The Japanese Ate A Lot of People In WW2
The Japanese committed a lot of war crimes in World War II but cannibalism wasn’t one of them, though only because cannibalism wasn’t technically a war crime because no one thought to make a rule against it. Still, Imperial Japanese soldiers practiced cannibalism more than you would think, and NOT because of a lack of food. We talk about the instances Japanese soldiers ate Allied troops both as an act of psychological warfare and because they believed it would bring them strength.
Subscribe to the Softcore History Patreon for hundreds of hours of extra history content including episodes like this, listener voicemails, movie watch-alongs, and weekly bonus episodes.
Rob Fox
https://www.instagram.com/robfoxthree/
https://twitter.com/RobFoxThree
https://www.tiktok.com/@robfoxthree
Dan Regester
https://www.instagram.com/danregester/
https://twitter.com/dan_regester
Speaker 1: You. I'm now listening to soft core History.
Speaker 2: What is up? Welcome back to soft Core History. I
am your host for the week, Rob Fox, joined as
always by Dan Rejester.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's a pleasure to host my good friend Robert
Fox in your home, in my sweet abode, beautiful wonderful home.
Speaker 2: How are you doing today?
Speaker 1: My one bedroom apartment?
Speaker 2: What do you need more in one bedroom for it's
a big apartment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we do it from my couch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, big living room, bigger kitchen.
Speaker 1: You can see directly into my apartment though, from the
common area at my apartment complex.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I wonder if they see the lights on hanging
above my TV, just wondering what I'm doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, it's an no f setup.
Speaker 1: They think I'm spreading my cheeks, Yeah, showing my whole.
Speaker 2: I feel bad for the family that live below you
on the first floor because one of their their kid's
bedroom is just like a glass door on like next
to a walkway.
Speaker 1: The slot area. Yeah, they keep it open because their
dogs always come running.
Speaker 2: That's a nightmare. And they're not young kids either, so
they are like they're like in high school, so they're
they're like beating off like with just a thin pane
of glass between them and the public.
Speaker 1: It's only a two bedroom apartment as well, so oh yeah,
mom gets one.
Speaker 2: And the two kids get the other. I noticed that too,
So that's an extra masturbation nightmare.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I couldn't live like that as a fifteen nowhere to
go sixteen year old.
Speaker 1: Honestly, they probably go out to the uh the pool bathroom.
That's definitely the cranks, like shit.
Speaker 2: I hope so, I hope it is. You have the
smell of like a hot chick that lives here, still
wafting in the area.
Speaker 1: I suppose no one's really hit. The pool's been a
little chilly, but it's almost pool season. We're about to
pop top soon. We almost back.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, I hope people look in here and
think your production is what you're producing is disgusting. No.
Speaker 1: One of my friends who lives here, Carson, I see
him a dog park all the time. He'll be working
out the gym when we record. Sometimes he'd like, yeah, dude,
I see you getting after it.
Speaker 2: See grind.
Speaker 1: See you not necessarily grinding, but just talking into a microphone. Yeah,
like soup, Carson Subcrson.
Speaker 2: We got a fun one today. If by fun you
know you mean like a series of horrifying details, it's
pretty sweet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have a pretty horrifying episode for the Patreon.
Speaker 2: Patreon dot com Solas Softcore History.
Speaker 1: Two additional episodes every week drop Wednesday Friday on the
lower tier, and then we got a sports show on
the upper tier.
Speaker 2: And more importantly than that, though, of the two episodes
a week thing, a four year evergreen back catalog, so.
Speaker 1: Much content, it's all history. We've talked about this, like
the amount we research and write it's too much. Doesn't
click in our heads and we're like, oh damn, we've
been doing this a while.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're out of topics. Yeah, I feel that way.
I've felt that way for a year and a half.
Speaker 1: Now. I always stumble upon something.
Speaker 2: It's always something, And of.
Speaker 1: Course I'm in my Ottoman phase right now.
Speaker 2: So the more we're doing more Automan stuff.
Speaker 1: Today we're doing Vlad oh sweet, yeah, Romanian stuff.
Speaker 2: We should uh, we'll talk about it at the end
of that Patriot episode. Let's decide whose episode was more disgusting.
Speaker 1: Okay, I like that.
Speaker 2: Because this one's pretty good.
Speaker 1: And I know that you wrote this episode with a
sponsor in mind, but the sponsor didn't come through.
Speaker 2: Well, they came through with the product and we got
it behind you. It's i'll shout them out now. Just
to shout them out, I'll come a freebie. The uh
Presadius Watch Company sent us a watch Pacific Theater themed
behind you. You had to box behind me. It's still
it's still boxed up. I'll do an unboxing on like
social as well. But it's really sweet and it's like
kind of based on the watches they wore. Plus it's
got like a little map of like the Pacific Theater
on the face and so it's a really cool watch.
They hit us up to do this and I was
like okay, And they sent the watch like a week
and a half ago, so it's like, well, I guess
i'll do it this week. And then I checked my
email and I was like, oh, no copy. They didn't
send any copy yet, So I.
Speaker 1: Just maybe they want us to riff like this.
Speaker 2: They do. I think mostly want us to riff. But
what I'm afraid of is that there is a code
that I won't give because I don't.
Speaker 1: Have use code crankshit.
Speaker 2: But the Persadius Watch Company is really cool. It's p
R A E. S. I d us watch co. You
just google them. They have a bunch of actually military
themed watches from like World War Two and stuff like that.
I was checking out the website earlier. It's awesome. Highly
recommend checking it out.
Speaker 1: Oh we don't need a full read.
Speaker 2: I know even before I give a code when they
ever whenever they said it. But check it out, pick
out what you like, uh, and then use the code later.
But uh, anyway, we'll get into this episode. So I
wrote a Pacific Theater themed episode because after they wanted
Uh so, now we're gonna get two in the next
month and a half.
Speaker 1: There you go.
Speaker 2: But that's fine. Pacific theaters full of.
Speaker 1: Right up your alley. I mean, your grandfather served there, Mike.
Speaker 2: One of my two grandfathers. The other one was in
Europe in the Battle of the Bulge, and my grandfather,
Robert Edward Fox Senior was in the Philippines and the Pacific.
Speaker 1: We've covered this in great detail. The Battle of the
Bulge was a film. It wasn't actually war.
Speaker 2: It was just eight men wrestling each other to see
who got the bulge.
Speaker 1: All oiled up. Yeah, ready to go out by a
pool in La the Hollywood Hills.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, wonder he never liked to talk about it. No,
I always thought it was because he saw some shit.
Speaker 1: I just imagine it was the scene from Boogie Knights.
Speaker 2: Which one just out by the pool. Yeah, I always
by the scene that always sticks with me. And Boogie
Nights is the one where he just walks up on
eight people standing around watching his wife get fucked. Yeah.
Speaker 1: William H.
Speaker 2: Macon, Yeah, that's.
Speaker 1: My favorite character. Plus his brain's out, poor guy. Sorry
if I spoiled that for you.
Speaker 2: It's it's an old, dirty, year old movie.
Speaker 1: This is it.
Speaker 2: Damn almost for sure. It's the nineties, like Late Night.
Speaker 1: I know, time just doesn't hit anymore.
Speaker 2: No, No, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: Waiting for the grays to fill my beard.
Speaker 2: I'm waiting for a beard to grow. Never will.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna let it go for the both of us. Okay,
I'll keep growing it.
Speaker 2: I gotta say, I do respect your beard because when
I'll scroll Facebook a lot of times and I'll see
just old people I know, like from life, and there's
a lot of real dog shit in terms of care.
I mean, I'm just talking like carpet of pubs, just
hanging out a curtain of pews.
Speaker 1: Well, what's popular in Delco where I'm from outside Philadelphia.
You get this beard grown all the way down your
chin and neck, but then you kind of trim and
maybe even get rid of the mustache, almost like you're
from Daugistan. It's like, is he from Daugistan two to
three years and forget or is he just Delco trash?
Speaker 2: Yeah? It is later hard to tell until you hear
the accents.
