Cannibal Ate My Homework
Joe Biden raised eyebrows when he hinted that cannibals on the island of New Guinea may have eaten his uncle’s body after he was shot down during World War II. And the White House and official records indicated Thursday that—as with many a family legend — the facts may indeed be a bit different.
Mary ManleyIt’s not the first mistaken military memory Biden has had – but it may be the most bizarre. On Wednesday, US President Joe Biden made a remark suggesting that the body of his uncle Ambrose Finnegan – nicknamed “Uncle Bozey” – was not recovered during World War II because it crashed near New Guinea, where he said there used to be “a lot of cannibals” at the time.Biden made the comment while drawing a distinction between himself and his political rival former President Donald Trump, who repeatedly said that Americans who died in war or were injured are “losers” and does not understand why they are honored, per a Washington, DC journal article from 2020.But in drawing the comparison, Biden made a bizarre mischaracterization of his uncle’s death.
"He got shot down in New Guinea, and they never found the body because there used to be — there were a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea," Biden told United Steelworkers union members in Pittsburgh.
However, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting agency said that the president’s uncle was on an A-20 Havoc headed to New Guinea when it was “forced to ditch in the ocean” off the coast of the island “for unknown reasons.”While it’s true that there were documented accounts of cannibalism in the region in the mid-20th century, the accounting agency said that Finnegan and the three men “failed to emerge from the sinking wreck and were lost in the crash” and that an aerial search did not come up with the missing aircraft or the lost crew members.“Three men failed to emerge from the sinking wreck and were lost in the crash. One crew member survived and was rescued by a passing barge. An aerial search the next day found no trace of the missing aircraft or the lost crew members,” the agency wrote. Other mischaracterizations made by the president regarding the US military include him saying that twice he was picked to attend the Naval Academy, despite no documentation to prove such a claim, and in 2022 he claimed his uncle Frank Biden had won the Purple Heart without evidence of the award and key details of the story being chronologically impossible, according to a New York tabloid.
