Flyboys

by James Bradley

  Soldiers dug a hole nearby and placed Glenn’s blood-soaked, emaciated body in it. They buried him with his canteen. There was no marker, and no one even bothered to record his name in a report. Glenn was always referred to as just “the prisoner” or “the flyer.”

  “I did not know the name of the prisoner,” Captain Nakajima later admitted. “I didn’t take the trouble to find out. I did not even ask the name of the flyer that I beat to death.”

  At dusk, just after Glenn was killed, his radioman, Marve Mershon, reached his final resting place. The cemetery was up a small rise from the main road. Lieutenant Morishita paused at the side of the road with his prisoner. The men with shovels proceeded up to the cemetery. After a few minutes, Morishita then led Marve up the small hill.

  Years later, I trod that same path. One can sense the unmistakable stillness of a cemetery. The canopy of overhanging trees must have darkened the dusk. In just a few steps up the hill, grave markers become visible. The stone sentries are tall and narrow, different than squat American tombstones, but Marve would have recognized it as a cemetery. And there was a freshly dug grave.

  Lieutenant Morishita gave Marve a cigarette as they stood beside the new hole. Marve remained calm and smoked quietly.

  Radioman Mershon was blindfolded and instructed to kneel beside the hole.

  What did it feel like at that moment? Pilot Charlie Brown had thought he was about to have his head chopped off after he was shot down over Tokyo on February 16. He was blindfolded and made to kneel and extend his neck. “I thought, Here it comes,” Charlie said. “But there was no fear or panic when I thought my head was going to be chopped off. Actually, it was the reverse: A calm went through me. Maybe it was blood rushing out of my head like I was about to faint. My life didn’t flash in front of me; there was just calmness. All I remember thinking was, I hope my parents don’t find out how I died.”

  Dr. Sherwin Nuland, in his book How We Die, suggests that Charlie’s feeling of calm had a medical basis. Nuland writes that the body releases self-generated opiates called endorphins when confronted with terror. “Endorphin elevation appears to be an innate physiological mechanism to protect mammals and perhaps other animals against the emotional and physical danger of terror and it probably appeared during the savage period of our prehistory when sudden life-threatening events occurred with frequency.” Commenting on the case study of one murdered young girl, Dr. Nuland writes, “I am convinced that nature stepped in, as it so often does, and provided exactly the right spoonful of medicine to give a measure of tranquillity to a dying child.”

  Marve, clad in his long underwear, knelt in the freshly dug earth.

  “Lieutenant Morishita aimed his sword and raised it up,” said a soldier named Yoshia. “Then he told us to move back because the blood might splatter us.”

  “Lieutenant Morishita aimed his sword two or three times at his neck,” recalled Iwakawa. “We in the working party didn’t want to look, so we retired several meters to the rear.”

  The sword came down and sliced through Marve’s neck. “When the flyer was struck,” Iwakawa said, “he did not cry out but made a slight groan.”

  As Morishita withdrew his weapon, Marve tumbled forward into his grave. Lieutenant Morishita ordered the soldiers to cover Marve with dirt. When Iwakawa looked at Marve’s body lying there, he saw that the lieutenant had done an incomplete job.

  “The head was not completely severed from the body,” Iwakawa said. “It was almost severed off, but it was held on by the skin of his throat.” If Marve’s inert corpse were held upright at that moment, his head would have hung upside down against his chest dangling by the skin of his neck.

  As the sun dipped below the horizon, Los Angeleno Marve Mershon was buried in his long johns. Marve had lived exactly nineteen years, six months, and two days. It had been almost twenty months since he had enlisted, at his brother Hoyt’s suggestion, to get his life together.

  The day after Marve died, Saturday, February 24, Major Matoba met with General Tachibana at the general’s headquarters. They were both aware of the ferocity of the fighting on nearby Iwo Jima, where their comrades were being mown down. On Chichi, their soldiers were suffering from overwork, limited rations, and the anxiety of expecting imminent attack. Even though it was just after noon, the major and the general were engaged in their favorite pastime—drinking sake. Whether they were getting drunk or getting drunker is the only question. “Major Matoba told me that he had been drinking for three days,” Captain Shigeo Ikawa later testified.