Speaker 1: I guess probably sound the same, so same amount of English,
yeah can be spoken.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. One thing we've always said on the
show is that the Pacific Theater just an absolute nightmare.
As far as American wars go, that is number one
worse place to fight. I put it above the Civil
War in Vietnam, which are the other two that I
would probably put close to it.
Speaker 1: I think comparable to Vietnam.
Speaker 2: It's comparable to Vietnam, but I still think this is worse,
partly because the enemy was more near peer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they were on our level.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also like crazier, even though the Vietnamese, God
bless them, they were crazy, but the Japanese were just
another level of insane. And actually that's what we're gonna
talk about today.
Speaker 1: Well, we've done some Japanese war crime episodes before.
Speaker 2: We've done the Siege of Manila, which was horrifying, and
we also did the I guess what was my favorite one?
Speaker 1: The episode where they got eaten by alligators crocodiles.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the saltwater crocs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course alligators only in Florida, uh slash Louisian China.
Speaker 2: No, there's something in China. There is a type of
allegator in China, but it's specifically the saltwater croc because
those crocs are fucking enormous and there was getting chomped
up Romrie Island. Highly recommend checking that episode. It's one
of my favorite ones.
Speaker 1: With Bouch with Booche. You remember it was a Bouch.
Speaker 2: I thought Bouch should enjoy that one. Yeah, I thought
Booch's alley.
Speaker 1: And that was when Jake was still with us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he just skipped the week he did so. I
think the Pacific Theater was also you could probably still
rank the Eastern Front above it in terms of worse
fronts to be on, but in terms of but that
the Eastern Front was mostly in terms of just like
the Armies, the Pacific theater was. I guess the environment too.
I think I'd rather fight in the cold than the jungle.
Speaker 1: But dude, fucked the cold, now you wouldn't you think
you'd prefer jungle. Yeah, give me humidity, give me the bugs,
give me the snakes. I don't want the cold.
Speaker 2: I learned This episode is about this. But one thing
I learned is that a lot of soldiers had to
be taken off the front line from the Pacific from uh,
from a debilitating I guess illness is really more of
a skin situation. They got tropical acne, just acne so
bad that it like was crippling.
Speaker 1: It's fine, take that over prospect, all right, every day
of the week.
Speaker 2: Fair enough.
Speaker 1: There was a reason I moved to Texas. That's a
fucking hate the cold.
Speaker 2: That's fair. One thing we always like to also joke
about is how the Japanese almost ate George.
Speaker 1: Bush h W.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's not an exaggeration. They almost ate George W. Bush.
So what I came to find out was that.
Speaker 1: Maybe they knew there were time travelers. They had to
stop HW from eating the baby. Yeah it was eat
or B eating allegedly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, get that. They want his indurna crone. He was
a twenty year old at the time, young blood. But
what I came to find out is that that instance
of cannibalism because and we're gonna talk about that in
this incident, it was a and not a one off.
The Japanese often eight enemy soldiers and.
Speaker 1: B Imperial Japan. Yep, I didn't go back centuries though.
People weren't No, I'm just Samurai weren't people. I'm just
talking about World War two, yeah, B. But I'm just
saying that was like a new thing for them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, apparently new wish because it did go against like
their you know, because they were a normal culture. No
one eats people, right, so like it was taboo.
Speaker 1: Obviously before that they were kind of dicks, but Imperial
Japan took it to a whole another level certainly.
Speaker 2: Oh they really. Yeah, they glowed up there evil quite
a bit.
Speaker 1: We've talked about Samurai culture. They were just the murdering
hobos test your sword, their goons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you were.
Speaker 1: A lower class, it would just strike you down to
test the new sword.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it did be is this cannibalism did not
happen solely because they didn't have other food to eat.
Speaker 1: No, they had plenty of women's titties that they cut off,
also that they could have just cooked up.
Speaker 2: But a lot of the time, a lot of the
instances of cannibalism that were recorded were not because of
a lack of food. It was for other like they
didn't need to eat the people. They wanted to eat
the people.
Speaker 1: Psychological warfare.
Speaker 2: Yes, and we're gonna get in uh to that now.
So Japanese Americans and other Allied soldiers on several recorded occasions.
And while it wasn't what I would call widespread, it
wasn't not widespread. And let me explain that. Historians estimate
there's about one hundred confirmed incidents based on declassified Allied
documents and war crimes trials and survivor testimonies. But it
was probably like more to quite a bit more, because
in nineteen forty four, the Japanese sent out in order
to the whole army being like stop eating people. It
was prevalent enough that the army had to be like
stop eating humans.
Speaker 1: Had to do a directive order. Yeah, the entire army,
millions of people in the Japanese army, they were like
stop eating your goddamn enemies, you psychopaths. What was the
recruiting process, like, were they just getting a bunch of
people out of prison.
Speaker 2: The Japanese was a kuza back then, and every man
on the theyakuza probably got out of it, honestly, if anything.
But yeah, it was every sixteen year old and up
on the fucking island.
Speaker 1: Actually not familiar. When do you think the yakuza.
Speaker 2: Started, great, question, they were certainly around during.
Speaker 1: D It'd be similar to the Italian mafia in America,
same time frame.
Speaker 2: It says, seventeenth century Japan.
Speaker 1: Shit, they've been around a while.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think they really. I think I read before
that they really they were already, you know, a thing,
but I mean like the Sicilian mafia predates.
Speaker 1: Yeah, uh the old country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were already a thing, certainly, But I read
that in post war Japan they really started bucking, like
they really started to flourish in the sort of lawless,
rubble filled country.
Speaker 1: What was I guess their prohibition that ignited their rise,
because the Italian mafia in America doesn't really do their
thing unless there's prohibition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, prohibition took them to another level. Certainly, they were
around and they were doing stuff, but they're you know,
they're on Dago Hill and Saint Louis and things of
that nature.
Speaker 1: But it's a real name, uh in New Orleans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But again, the Japanese like a huge black market
pops up after World War two because of the lack
of supplies, the lack of infrastructure, the lack of who
the fuck is in charge other than the Americans. So
them being the only like remotely standing system of like
organized group of Japanese people after the war, I think
helped them a lot. That's off the dome, so there
could be wrong, but I believe that's roughly in the ballpark.
So in some Japanese units, the cannibalization became normalized, with
soldiers harvesting specific parts of enemy soldiers like live thighs
and even brains. So this is the story of I think.
Speaker 1: What's like the horrific Unit seven.
Speaker 2: Unit seven thirty one thirty one. So we get into
a that was not the only group that did that stuff,
and we're going to get into to one of them.
Speaker 1: But they did a lot of war crimes. Oh, they
better documented.
Speaker 2: Nothing but war crimes. Yeah, and we gave we let
them all off so that we could take the data. Yeah, God,
what does an anthrax candy bar do to a Chinese
eight year old? That's important to know, said Harry S. Truman.
Speaker 1: I feel like we could have gotten that info and
still executed all of them. I know, doesn't seem like
it's a fair trade.
Speaker 2: Or Also, you would think that one American doctor would
be like, what does it do? What do you think
it does?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it kills them immediately.
Speaker 2: What do you what else do you need to know?
Were you planning on doing this?
Speaker 1: Yeah? If you just throw a baby up into the
air and you catch it with a bayonet, what will happen?
Speaker 2: Science? Science, So we're gonna start with the Chichi Jima incident.
This is Bush's incident in the Bonin Islands between September
and October nineteen forty four.
Speaker 1: You're just doing this because you love HW.
Speaker 2: I do? I do like HW. I think he's one
of the most underrated presidents of the last fifty years.
Speaker 1: He will be exposed soon enough. I don't think the
Bushes were well, W was W's not No, W's just
chilling W.
Speaker 2: Look, he wasn't a good president.
Speaker 1: And Dick Cheney. We're just doing it for the love
of the game.
Speaker 2: I won't I can't comment on Dick Cheney, but like
w not a good president, but like clearly a good dude.
Speaker 1: Should have been the baseball commissioner.
Speaker 2: He should have been.
Speaker 1: That's what he was meant to be.
