been at least legally recognised as having happened.

A: We tend to be quite apologetic when it comes to survival cannibalism as something that is done to survive desperate circumstances. And I think it’s quite important to remember that there is quite a devastating and horrific war going on at the same time. Like, just because survival cannibalism isn’t in and of itself something worthy of judgement…

C: War crimes are.

A: War crimes are! War crimes are bad.

C: In 1947, the Australian War Crimes Section in Tokyo interrogated a Japanese lieutenant in relation to this incident. He claimed that the consumption of the villagers had been committed by members of his squad, but he had not been aware of the incident at the time. When he discovered what had happened, he punished three soldiers involved by assigning them dangerous reconnaissance duties.

C: However, Captain David Feinborg, the Australian officer who captured this squad, stated that “these t[roo]ps were by no means starving and their discipline was excellent. It may be presumed that any atrocities were carried out with the consent and under the orders of the officers of the party.” Another report states that “the Japanese captured… were found to be in good physical condition… The discipline maintained… was of the highest order [and] The officers had excellent control of men under their command.” Which again backs up the idea that perhaps survival cannibalism in some cases was a case of strategy as a long-term thinking rather than opportunistic moments of desperation.

A: It had become part of the survival plan.

C: Yeah, part of your everyday life, almost. Which is very, very depressing.

A: If the first blockades of food against Japanese forces came into place in 1943, it would become part of a long-term survival strategy.

C: This one was from ‘45, so you’re two years into intense starvation. Alongside Japanese forces, Australian forces, American forces, and the local population, we also have the POWs. During the war years, the Japanese government forcibly removed workers from Korea, China, India, and elsewhere in Asia and shipped them to Southeast Asia as unpaid labor for dangerous work in coal mines and for heavy construction projects such as the Burmese-Thailand railway.

C: After the fall of Singapore in February 1942, 40,000 men of the Indo-Pakistani Army – which was part of the Commonwealth forces – also became POWs. Indian and Pakistani POWs were divided into construction companies and special transport companies. There were 30 of these stationed in the New Guinea region, numbering approximately 8,000 to 10,000 people.

C: Hatam Ali was a Pakistani soldier taken prisoner on 15 February 1942 and sent to New Guinea towards the end of 1943, where he worked on the construction of an airfield. He recounts how men “were employed for 12 hours daily on hard fatigues and were given very little to eat”. Japanese supply lines were then cut off – as we already know – so that their own soldiers ran out of rations. Ali reports that, “At this stage the Japanese started selecting prisoners and everyday 1 prisoner was taken out and killed and eaten by the Japanese… about 100 prisoners were eaten at this place.”

C: Ali and his fellow POWs were then moved to another spot, where the selection process began all over again. Warning: this is about to get really bad. Like, even for us. He reports that “Those selected were taken to a hut where flesh was cut from their bodies while they were alive–”

[Alix shudders]

C: And they were then thrown in a ditch, where they later died. When Ali was escorted to this hut himself, he managed to run away despite an injury on his left ankle. He was rescued by Australian forces, who were unable to find any other witnesses to corroborate this particular story. So the question is–

A: How much first-hand evidence and testimony is enough? When does it stop becoming rumour and start becoming accepted fact?

C: Exactly. These seem to be really, really cruel methods – it’s almost like a people farm – and the question is why would you then carve up living people.

A: Why is there that much intentional cruelty if you’re not – this is going to sound awful – but if you’re not keeping people alive to create more food, why wouldn’t you be a little humane?

C: Tanaka, the author of Hidden Horrors, suggests that if this was the case, perhaps it was an attempt to avoid the rapid putrefaction of the tropics. Keep the meat fresher for longer. And that perhaps, people do get deadened to horrors of war, and do start seeing enemies as not really people. Even so, it seems like a really far-flung case that’s difficult to believe – but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen.

A: We have first-hand testimony, and what does he have to gain by saying this happened? Other than further dehumanising those who held him prisoner. I can see why in both directions it’s difficult to both believe and disbelieve.