  “At the general’s headquarters,” Matoba recalled, “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.”

  The two Spirit Warriors were discussing a topic that must have held a morbid fascination for their alcohol-soaked minds. The Spirit boys in Tokyo had dispatched more than 150,000 Japanese troops to New Guinea. They planned the invasion “off the map,” with little knowledge of the horrible tropical conditions there. Instead of responsibly backing the troops up with sufficient supplies, they blithely gave instructions for the Japanese boys to survive by “local provisioning.” But New Guinea could barely support its few tribal inhabitants; the land was not rich like that of China. And when shipping lines were cut by American naval might, the Tokyo armchair generals simply wrote their stranded troops off.

  This was a death sentence for almost all the Japanese soldiers in New Guinea. With no food, they began to eat their dead. Sipping their sake, General Tachibana and Major Matoba spoke of the situation with a perverse admiration.

  In the middle of the afternoon, Colonel Takamune Kato, who was in charge of the 307th Battalion, phoned General Tachibana’s headquarters to invite the general and Major Matoba over to his headquarters for a drinking party.

  “We walked to Colonel Kato’s quarters,” Matoba said, “and when we arrived, we found that Colonel Kato did not have enough drinks and things to go with the drinks.” Ikawa recalled, “We only had two bottles of sake. Major Matoba began to shout for drinks.”

  Everybody knew where plenty of sake was stashed—back at Tachibana’s headquarters. Ikawa phoned there and ordered some bottles brought over.

  A sukiyaki-style meal of meat and vegetables had been set out on a table. To make sukiyaki, a heavy pan full of liquid is heated and then fish, meat, vegetables, noodles, and other ingredients are cooked by dipping them.

  General Tachibana took one look at the spread of meat and vegetables and murmured that there wasn’t enough meat to go around.

  “Major Matoba was very angry,” said Ikawa, “because the 307th Battalion did not have enough meat on the table to go with the vegetables.”

  As the terrified hosts tried to figure out how to secure more meat and avoid a beating, General Tachibana, who had been knocking back drinks for hours by now, had a creative idea. “The general asked me about the execution and about getting some meat,” Matoba said. Tachibana told his hosts, “One had to have enough fighting spirit to eat human flesh.” When he spoke of eating human flesh, the general used the word kimo. Kimo refers specifically to the liver and more generally to the internal organs. The word can also refer to spiritual or mental strength. In Japanese, one can say “kimo ga ookii,” literally, “he has big kimo,” meaning “he is bold and daring,” or “he has a lot of guts.” So when Tachibana spoke of eating Marve’s kimo, he was using a term that referred to an organ but had much more meaning.

  At about 4:30 P.M., Major Matoba called his headquarters, the 308th Battalion. “Matoba sounded drunk on the phone,” said Captain Kanmuri, who took the call. Matoba ordered the captain to cut kimo from Marve’s body.

  “I told the major that the body had already been buried and so please give up the idea of getting any flesh from it,” said Kanmuri. “Although I tried to advise the major by telling him not to take any flesh from the body, h
e ordered me to order the medical officer to have the body exhumed and to have flesh cut away from it and delivered to him.”

  Orders are orders. Captain Kanmuri told the battalion surgeon, Dr. Teraki, to do the dirty work. Corpsman Kanemori was working that afternoon and later recalled events:

  Doctor Teraki came into the sick bay accompanied by two soldiers and told me to get some surgical instruments ready. He did not tell me what for. I thought this was an emergency call, so I prepared a kit with emergency gear. The doctor said, “Follow me.”

  It was dusk when we reached the cemetery. Someone pointed out the location of the grave and the doctor ordered the two soldiers to dig.

  The doctor told me that he had received orders from Major Matoba and that we were to dissect the body and take out the liver. Whereupon I objected, as I knew the flyer was executed the previous day and the body would be decomposed. However, the doctor said it was an order.