Speaker 2: It truly was, and it's a shame as a baseball
fan that we didn't get George W. Bush as the
commissioner of baseball.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now I'll just paint so Chichi Jima.
Speaker 2: They were, they were attacking this island. There was a
key radio station there in the Bonan Islands. There were
a bunch of Navy raids air raids in nineteen forty four.
They're trying to take it out because it was again
big communication hub, trying to fuck up the Japanese infrastructure.
And nine airmen flying grumming TBF Avengers, which I think
is like a sort of like a fighter bomber. It's
not like a it's not like a big like flying
fortress or like what you would think of like a
four engine or or two engine bomber. It looks more
like a fighter plane, I believe. But they were shot
down peep pew by anti aircraft fire.
Speaker 1: It's exactly what it sounded like to Pepoo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a torpedo bomber, but it looks it's like
a stupid kind of maybe I don't know, you out
of your depth. Yeah, but what I'm saying is it
doesn't look well. When people think World War two bomber,
they immediately go to like Masters of the Sky or
Air or whatever the fuck that shows.
Speaker 1: SELVM watch it.
Speaker 2: It gets good.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's good.
Speaker 2: Also, there's a guy in that show who I think
should be the next Bond. I do not think it
should be JACOBILORDI. I think he should be Calum Turner.
Speaker 1: Nohan thinks it's gonna be Jacob e LORDI that.
Speaker 2: He's been getting a lot of press.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be Aaron Taylor Johnson.
Speaker 2: No, and needs to be Calum Turner. Calum Turner has
is number one with the bullet and he's in He's
in that show. He's great. So nine guys are shot
down and parachute Lieutenant George H. W. Bush's torpedo bomber
was hit by an aircraft fire. His plane caught fire,
but he managed to complete his mission. He got his
load out and uh and he bailed out over the
ocean and inflated his life.
Speaker 1: Raft seems like a weird spot to jack off.
Speaker 2: I don't think so. Combat Jack, that's totally normal. Do
we ever ask Jack if he did it? Did that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, he jacked off all the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: War, he said, dudes would just be cranking it left
and right.
Speaker 2: He's oh yeah. He said he caught one guy cranking
it in his in the armored vehicle and he was mad.
Speaker 1: There's only so much space.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: I mean, you leave enough room when you take a shit,
but nobody cares if you jack off in their spot.
Speaker 2: It's just a load. You just stamp that into the ground.
Speaker 1: Everyone's a hand when you're in war, everyone's a hand.
Speaker 2: So Bush's survival was like pure, truly pure luck. He
was somehow unseen and just floated away in the ocean.
He was a drift for four hours before he was
saved by the submarine, the USS finback, the eight other
down Americans.
Speaker 1: The finback just sounds like a slurlur.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds like hear me out. If dolphins got
super intelligent.
Speaker 1: Finback, goddamn finback. Yeah, if they took over the town
like in the Simpsons, yes, yeah, these fucking fucking finbacks everywhere. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the eight other American airman who got shot down
not so lucky. They were captured by Japanese forces under
Lieutenant General Yoshio Tachibana. Sometimes Japanese names are pretty easy
phonetically the Chinese.
Speaker 1: Are, but you gotta put that Japanese spice on Iturebana.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, uh. These men were tortured and all executed,
probably beheaded. At least four of them had their livers
and other body parts eaten by Japanese officers in a
form of ritualistic cannibalism, because the Japanese believed the liver
specifically would grant them strength.
Speaker 1: How did that work though? Was it tabal or another god,
another entity, even though the emperor believed he was god,
just for the emperor. Okay, so there's just eating it
for the emperor.
Speaker 2: Well, it was partly for revenge, but partly they thought
that they thought that the liver was like partly medicinal,
like it was good to eat human liver, and you
know you're not gonna do your own guys, So and
then there was a bit of it was a bit
of revenge to it too, like fuck, you for prominence.
We're gonna eat you. Yeah. The livers and other body
parts were cooked with soy sauce and vegetables, so it
was a traditional Japanese meal.
Speaker 1: Human apparently tastes a lot like pork long pig. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I saw a conspiracy video at the reason Jews and
Muslims don't.
Speaker 1: Eat pigs because they think that the human soul that's
lost goes to a pig, because these pigs have like
human I like guys.
Speaker 2: Yes, I thought it was. You might be right, but
my memory of the real that I watched was it
was like they were like an offshoot of humanity, essentially,
like at some point they bred themselves into being pigs.
Speaker 1: The human pig.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so they those cultures had a memory of that,
and they won't eat pork.
Speaker 1: San Francisco, I'm making a human pick coppers.
Speaker 2: They might be right, you know what, if it's for
organ transplants, I don't care. Let the freaks, let the
I feel guilty and big now why I mean they
are they're tasty, but I'm actually not a huge pork guy.
I'm a little out on bacon.
Speaker 1: I like all pork products except ham. I hate a
honey baked tam. Dude, I don't know why everything else
hits bacon. Pulled pork.
Speaker 2: Still like pulled pork. I'm kind of over bacon.
Speaker 1: You're just trying to be different. No, I'm just a
little over it.
Speaker 2: Uh, pork chops are the right type of pork. Still great.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Honey baked tam just doesn't hit the
sam as the other pork products.
Speaker 2: That's fair. Did you eat a lot as a kid?
Speaker 1: No. It was my last meal before I showed symptoms
of crones disease, though, so I might actually align my
Cron's disease with the last time I ate ham.
Speaker 2: That's fair. Although there is actually a lot of pork
products as still because basically every Italian meat, like Italian
deli meats.
Speaker 1: All the sausages too. Yeah, a good pork sausage.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. So. Japanese testimonies during the nineteen forty six
Guam War criminal trials revealed that the uh.
Speaker 1: The only thing we've ever done at Guam.
Speaker 2: I think we have a battle there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's such a useless island. It's not even pretty.
Speaker 2: It's there to launch airplanes.
Speaker 1: It's gross.
Speaker 2: It's there to launch airplanes off of in refuel ships.
Speaker 1: It's not Fiji, No, No, certainly not. No.
Speaker 2: American Samoa doesn't seem much better, although that island might
be beautiful, but we just like.
Speaker 1: Do we're just scooping up all these bad islands.
Speaker 2: They're not bad, they're useful.
Speaker 1: Find more useful islands that are still pretty like Hawaii.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's the reason why I have Hawaii.
Speaker 1: Why is awesome?
Speaker 2: It's useful as.
Speaker 1: The best place on earth?
Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of is.
Speaker 1: It's perfect.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was there for like nine days. It was incredible.
Speaker 2: It's literal paradise.
Speaker 1: The weather was pristine.
Speaker 2: It's a little hot.
Speaker 1: Wasn't that hot? Grant was December, but.
Speaker 2: I was there in November. Yeah, both times the winter
actually so. Vice Admiral moriy Kuniso commanded the chichi Jima
Air Base, and he was particularly of the belief that
the liver had medicinal benefits. So he was like, yeah, boys,
you get any pilots, chop them up, Yeah, chop them up.
That's medicine.
Speaker 1: Eastern medicine is a little different, and apparently they probably
thought it like brought fertility as well.
Speaker 2: Well. One of the things they thought too, is that
it brought them the strength of their vanquished enemies.
Speaker 1: Get all that tea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they had a couple of weird beliefs about that.
Speaker 1: Prove them wrong.
Speaker 2: Guess I can't, I personally can't. I have to get
a scientist.
Speaker 1: I think you're afraid to eat other humans because you're
afraid of how much you all enjoy it. Vampire like you.
Speaker 2: I did once look how pale you are? Yeah, I
know one time in a in the most Mexican hub
in the city, I was walking through and a little
Mexican girl looks up at me. She must have been five.
This is completely true story. She's with her mom. She
looks up at me with my dark hair and my
pale skin, and she goes simpio.
Speaker 1: Yeah, listen, I did not adjust for me to have
a warmer color balance on the cameras. We have the
exact same.
Speaker 2: I feel like, this doesn't this doesn't even look bad.