C: This isn’t the only case of brutal accounts of survival cannibalism in this theatre of war. Another one occurs between August 1944 and March 1945, so right at the end here. Japanese forces executed eight downed US airmen on the island of Chichijima. Four of the prisoners were cannibalised after their executions. One felled US airman did manage to escape this fate because he ditched his plane further from the island than the other crews and managed to scramble onto a life raft. You may have heard of him… George H.W. Bush?

A: The name rings a bell. I wish it didn’t.

C: So fun connection between a former US president and cannibalism.

A: Don’t say we don’t teach you anything.

C: In the incident reported on Chichijima, Lieutenant Wantanabe reports “The despair of the soldiers was very great… The air raids were very frequent [and] the supply route to Japan was cut. All the units were cut down on their rations and because of this they were using all sorts of edible grass, snails et cetera, to supplement their diet. Because of these reasons the troops were suffering from something like a nervous breakdown.”

C: The felled airmen were being interrogated and tortured, and the plan was to then execute them as they stopped being useful for interrogation. Why keep alive extra mouths to feed if they’re your enemies? The first to be executed via beheading was Marve Mershon.

C: The Japanese officers at this time were on a real bender, drinking sake for days on end. The day after the execution, according to Major Matoba, “At the general’s headquarters, sake was served and the conversation turned to the Japanese forces that had been stationed in New Guinea. General Tachibana and I talked about how the troops there had lacked provisions and eventually had to eat human flesh to survive.” Later that day, Matoba and Tachibana were invited to the 307th Battalion’s headquarters to continue drinking. It’s reported that “Major Matoba was very angry because the 307th Battalion did not have enough meat at the table to go with the vegetables” – although there was some meat at the table. Tachibana brought up Merhon’s execution, and suggested that as a way of obtaining more meat. He allegedly said that “One had to have enough fighting spirit to eat human flesh”.

C: Matoba telephoned his headquarters and ordered for the liver to be cut from Mershon’s body. Even though it had already been buried and his men were really reluctant to follow through with this command, eventually they gave in and the surgeon, Dr Teraki, was made to remove flesh from the thigh and the liver. Matoba and Tachibana reportedly had the meat cooked and served to them along with the rest of the meal, and ordered the others to eat with them. And this was repeated for the other three cannibalised prisoners. Now, this sounds like a far-flung story, but all of these men were later convicted in the war crime tribunals.

A: For cannibalism?

C: For this specific case of cannibalism.

A: See, this seems to be blurring the boundaries between survival cannibalism, enemy cannibalism, and ritual cannibalism. I think ‘we don’t have enough meat to supplement the vegetables’ isn’t quite the same as ‘we’re starving to death’.

C: Yeah, I feel like this one is much more of a– They’re quite drunk, it sounds like a good idea, it’s part of this, like you said, enemy cannibalism.

A: I’m going to repeat something that I said when we were discussing the Raft of the Medusa. No matter how drunk I’ve been, I’ve never resorted to cannibalism.

C: Take the high road then, Alix! Let’s get onto the tribunals.

[Both laugh]

C: Shall we? Australia was the only member of the Allied nations to officially recognise cannibalism specifically as a war crime, but despite the vast body of evidence, no charges were laid for these crimes in the A Class war crimes trials. During the war, reports of cannibalism were highly censored both within the Australian military and going outwards to the public – apparently to avoid demoralising Australian forces.

A: You wouldn’t want morale to be any worse than it already was.

C: Yeah. The A Class trials were heavily globally publicised, so perhaps that’s why the decision was made to keep cannibalism out of them. But the B and C Class trials were less highly covered, and so they did include cannibalism.

[Both laugh]

A: Just in the trials.

C: Cannibalism charges. Of course, in some ways this backfired. Because of the lack of public information about the causes of this cannibalism or any persecution of the Japanese High Command to these war crimes, most of the information that was circulating was rumour.

A: Wartime rumour, scurrilous gossip, dehumanisation, and cannibalism.

C: The Australian public came to believe, or possibly to reinforce a view that may have already existed of Japanese people as, you know, evil cannibals who sadistically murdered people in the war.

A: Barbaric behaviour, not civilised. Just killing and eating people for fun.