  The enlisted men dug up the body, which had on long underwear. The body was decapitated, although the head was hanging by a little skin. The neck was about seven tenths severed.

  After the body was exhumed, Doctor Teraki took a scalpel from my hands and informed me that he was going to dissect the body.

  Doctor Teraki ordered me to cut the leg. I asked him, “Why?” He answered, “It is Major Matoba’s order.” It was a custom in the Japanese army that when the whole body could not be given a proper burial, we would sometimes just cut off a hand or a foot and give this portion a proper burial. Therefore, I thought the same thing was desired of this body, and I started to cut off one of the feet.

  Then Doctor Teraki said, “You should not cut there at the foot. You must cut the thigh.” I asked him, “Why should I cut the thigh?” Then he told me, “You should not ask questions. It was an order.”

  Then I asked him, “Must I cut the whole thigh off, right into the bone?” Doctor Teraki replied, “No, just remove the flesh.”

  Doctor Teraki cut open the chest and took out the liver. I removed a piece of flesh from the flyer’s thigh, a piece weighing about six pounds and measuring four inches wide, about a foot long.

  The doctor wrapped up the liver and flesh in white cellophane paper.

  I had brought gauze bandages and cotton from the sick bay. I placed the gauze over the leg wound and then started to bandage it. I brought out a needle and thread and asked the doctor if he was going to sew up the body and he told me that as it was too late, he was not going to sew it up. Then the doctor turned to the men and told them to bury the body.

  About twenty minutes after we had removed the liver and flesh, Sergeant Sugiyama came and the package was turned over to him by Doctor Teraki.

  Sergeant Sugiyama delivered the package of flesh to the 307th Battalion headquarters. Marve’s liver and thigh were cut up and put on the table next to the sukiyaki pan for cooking.

  “Major Matoba and General Tachibana asked for the meat and I served them,” said Ikawa. “Major Matoba said, ‘You have to eat this kind of meat to become a strong fighter.’”

  The general ordered others to eat, saying they had to demonstrate the “necessary courage.” Matoba commented, “Human liver is a good medicine.” But the broader feast was not to be. “Major Matoba and General Tachibana had eaten most of their portions,” Kanmuri later recalled. “Then the air-raid siren went off.”

  Kanmuri spirited the wobbly general out to a nearby air-raid shelter. “Matoba did not come, as he said bullets and bombs would not hurt him,” said Kanmuri.

  “After the air raid, Tachibana was so drunk that he couldn’t move,” Kanmuri remembered. Finally, the snoring Spirit cannibal was bundled into a car and driven to his headquarters to sleep off the day’s drinking. Major Matoba had passed out on the floor of the headquarters building, where he lay until the next day. Captain Ikawa said the men “did not even cover him up with a blanket.”

  The next morning, Major Matoba ordered the remaining hunk of Marve’s flesh sent to General Tachibana’s headquarters. Later, he couldn’t recall giving that specific order, but the major did admit there was a good chance that since he had started drinking early again that day, he probably was just too drunk to remember.

  No crime was committed by eating Marve Mershon. It was legal for Spirit Warriors to eat kichiku. The Australian National Archives preserved the original of a secret order found by Australian forces in New Guinea that addressed the subject. The Australian archivists titled it “Captured Document number 80.107,” an order written by Major General Kikutaro Aotsu, commanding general of the Forty-first Infantry Group. He had the order stamped “Most Secret,” and it is dated November 18, 1944. Addressing “all Force Commanders,” Aotsu explains that he is writing because “Recently, offences, especially murder, robbery and the acquisition of human flesh have been frequent within the detachments’ jurisdiction and this has had a great influence on the army’s morale.” He goes on to address the problems of—and punishments for—murder and robbery. Then he moves on to the “frequent” problem of “acquisition of human flesh” and writes: “Those who have consumed human flesh (excluding enemy) knowing that it is human flesh, will be sentenced to death as for the worst human crime.”

  Excluding enemy.

  This document is curious, not just because it approved cannibalism of gaizin, but because it had to be written at all. As far as I can determine, the British, French, German, and American armies did not have to address the problem of cannibalism in their ranks. Only the Spirit Warriors’ army.