I feel pretty good about the skin tone right now
on YouTube.
Speaker 1: Okay, so yeah, whider than it appears in camera. Yeah, yeah,
I'm blind.
Speaker 2: This was also the cannibalism tended to be an act
to build unit cohesion, kind of like we're all we're
all doing the worst thing possible together. We're yeah, brotherhood,
We're just in it, just in it together.
Speaker 1: That's why they all did it. Epstein's silent too.
Speaker 2: You can't yeah, when everyone's got dirt on each other,
it's a yeah, it's a it's a Mexican standoff of
horrible secrets. That's all they get, you usually assured destruction.
They also did it to uh instill fearlessness in their troops,
so like they did psychological warfare against the enemy, but
they also did it for themselves to be like, look, man,
what do you have to be afraid of anymore? You
already did the worst fucking thing you can do.
Speaker 1: It's really only psychological warfare. If they're chomping on a
leg like it's turkey in front of a US soldier,
we'll get to that, okay, just like that at a
ren fare, Yeah, being a human leg, we will get
to that, chopping on it to the bone.
Speaker 2: And then they also believed that it gave soldiers nerves
of steel. And again when they did this at Chichijima.
Speaker 1: How high were they though? Were they all gassed up
on some type of myth you.
Speaker 2: Don't need on meth though you don't need on meth.
But I guess you're like mentally fucked up.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you can eat human on methy. Yeah yeah,
it seems like the only time you would eat human.
Speaker 2: I am actually not. Baths were about what the Japanese were.
Speaker 1: On, yeah, because Germans were all jacked up on. I
think it was called the p Perivian yeah, yeah, yeah
or something. Yes, it was a meth pill.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's an amphetamine. So after the war, this
incident gets brought up in the Guam War trials. But
military and international law didn't really have a law about cannibal.
Speaker 1: They didn't think they had to write it in.
Speaker 2: Right, They had no point foresaw that punitive cannibalism would
be something they needed to make a law about.
Speaker 1: Like who was the last army to actually eat other
armies for effect? Right? Not out of necessity, right right?
Not like oh we're starving, we're out of resources.
Speaker 2: Yeah, plenty of armies have done that. I don't know
any army off the top of my head that did
it to fuck with their enemy. So yeah, they didn't
even think to write it. They were like, why would
we have to make a law about this? Whyould we
possibly have to waste three days writing all these law.
We're writing all these laws that we have to waste
like three days a week working on a cannibal.
Speaker 1: Law because they assume everyone that's fight in a war
is still in fact a human being.
Speaker 2: Right, which I think the Japanese.
Speaker 1: I think we revoked that status from anybody that participated
in Unit seven thirty one. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And this wasn't Unit seven thirty one by way, right.
This was an average Joe Japanese unit on a random island.
This was not some crazy special Forces unit. This was
not some crazy medical experimentation unit. These were gi Japanese
Joe's just on the isle. This was essentially the equivalent
of your grandpa in World War Two. But they're Japanese,
just normal guys.
Speaker 1: They're just working a fishing boat four years before.
Speaker 2: Right. So, of the thirty Japanese soldiers prosecuted for this,
four officers were found guilty and hanged.
Speaker 1: Listen, there's a reason we had to new com twice.
Speaker 2: Make sure they're down, because they.
Speaker 1: Weren't gonna admit defeat after one.
Speaker 2: I don't think they were at all. The more you
the more you learn about the Japanese in World War Two.
The more you're just like, there's nothing bad enough for them,
there's nothing bad enough for them, right will It's it's
like my life's mission to be like, did you know
the Japanese were every bit as bad as.
Speaker 1: But now they're kind of like one of our greatest allies.
I know we nuked them into submits, but like, here's the.
Speaker 2: Thing, man, this could have been something that like showy
O Tani's grandpa was doing.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, but you forget about those war crimes when
he's hitting dingers, When.
Speaker 2: He's striking out ten and hitting three homers in an LCS.
Speaker 1: Game, I forgive Japan for everything after that. It's just
although he's on the Dodgers now, so maybe not.
Speaker 2: It's annoying, no, yeah, but it's still.
Speaker 1: I'm in all.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. All the enlisted men were released after eight years.
In one US report just from New Guinea, which was nearby,
an American soldier's mutilated body was found near a Japanese
bunker with a stewpot containing a human sized heart and liver.
So they were finding these things everywhere.
Speaker 1: Not don't want to waste any body part.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like, it wasn't like it happened one hundred
thousand times, but it might have happened like ten thousand times,
like truly, like we have one hundred recorded incidents. But again,
my main piece of evidence that this was quite a
bit more pervasive than even people think. It's just that
you don't send out an order to like five million
people to stop doing.
Speaker 1: Something if it's only been none five times, right, right,
You maybe talk to somebody like, hey, here's a stern
talking to don't eat people.
Speaker 2: You gotta think there are other dudes in the Japanese
army too that were like, what.
Speaker 1: Why am I getting this? Yeah? What they mail us today? Yeah,
an apartment complex sends kind of a site wide email
about a specific issue, and you're like, what who the
fuck did that?
Speaker 2: Right? Please stop opening your butthole over the sprinklers right
before they pop up out of the ground. You're like, whoo,
how often does this happen?
Speaker 1: But that's oddly specific? Yeah, just addressed the one person.
Speaker 2: Like unless it's not just sol of them, right, it's
all of us. There's a dozen people doing it. The
next one and this one is the one that's.
Speaker 1: Well, they don't have the days here, that's fair.
Speaker 2: Enough.
Speaker 1: So a couple of Europeans live here. They want to
live a life of luxury. You go to the sprinkler's
house side.
Speaker 2: They get scrappy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Uh, this one, this next one is the unit. It's
that it's not Unit seven thirty one. So it wasn't
only Unit seven thirty one doing this. This is another exactly.
Speaker 1: Apparently all of this is just not Unit seven thirty one.
Speaker 2: So none of none, nothing in this episode continue is
Unit seven thirty one. So this is the Kyushu vivisections
and cannibalism that happened between May and June of nineteen
forty five, late in the game. Late in the game,
we were bombing the shit out of Japan on May fifth, nineteen.
Speaker 1: You sure they weren't desperate.
Speaker 2: Yes, every single they had food. Every single one of
these recorded instances that I used were when they had food.
Speaker 1: I want to give them the benefit of the doubt.
But why it's not why, I don't know, Just because
I believe in humanity and there's no way you cross
this line unless it's absolutely necessary.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, it's already been shown in the first one
that it wasn't necessary. Okay, they just did it anyway,
I wanted to eat George Bush.
Speaker 1: It might be a better one if the HW, how
dare you thought it? Wars would have been prevented? Just kidding,
somebody else would have done it. Yeah, he's just a suit,
just a guy. It's just a guy.
Speaker 2: So multiple May fifth nine point five, multiple b twenty
nine bombers.
Speaker 1: Even though HW was in charge of intelligence. I don't
worry about it. Shitty stuff he did, I don't worry
about it.
Speaker 2: Great president, let's.
Speaker 1: He I mean the nineties were okay, I spose he.
Speaker 2: I will say this, and I don't know everything about George,
but but in terms of foreign policy, he just stuck
to landing so hard that it's like incredible to even fathom.
Like the Soviet Union falls and nothing bad happens immediately
after term.
Speaker 1: So it went over the American population as Ross Parro's fault.
You can't be blaming a third party that one, you can.
Speaker 2: It's a joke.
Speaker 1: You're unserious.
Speaker 2: That hit literally swung the election.
Speaker 1: You're unserious. It only taken down by Ross Perot.
Speaker 2: He only took votes from Bush. It's crazy that it
even that the America was even Like, yeah, but I
don't know, it'd been twelve years of Reaganite Republicans, so
I think they were just like fuck it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So multiple B twenty nine's targeted the Tachiarii air Base
in Kayoshu, Japan, and on Kayoshu, which is Japan's southernmost
main island. One B twenty nine, commanded by Lieutenant Marvin Watkins,
was hit in mid air by a Japanese Kamakazi plane.
