Chichijima incident


The Chichijima incident occurred in late 1944, when Japanese soldiers killed and consumed five American airmen on Chichi Jima, in the Bonin Islands.

Incident

Nine airmen escaped from their planes after being shot down during bombing raids on Chichi Jima, a tiny island 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. American authorities reported that Japanese officers then ate parts of the bodies of four of the men.

Trials

Tachibana, alongside 11 other Japanese personnel, was 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 were found guilty and hanged. All enlisted men and Probationary Medical Officer Tadashi Teraki were released within 8 years.

Book

In the best-selling book , American author James Bradley details several instances of cannibalism of World War II Allied prisoners by their Japanese captors. Bradley claims that this included not only ritual cannibalization of the livers of freshly killed prisoners, but also the cannibalization-for-sustenance of living prisoners over the course of several days, amputating limbs only as needed to keep the meat fresh.