  In August of 2002, I interviewed a soft-spoken eighty-year-old Australian man by the name of Bill Hedges. Bill served as a corporal in the Australian army in New Guinea. During training, he struck up a friendship with Private George Bliss. Bill told me that George “was a happy country boy” and that the two were “good mates.” They slept in the same tent and were typical twenty-year-old buddies who shared stories of home.

  In early 1943, Bill and George were fighting on the Kokoda Trail in New Guinea, one of the most godforsaken places in the world. Bill led a forty-man patrol into battle and was ambushed by the Japanese, who were well hidden by the concealing jungle. Six of his men were killed, including George Bliss, who was felled “right alongside” Bill. Bill was not hit because a tree shielded him, but he had to retreat and leave George’s body where it lay.

  The next day, replacements arrived, and one day later the Australians counterattacked. The denseness of the jungle now worked to the Australians’ advantage as they caught the Japanese soldiers by surprise. The Japanese fled for their lives, leaving their equipment and supplies strewn about.

  Bill stepped warily over the ground where his buddies had been downed only forty-eight hours earlier. He came to the spot where Private Bliss had fallen and found George’s body still there—what was left of it.

  “His uniform had been torn off and the flesh stripped all off his arms and his legs,” Bill told me. “They butchered him.”

  Farther on, Bill found suspicious-looking meat in Japanese eating tins. An Australian doctor confirmed that it was human flesh.

  At the time, Bill was shocked but preoccupied with survival. “We had trouble coping with it,” he said, “but we were getting shot at and had to look after ourselves.” Later, Bill was debriefed by Australian Army Intelligence and was ordered to sign a pledge that he would not speak of this incident for twenty-five years.

  Bill told me that after he left New Guinea, the memory dogged him. Some of his friends never recovered. He said they were “brain damaged” after seeing Private Bliss’s hacked skeleton. When I asked Bill why his opponents were eating humans, he said he really didn’t know, but that “some said it gave them more fighting spirit, the feeling of being superior to their enemy.”

  Eighty-year-old Bill Hedges still has “bad dreams now and again.” The image of George Bliss’s stripped body comes up all the time. Said Bill, “Sixty years after the fact, I can see it now as if I was there.”

  U.S and Australian WWII arch
ives hold many files detailing numerous acts of Japanese army cannibalism. For example, of those 157,646 sons of Japan sent to New Guinea, only 10,072 survived. Allied bullets killed relatively few. The vast majority were felled by disease and starvation. General Aotsu was aware of the plight of his men. He wrote that incidents of cannibalism in New Guinea were “frequent.” Japanese boys were starving and had to eat whatever they could find. Often, all they could find was one another.

  Harumichi Nogi, the chief of a Japanese naval police force stationed in the South Pacific, later recorded in his memoirs a story told to him by an army lieutenant:

  There was absolutely nothing to eat, and so we decided to draw lots. The one who lost would be killed and eaten. But the one who lost started to run away so we shot him. He was eaten. You probably think that many of us raped the local women. But women were not regarded as objects of sexual desire. They were regarded as the object of our hunger. We had no sexual appetite. To commit rape would have cost us too much energy, and we never wanted to. All we dreamt about was food. I met some soldiers in the mountains who were carrying baked human arms and legs. It was not guerrillas but our own soldiers who we were frightened of. It was such a terrible condition.

  Of course the emperor’s soldiers preferred to eat non-Japanese when the opportunity presented itself. In New Guinea, Japanese soldiers referred to the Allies as “white pigs” and the local population as “black pigs.” Australian and American archives cite many examples of Japanese troops harvesting Allied dead killed in battle. As historian Yuki Tanaka has written, “It seems clear that Japanese soldiers removed the bodies of Allied soldiers from the area in which fierce combat was occurring and carried them to a staging area to be cooked and consumed, while others held back the Allied forces in order to prevent them from recovering the bodies. This indicates that these incidents were not isolated or sporadic acts but part of an organized process.”