They weren't just ramming boats.
Speaker 1: The plane in the plane.
Speaker 2: Rammed into their B twenty nine, and about a dozen
people parachuted from the flaming aircraft. According to observers, probably
other planes, not like other bombers.
Speaker 1: So imagine they were going the same way and they
just kind of sideswiped them.
Speaker 2: Or they came in from above, who knows, but yeah,
they the Japanese plane came in and just cracked.
Speaker 1: It was a head on collision. I feel like, boom,
ain't no time to parachute out.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, that's just your wreck and the whole plane. Yeah.
I think it just kind of he clipped them or
something and it was enough time for them to bail out.
Several of the airmen in the plane died basically immediately
immediately upon landing one I think his parachute didn't work,
like the cords broke unfortunately. Yeah, another one got to
the ground. I think he fought off a few people,
but then he had one bullet left and was like nope,
took into the nome, blew his brains out. He was like,
I've heard plenty of stories at this point about what
the Japanese do to prisoners. Probably don't even know about
the eating, but he was just like, I am not
getting taken prisoner. Blew his brains out. And then at
least two were stabbed or beaten or shot to death
by either Japanese captors or just like local civilians who
were like, fuck these guys who were alighting all our
cities on fire, let's kill him. But somewhere between nine
and eleven crew members survived the crash, never forget, and
were captured by the Japanese, and the captives were of
course had the ship beat out of them because they
hated the bombing crews especially, they didn't know what to
do with them for a minute, so a military doctor
and a colonel from a local regiment decided, let's use
the prisoners for medical experiments. You know, it'll cost too
much to feed them and shit, so let's just let's
just do experiments on Let's do science on them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're thankful for their sacrifice. We uncovered so
many things.
Speaker 2: There was one airman who escaped this fate, the captain
of the commander of the plane, Marvin Watkins. He was
taken away from the unit and sent to Tokyo for interrogation.
He was still tortured and everything, but he did survive
the war.
Speaker 1: And he gets a chill in Tokyo.
Speaker 2: I don't know if he's chilling.
Speaker 1: Chilling in Tokyo. Tokyo is better than the Jungles.
Speaker 2: It's better than where the rest of his crew went.
So they transferred. The other eight airmen were transferred to
Kyushu University's medical school and the faculty, and to the
faculty for surgical experiments. Highly regarded school or it doesn't
you know they think outside the box.
Speaker 1: There be sweet if like it's their Harvard World War two.
Fdr just sends a bunch of Japanese Americans to Harvard
to be experimented on.
Speaker 2: He's just like cut off that feet and see what happens.
Speaker 1: University of Pennsylvania uncovered you cannot inject a Japanese man
with this amount of heroin.
Speaker 2: It seems the average Japanese man can take only eight
ounces of heroin.
Speaker 1: He starts to convulse.
Speaker 2: Mean, this knowledge is useful.
Speaker 1: We have it now, and he chokes on his vomit. Great, dude,
unless you turn him over.
Speaker 2: Which we did not, so you gotta let it play out.
They immediately just start cutting these guys open. They'll bring it.
They'll bring them into surgery rooms and stuff like that.
They rarely had enough or any anesthesia, so the victims
were conscious while this was happening. They conducted the experiments
to test surgical techniques and also just like the human
response to having your lung pulled.
Speaker 1: Out, Sure we needed that info.
Speaker 2: I guess it's useful for there were there were no controls.
There was no like, there was no like ab testing
it again, you know what I mean, Like it was
just like, all right, let's cut out his do alive. Yeah,
see what happens. A lot of these took place in
the university's operating theater, so like you know, there's an
operating room and then above it there's just like bleachers
like in Seinfeld when he drops of Junior Mint into
the spectacle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's their Breton circus. So one baseball hadn't made
it over there yet.
Speaker 2: It had, but no one airman.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: He was the first victim, Teddy Ponska something Polish, I
don't know. Under only partial sedation. Surgeons removed guy. I
know this, poor guy. I don't even know his fucking name.
I mean, I know it, I can't say it, Ponska.
Speaker 1: I will not live in Coco verse because he didn't
get his name right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he had his lung cut out for nothing. He
was only partially sedated. And again, like I said, surgeons
just cut out, took out his lung. They wanted to
see how it would affect the respiratory system.
Speaker 1: Gave him partial sedation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I just like that. That's the idea. They're like,
I wonder what would happen to his breathing if we
took one of the lungs away?
Speaker 1: What he is gonna the other one work really harder? Yeah,
it's gonna get worse, you assholes.
Speaker 2: What do you think? And then at one point they
operated on him again, and the surgeon U Taro Tosu,
just like reached in and like with his hand just
like stopped his heart.
Speaker 1: Yeah, honestly, I thank these Japanese doctors because without these experiments,
my dad at the University of Pennsylvania doesn't get his
lung transplant from a Japanese man.
Speaker 2: What did we learn?
Speaker 1: The Japanese doctor did it. He's highly regarded. Don't remember
his name, But now my dad's been alive for five years. Wow,
because of probably this guy's sacrificed.
Speaker 2: Maybe Teddy saved him.
Speaker 1: So no, I mean, they figured out all the lung
trip ups.
Speaker 2: We figured out all the wrong ways to do it.
Speaker 1: And then you know, he learned this knowledge over in Japan,
came over to America to work at U penn and
now you know he did a transplant on my dad.
Speaker 2: Happy for your dad.
Speaker 1: I think it was like Yokamoto sounds right.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's just he probably learned from the guys,
you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean obviously he wasn't there, right, wasn't that old, right,
But that knowledge was passed down to him by these
So in an indirect way, they kind of saved my
dad's life.
Speaker 2: We salute you.
Speaker 1: Who's the real hitler of the episode, Rob from blaming them.
Speaker 2: Another experiment that all eight of the victims had to
undergo was they just injected them with sea water.
Speaker 1: Why not, I'm sure salt water's good for you.
Speaker 2: They wanted to see if it was a decent substitute
for saline, like sterile saline.
Speaker 1: Was it not?
Speaker 2: It was not? No, and Ponska bled to death during that.
He actually the long thing didn't kill him.
Speaker 1: Did they not believe in experimenting with rats or like
working their way up to humans?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess not. Why if you have a I
guess if you have a free human, why bother with them?
Speaker 1: So I probably considered us rats at some degree.
Speaker 2: That's also a serious possibility. They would draw holes into
the skulls and small brain sections would be removed to
study epilepsy and stuff like that. They forgot to write
most of it down though.
Speaker 1: Well that was just like a religious thing over there too, right.
Didn't Jake do an episode in about Japanese cults that
like drilled a hole in their head?
Speaker 2: Was that was that Japanese? I think it was Japanese, Okay,
I couldn't remember.
Speaker 1: Could could be mixing two stories together, but there was
definitely a cult that drilled holes and heads.
Speaker 2: There was I do remember doing that episode, and I
do think it was in the under the guise of
like Eastern medicine. At the end of all of this,
there were reports that several of the experimenters doctors or
whomever uh took the livers of at least one victim
and had a little dinner party with it to celebrate
the end of their experiments.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I've ever eaten liver just in general.
Speaker 2: Have you had pate?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: You never had.
Speaker 1: Like I thought liver was gonna be more prevalent in
my life because of the show Dug. Yeah, liver and
onions they had every fucking meal. Yeah, but yeah, I don't.
I've never encountered liver on a menu.
Speaker 2: Just pata pat is the only liver I've eaten regularly?
Is that?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: How do they prepare that it's expreadable meat? Okay, you
probably have had pete?
Speaker 1: Probably not. I don't just dive into spreads.
Speaker 2: Have you had brunch faga, No, No, that's that's liver. No,
you never had a brunchwoger sandwich. No, that's good. I
loved it when I was a kid. The party allegedly
took place June third, nineteen forty five, uh, just a
day after the final vivisection. Historians speculate it was like
in an informal gathering among the doctors and staff. Again,
like I said, to celebrate, there was either one liver
or multiple livers. Now, it's not totally corroborated, but obviously.