C: Exactly, yep. The B and C class trials included the investigation into the treatment of Allied POWs on Chichijima, and they began on the 21 December 1945. Many interviewees claimed to know nothing about it, or only to have heard of it. One witness, Major Yoshitaka Horie, made a statement claiming the four airmen were killed in US air raids. Later, then he admitted that this was false, explaining that “a few days after the end of the war, an order was put out by [General] Tachibana… that all records [were to] be destroyed about American flyers, and no one was to say anything to the Americans about the flyers that were up here.”

C: Horie had asked Matoba to help fabricate a plausible cover story. Matoba chose men to play the role of the guards of the POWs supposedly killed during the US air raid. Matoba himself failed to stick to the story he had concocted – he admitted, almost immediately, that POWs on Chichijima were executed. However, he maintained that stories of cannibalism were false and resulted from jealousies among the battalions and attempts to blame him for crimes committed by others on Chichijima. So it wasn’t that no Japanese forces had done it: he hadn’t done it.

A: So we don’t have a unified front?

C: Well, in a second interview, Matoba then admitted that the bodies were cannibalised. When asked whether he considered himself a cannibal, Matoba said, “Yes, I was a madman due to the war and that is the only reason I can give for being a cannibal.” In August 1946, Lieutenant General Tachibana and 13 other Japanese military personnel were tried on Guam for murder, violation of the laws of war, and neglect of duty in violation of the laws and customs of war. One of the specifications was “prevention of honorable burial”, e.g. cannibalism. The court found 13 of the 14 defendants guilty. Tachibana and two officers received death sentences, and the remaining ten defendants received prison sentences, ranging from five years to life. I have to say, five years doesn’t sound like a long time.

A: No. I want to know how one person got off.

C: There was a request for the arrest of Dr Teraki – who was the guy who had butchered the bodies under the command of the officers – and this request was issued in January 1946. However, on the 27 March, Teraki left a suicide note intended for his wife and disappeared. End of story? No. In August 1948, police found Teraki running a small dispensary and arrested him. His trial began in March 1949 and he was charged with violation of the law and customs of war, including mutilating the bodies of executed POWs by removing their livers and portions of flesh.

A: To be cannibalised.

C: Yeah. He was found guilty and sentenced to four years in prison. I guess he didn’t eat it himself.

A: If he hadn’t run away, he’d have been halfway through his sentence by then.

C: That’s a very good point. Despite prosecuting individuals, the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal didn’t go so far as to examine the guilty party behind the war crimes overall, which is to say Japanese Imperial Headquarters, who put everyone in this horrible situation where they were starving to death. While Japanese forces in the Pacific were the perpetrators of war crimes, they’re also the victims of gross neglect that pushed them into cannibalism in the first place. The Most senior Japanese officer found guilty of cannibalism and hanged was Tachibana, and nobody more senior than him took any flack for it at all.

A: Other than Chichijima, I hadn’t heard of any of those instances of cannibalism in the Pacific theatre of war.

C: There’s a lot of them.

A: That is horrific and quite incredible at the same time.

C: And these aren’t even the only cases of cannibalism in this area – Alix?

A: We will be looking in more depth at the fall of Singapore and its consequences in a later episode.

[Outro Music – Daniel Wackett]

A: Thank you for listening to today’s episode on the war in the Pacific. What else can you really say about war crimes?

C: Join us next time for a deep dive into Chinese history…

[Outro music continues]

A: Casting Lots Podcast can be found on Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr as @CastingLotsPod, and on Facebook as Casting Lots Podcast.

C: If you enjoyed this episode and want to hear more, don’t forget to subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, and please rate, review and share to bring more people to the table.

A: Casting Lots: A Survival Cannibalism Podcast, is researched, written and recorded by Alix and Carmella, with post-production and editing also by Carmella and Alix. Art and logo design by Riley – @Tallestfriend on Twitter and Instagram – with audio and music by Daniel Wackett – Daniel Wackett on SoundCloud and @ds_wack on Twitter. Casting Lots is part of the Morbid Audio Podcast Network – search #MorbidAudio on Twitter – and the network’s music is provided by Mikaela Moody – mikaelamoody1 on Bandcamp.

[Morbid Audio Sting – Mikaela Moody]