Speaker 1: For the sake of the show, it's just more entertaining
if we go with it.
Speaker 2: It's well within the realm of possibility. Yeah, and I
think they did it.
Speaker 1: Whenever I come across something in my research and it's
like many historians dispute this, I ignore that, Yeah, because
I'm like, this makes the story better. Yes, why would
I ignore that?
Speaker 2: I also just it's completely plausible. And essentially the reason
it's not corroborated is because when these people were prosecuted
after the war, that was one of the charges. But
like the their defense attorney, who was also an American
by the way, was just like, there's no fucking evidence
for this, it's all wit in his testimony, and one
guy was like, one guy admitted to it, but said
he was coerced into admitting to it. And essentially the
prosecutors were like, well, fuck it, we know for sure
that they cut open eight American soldiers. I guess we
don't need the cannibalism charge to get them in jail
for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, go for the lesser charge. It'll stick.
Speaker 2: Right. They had what they had. They didn't bother with
it because they had harder evidence for the other stuff.
Of the thirty defendants, twenty three were convicted on vivisection charges.
They were five. There were five death sentences, four life sentences,
and fourteen shorter sentences. All of the sentences from the
death sentences to the lesser sentences were commuted in nineteen
fifty by General Douglas MacArthur in the middle of the
Korean War. Motherfucker, I guess because they just he was busy,
so he was like, dude, fuck it, fuck it.
Speaker 1: It was Japan's rolling the Korean War.
Speaker 2: I don't think they put many troops in, but they
were certainly going to help us a little bit, very
important staging area. All of our shit went through Japan. Yeah, sure,
we owned it basically.
Speaker 1: Well, I know, we've rebuilt the railroads, ironically, we rebuilt everything. Yeah,
now they have all the best high speed trains and tech.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we did that. You're welcome. We won't do it.
Speaker 1: He can't do it here. No, there's just no way, No,
how could we.
Speaker 2: It's too hard, too big. So the last one, even
though Japan's massive, Yeah, the last one. This is the
gnarliest one. It didn't happen to Americans, but it did
happen to Allied soldiers, and it is. It's a good
time in Borneo. The Sonda Con pow camp and death
marches between nineteen forty four and nineteen forty five saw
quite a bit of human eating on the part of
the Japanese. This pow camp was initially set up to
make Allied POWs, mostly Australian and British boy Oi, I
don't want to do don't eat me? I eat me?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Do I want to be eaten? They were used as
slave labor the POWs. Essentially, they were building a military
airfield near the town. It was a strategic refueling point
for Japanese aircraft, so they used the POW's as slaves
to build the airfield. As the Allies closed in in
nineteen forty four, they destroyed the airfield with bombing runs
Andjapanese commanders were like, fuck, dude, they're gonna get here soon,
and we don't really want them to have their POW's back.
Good bargaining chip, great slaves.
Speaker 1: We got to keep them, so be really fucked up
if they did these death marches. But it was only
for Native American soldiers.
Speaker 2: Everyone else that get to hang out.
Speaker 1: They just really knew their history with the Trail Tears.
Speaker 2: You'll survive it.
Speaker 1: You've done it before, all you win talkers.
Speaker 2: Let's go so and I look like a nip. It's
the worst line in film history, Like the worst line. No,
you don't, and they'll know immediately.
Speaker 1: I was gonna do like a racial slur and say
eat my baby, like it didn't go eat my baby
when you did the Aussie accent. But I passed it. Yeah,
you got the nip in though.
Speaker 2: I did. It sounds worse until you remember the Japanese
on their island Nippon. So it's to me it's like
brit But I guess it was a slur. But either way,
it's a line from the movie Wind Talkers.
Speaker 1: I leave the Japanese slurs to Clint Eastwood in Grantina. Yeah, yeah, yeah, were.
Speaker 2: They even Japanese. Was there a single Japanese like.
Speaker 1: Character in that way in Detroit?
Speaker 2: Hard to say no, But weren't they Korean or something?
Speaker 1: I think they were. But you kind of grip everyone
together when you're old.
Speaker 2: He does, certainly he was in Korea. So the camp
was evacuated in nineteen forty five. The POWs were made
to go on a series of three death marches. The
survivors were taken inland about one hundred and sixty miles
through dense jungle. POWs were obviously forced to carry all
the heavy loads, including Japanese supplies. This despite the fact
that they were completely malnourished and barely getting fed by
the end of the war. Out of about twenty four
hundred people who were at this pow camp, six survived.
It's probably, I mean, it was a near one hundred
percent fatality rate. It was certainly the worst thing that
happened to Australia.
Speaker 1: Just said six survive. It's not one hundred.
Speaker 2: Percent, said nearly one hundred percent. So these death marches
heavily featured cannibalism, both because the Japanese were trying to
fuck with their prisoners to make sure nobody tried anything.
And also because again they had they had food, the
Japanese did. They just wanted They were just sick fucks
at that point, like they were just like they were
like Danny McBride and this is the end, you know
what I mean. They were just like, dude, fuck it,
we're cannibals now, like the world's ending. We're cannibals now.
Fuck it. Well, let's just go full villain mode. Let's
just go full evil. We didn't give a shit.
Speaker 1: Now. Did the prisoners at each other as well?
Speaker 2: No, not, to my knowledge, were forced to.
Speaker 1: I always wondered, with the Holocaust and the concentration camps,
if some of the Jewish prisoners got desperate enough that
they had each other.
Speaker 2: Probably, probably it probably happened. I would be, it would be.
It would be impossible to rule that out right.
Speaker 1: There has to be documentation of that.
Speaker 2: Even if there isn't to say it happened to zero
times in a time when people were starving and desperate,
somebody did it. I don't, but I don't blame them
unless they murdered the person to do it.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, you need you know, somebody croaks, they die,
you gotta cook them up. Pretty quick.
Speaker 2: Real, it's not good meat before the meat gets spoiled. Yeah,
it's not good meat. Like if you saw your steak
right before it was slaughtered and it was like a
cow that was just like just like some malnourished like
her like labored breathing. You're like, I I'll just have
this caesar salad. Think I'm good. Think I'm good on
that cow?
Speaker 1: What's the caesar salad in this situation?
Speaker 2: For the Holocaust jungle leaves, Oh, for the Holocaust grass,
I guess that'll fuck it?
Speaker 1: Know.
Speaker 2: Uh So the cannibalism on these marches again, the Japanese
did not need to do it. They were just going
full damn mcbriden and this is the end, just like, hah,
fuck it, it's the end of the world. We're fucking cannibals.
Speaker 1: Just watch that movie. No, okay, it's just.
Speaker 2: A perfect example to me, like because he literally just
pops out and he goes, yeah, what's up with cannibals? Now?
Speaker 1: I saw that in theaters. I don't remember it very well. Okay,
it's been a while, it's been over a decade.
Speaker 2: It's the same scene where he talks about how uh
Channing Tatum is his gimp, gotcha?
Speaker 1: I know it's on Netflix, I think so. I was like,
he must have just watched it.
Speaker 2: No, no, I haven't seen it.
Speaker 1: Well, well i'm fresh on the brain.
Speaker 2: That seen is fresh in the brain, because I probably
watched that YouTube clip like a week or two ago.
But the movie as a whole.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: So again, this was not due to hunger, or at
least not solely to hunger. It was often ordered by
officers to fuck with the prisoners, and it involved both
dead and living victims. Guards began first eating dead POWs,
bodies of people who died from disease or beatings. You know.
They butchered them up, ate them, cooked them in mess
pots and ate them in front, cooked them and ate
them in front of the other POWs. I guess the
Japanese did start with not the POWs, but then they
were like, dude, fuck these guys and just started eating them.
The guards would first every day they would find like
the sickest guy holding up the whole line, barely walk
and just kill him, bayonet him, not gonna waste a
bullet on him, Bayonet him, and then carve him up,
cook him.
Speaker 1: He's a kebab, eat.
Speaker 2: Him However, this sort of proved to be a little
inefficient unless they were like totally on death doorstep. Because
it's hot, it's humid, you don't have salt. The meat's
just not gonna keep if you slaughter the whole body.
Speaker 1: Right, so you just kind of him off piece by piece.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what they started doing. They would start tying
POW's to trees, cut a leg off, and then that
person for the next couple days would be there walking
meat storage and like you know, they stop for the
day time to a tree. Again, let's chop off an arm.
I'm gonna eat an arm today.
Speaker 1: Gotta think you're staring with arms because legs, they at
least will be able to walk. Yeah, yeah, you know,
want to inconvenience yourself.
Speaker 2: So they would essentially have the.
Speaker 1: Ears, maybe a nose. Arms don't need the arms, and
cheek some cheek. I mean you can cut some shoulder.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, ass well, as might hurt the walking acs
and legs will probably.
Speaker 1: Last, but they wouldmagine to be tender good meat if
it's the shoulder, because that's what pork shoulder, pork butt
is r shoulder.
Speaker 2: So they would essentially just cut a piece off every
day of these guys, and but they'll keep them alive
so that the rest of the meat would still be
fresh and they could cut off another piece the next
day until that guy was fucking dead. Rinse and repeat
with a ship time and again. Six people survived out
of the thousands of people on these death marches. Hearts
and livers were removed and eaten raw or cooked for
quote unquote again medicinal benefits. This constantly happened in front
of other POWs. They would literally turkey leg it, like
you said earlier, in front of the other POWs, to
be like I want to try and run, you want
to try and grab my rifle? Look at this. That
wouldn't sway me though, That would actually inspire me more
to either go down swinging or get the fuck out
of there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's not gonna mentally defeat me. That's just gonna
inspire me to take a swing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because hopeful hack hope is the only thing that
would keep you from rebelling, right, Like, maybe I can
just keep my head down in desperation. Yeah, Like, maybe
I can just keep my head down and get through this.
But if they're just using a guy as a rotisserie chicken.
Speaker 1: If you're being a dick, it's gonna motivate me. That's
how you motivate an American pettiness.
Speaker 2: Well, these were rossies.
Speaker 1: That's how you motivate. I mean, if there's ever a
group of people that need to be inspired, it's all I.
Speaker 2: Think out of the entire Anglo world, Australians are the
most similar to Americans.
Speaker 1: There are a lazy cousins.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't.
Speaker 1: They're rough, they don't have any driver ambition. That's why
they hang out down under it.
Speaker 2: But they're rough and tumbles they are.
Speaker 1: I mean, they've getten to a scrap. But they love
to drink, they love to fight. They don't really like
doing anything else.
Speaker 2: Now, that was my favorite. That's my favorite thing about Austin.
When you go out, which I don't anymore, there's so
many you run into Australians. This is like a popular
vacation spot for Australians.
Speaker 1: Because all they know about America is like New York,
LA and Texas pretty much. So like we'll go to Texas.
I did, boys.
Speaker 2: I did meet a couple of Assis in New Orleans
two once they were I think, you know, they knew
enough about that to be like, oh this guy see
go see New Orleans. I can't do it right now.
I don't know the Aussie and me right now.
Speaker 1: Oh baby, ate mod dingo. I know I did it wrong.
It's okay, No, I mean that was on purpose.
Speaker 2: Oh a baby. So a lot of times when a
pow would die too. The Japanese like, oh, cool meat.
We don't have to chop off Rick's arm today. We
can keep that meat fresh for tomorrow. So they chop
that guy up. They eat some of it, but you know,
you don't eat so much in a day. He don't
have so much barbecue. You get full, get the itis,
You gotta keep marching. It's hard. So they would put
it into packs, put it into their supply packs. And
as I mentioned earlier, they were not the ones carrying
the supply packs. So all of a sudden, you're carrying
your friend Steve's meat for your horrific captors to eat later.
Speaker 1: Just make him a jerk he or something easier to
carry in packs.
Speaker 2: You haven't. You got the fire, you can smoke it, you.
Speaker 1: Dry it out. It's a whole process. Yeah, probably takes
a little longer.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's true.
Speaker 1: But you're gonna be able to carry more.
Speaker 2: Also, true, shrinks it up, makes it better surviving POW's
All six of them also said they witnessed guards eating
the brains of freshly killed victims, often in front of.
Speaker 1: Steel their memories.
Speaker 2: The other Yeah, often in front of the other POWs
to fuck with them. So they'd just be like pulling
a brain out of a guy's skull while other POWs
are watching, to be like, yeah, that'd.
Speaker 1: Be kind of sweet.
Speaker 2: Though.
Speaker 1: If you best hit somebody and ate their brains, you
got all their knowledge.
Speaker 2: That's how it should work.
Speaker 1: Should work that way.
Speaker 2: I don't know why it doesn't.
Speaker 1: He's someone's brains. All of a sudden, you can speak
four different languages.
Speaker 2: You know what their wife looks like naked.
Speaker 1: You know how to please her. She's a widow. Maybe
she's freshly a widow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know all
the right moves.
Speaker 2: No, lock her down, know everything to say to her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, what how do you know that? Wow? It's
like that is my favorite flower.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like it's like fate that you were sent here.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I killed innate your husband.
Speaker 2: His brain and specifically, and now I know the key
to your heart, and the guards would often brag to
the other POW's like, hey, I hate your buddy. He
tastes like shit.
Speaker 1: Don't worry Rob, when you die, I won't eat you.
Speaker 2: Thank you appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Definitely not your brains. Don't want your brains. Have no
use for your brain.
Speaker 2: Wow, Okay you want all these history facts up there.
I hope you eat my brain and it gives you
my ad D.
Speaker 1: Don't need that. Although with that, just balance out the autism.
Speaker 2: Baby, who knows you get normal?
Speaker 1: Just yeah, when people talk about speedballs, they just like,
do a shit ton of weed, shit ton of coke?
Could just they're back to normal. It's like, why aren't
you just not doing anything?
Speaker 2: It's so much work too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a lot of money to get nowhere, the
same effect of being sober.
Speaker 2: It's like sprinting in a circle. It's a point.
Speaker 1: Yeah when in coke. Okay, I guess sure.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that is the stories I have today. And again,
like I said, there were a fair amount of and
these weren't even all the ones, but you know, it
was about an hour's worth.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: There were a fair amount of stories about Japanese cannibalism.
Most of it, though, went unrecorded, because why would it.
The evidence isn't really there. You just ate a guy
and then buried him. There's probably no witnesses to most
of it. But to me, the most damning thing is
that the Japanese Army had to send out a whole
ass order to everyone to be like, stop aiding people more.
Speaker 1: Serial killers should eat people. Seems like an easy way
to dispose of the body.
Speaker 2: I think it's not. It's like one hundred and eighty
to two hundred and fifty pounds of meat or use
if you're killing women, like one hundred to one hundred
and thirty.
Speaker 1: But in the fraser you're good for the winner.
Speaker 2: That's not that's keeping the evidence at that point.
Speaker 1: Eventually though, no true, unless they start doing going through
your your sewer system and finding fecal matter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they could probably test your shit for human remains.
Speaker 1: No doubt. Actually, the easiest way is to just live
in the Everglades and you just throw bodies for the
alligators to child.
Speaker 2: Oh, they'll never find anything.
Speaker 1: Or of course you feed them to the pigs that too.
Speaker 2: Those pigs will take it down.
Speaker 1: Bring a full circle real fucking fast.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that's Uh, that's my episode today on how
the Japanese eight Allied soldiers in World War Two and
not because they were hungry.
Speaker 1: But they wanted to send the message.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that message was something everyone already knew, we're crazy.
There was another thing, like I just got like random
tidbits of stuff too in this episode that weren't with cannibalism,
but just like showed how fucking wild the Japanese were.
Like there were reports of like American sailors on ships
that were getting Kama Kazi bombed, and like there were
reports of like sailors looking up and seeing seeing like
the Kama Kazi pilot like waving at them as they
were coming straight fucking down at the ship.
Speaker 1: Why not. It's like everybody that owns a jeep they
have that little jeep wave.
Speaker 2: Yeah, put a little duck in your And then they
ram another car and then the jeep owner gets out
and vouch it. The other jeep owner gets out and
vouches that it was the Superaru driver's fault.
Speaker 1: Always was. Yeah, I mean, if it's going to be
a super Roo, it's gonna be a lesbian, right, Yeah,
we know lesbians can't drive.
Speaker 2: I think lesbians love wranglers too.
Speaker 1: Though super ru is typically the joke. I know, I know,
it's actually a joke. My mom told me it's one
of the first jokes I heard when I was a child.
She's like, Yeah, the only people that drive superos lesbians.
Speaker 2: It's pretty accurate. I wish I was like a billionaire
so I could just troll like lesbian friend.
Speaker 1: Bouche drives the super Uo. He's a lesbian.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, he kind of has a lesbian haircut. He did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know if he still does now you've
seen him since he cut his mulet off.
Speaker 2: Yeah. True. And he has sex with a woman, real
lesbian behavior.
Speaker 1: Very lesbian. Yeah, and he doesn't use his penis.
Speaker 2: A lot of it's all strep. A lot of smoke
on that, A lot of smoke on boushe haircut, Subaru
focks a woman.
Speaker 1: Yeah, lesbian lesbian.
Speaker 2: Uh, that's all I got for today. What'd you learn?
Speaker 1: I learned your down bad. You got a big gulp
right now full of tequila. Yeah, and it's because you
had to spew out this horrific information.
Speaker 2: I mean, I have a big golp full tequia because
I don't want to refill it in the middle of
the episode. If I'm drinking beer, I can just crack
a fucking beer.
Speaker 1: If you have a big gulp full of tequila because
you have an alcohol problem, and that's fine.
Speaker 2: I don't have an alcohol fine, I have an alcohol hobby.
Speaker 1: You're coming up on forty this week. Yeah. In fact,
say happy birthday, Rob. For everybody at home.
Speaker 2: You'll have to wish me happy birthday.
Speaker 1: In the comments. Just tell Rob happy birthday.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Well help us with the algorithm.
Speaker 2: The Patreon episode we're recording in five minutes will come
out on my birthday. Happy birthday, Rob, Thanks buddy. Turn
forty feel great, I feel very healthy.
Speaker 1: You're having a midlife crisis and it shows.
Speaker 2: I just started, like actually exercising again, not going for
the odd run.
Speaker 1: And why are you running? Who you're running from? What problems?
Speaker 2: All of them? Just forty Running's.
Speaker 1: Pointless, you know, start doing like ultra marathons.
Speaker 2: No, I didn't like forty. I like running. I want
to do I want to run get into tennis league again,
and I can't get can't it run off the court
in the first second. Well, I'm running on treadmills now.
Speaker 1: I'll play tennis with you. Okay, I've never really played tennis,
played tennis like five times in my life. I still
think I can compete.
Speaker 2: Oh, you certainly can't.
Speaker 1: I was taught by my Hungarian roommate in college.
Speaker 2: This would be your best opportunity of the last ten years,
because I'm in the worst conditioning shape I've ever been in.
But you won't. You're not gonna get any first service in.
You're gonna try to hit it hard. You're eventually gonna
have to lob it, and I'm just gonna smash a
fucking backhand.
Speaker 1: Dude, what if I have the serve of an adonnis?
Speaker 2: You don't. I'm sure. I'm sure you can hit it hard.
You're not getting it in.
Speaker 1: We'll get it in, dude. It's just form. How hard
is that? Take my golf swing? Once I get it down,
it's over before you do that.
Speaker 2: The same thing about golf.
Speaker 1: I just said that, Yeah, how hard is golf? Not
very Sometimes it feels like it's not that hard. Other
times it feels really hard. We're gonna get it together, though,
We're gonna break eighty at some point during this unemployment phase.
I've done it several times. It's attainable. The game's there.
I just gotta put my mind do.
Speaker 2: It, gotta get it all together in the same.
Speaker 1: Yeah, team, it's the put in. It's really the fucking
Anything inside thirty forty yards right now is killing me.
I'll drive it three ten and have forty yards and
I'll just I'll hit a green in regulation would be
like fifty feet, not four feet.
Speaker 2: So that sounds fixable. Don't drive it three hundred yards,
don't put it within forty, put it within eighty. And
then no, it sounds like you're better from eighty than for.
Speaker 1: It's better from forty. We just got to figure out
the phot Okay, all right, we'll get there fair enough.
Who today's hitler? Today's hitler, I'm gonna say, isn't the
Japanese actually, because they saved my dad's life?
Speaker 2: Fair enough?
Speaker 1: In the roundabout way.
Speaker 2: Is it George Bush for abandoning and and bandoning his comrades?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's hw staying alive, okay, because of
all the terrible things he did around the world through
the Central Intelligence Agency.
Speaker 2: If he had any honor, he'd have been eating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, go down with the ship body, heah, body.
Speaker 2: Heah, body, that's all I got for today on Japanese
eating people for fun basically in World War two.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, like I said, go wish Rob happy birthday
in the comments on YouTube. Make sure to subscribe to
our YouTube, leave comments. Leave a review on Apple and Spotify,
please and thank you. That'll really help us, especially if
you leave a reveal on Apple. It's just fun to read.
Maybe in the next couple of weeks if we have
a bunch of new reviews, we'll read those aloud at
the end of the episode next week or the week after.
And yes, check out Patreon, Patreon dot com, Slash software
history two additional episodes every week on the lower tier,
go higher tier for the sports, doing an episode on
VLAT that'll drop Wednesday, and then whatever Rob's feeling for
the Friday episode. Plus the four year evergreen Back catalog
that has so many episodes, so.
Speaker 2: Many episodes, it's an insane amount of episodes.
Speaker 1: You'll it's gonna be hard to run through them all
in a conservative amount of time.
Speaker 2: I mean, you could just subscribe for six months and
you would have content every day.
Speaker 1: And it just keeps building because every week you're getting
two more episodes like this, yep, and we're gonna keep
on chugging, keep on doing.
Speaker 2: This, we don't stop.
Speaker 1: Subscribe to the Patreon if you haven't already for Rob's birthday,
nice little birthday.
Speaker 2: Game that is a nice birthday gift. Subscribe to the
Patreon and say happy birth.
Speaker 1: Give somebody else if you're a Patreon member, the gift
of Patreon, the gift of us, Gift of us. You
really need to help her all with this midlief crisis. Yeah,
and also amun employed, so that would Yeah, I hope
it's midlife. You don't want to live to one hundred
and twenty.
Speaker 2: No, I was going to the opposite. I don't want
to die at.
Speaker 1: Like sixty, okay, but like no, it could be like
a quarter life. You're living to one hundred and six.
Speaker 2: I mean based on my grandparents and my parents, like,
seventy is no problem.
Speaker 1: They told us all we got to do is get
the twenty thirty five and we'll be immortal.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, let's all.
Speaker 1: Probably the rich elite.
Speaker 2: Yes, we're no, we have to we have it in
twenty forty five were peasants.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll find some like like ghetto rigged version of immortality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yahah Yeah, we are not getting it in twenty
thirty five, but twenty forty five, twenty.
Speaker 1: Fifty five, now we're cooking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're good to go. That's how that's how long
we have to make.
Speaker 1: It, and we will will persevere. Yeah, and we'll continue
to the show forever if we have to.
Speaker 2: There'll be more history to do.
Speaker 1: Keep his belding every year.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Tune in in twenty forty eight for our recap
of the Trump presidencies.
Speaker 1: Uh, well, be objective. Yeah, we'll have that ten thousand
foot view.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: I don't want to cover it now.
Speaker 2: It's stupid, No, it's horrible.
Speaker 1: I don't give a shit about it now. And too deep,
too close to the elephant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, that's all I got.
Speaker 1: And how do you eat an elephant?
Speaker 2: One by a time?
Speaker 1: By at that time in twenty forty eight. Yeah, for
day tuned subscribe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for Dad Regester, I'm roped Fox.
Speaker 1: You just gotta saucerved.