Eight out of nine US Navy airmen downed near Chichijima were killed, and four cannibalized, by the island’s Japanese garrison. The sole escapee was a young pilot named George Bush.

Many people know that former President George Herbert Walker Bush, who led the United States from 1989 to 1993, served as a US Navy combat pilot during World War II. Some even know that his TBF Avenger torpedo bomber was shot down in September 1944, leading to his rescue by an American submarine.

Very few Americans today know that Bush’s harrowing ordeal could have been far, far worse. Bush was the sole survivor from a group of nine pilots shot down in the so-called “Chichijima incident”—and he escaped a truly horrifying fate at the hands of a Japanese island garrison in the remote Pacific.

In 1944, the US Navy Was on a Winning Streak in the Pacific

By the fall of 1944, it was clear to all parties that the United States was on track to victory in the Pacific War. The summer had seen a string of remarkable advances for US forces. During the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June, US aircraft achieved a severely disproportionate loss ratio on Japanese aircraft, leading pilots to describe it as the “Great Marianas Turkey Shoot.” The battle opened the gateway to the Mariana Islands, and in July, US troops captured the strategically vital island of Saipan. Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, the operational commander of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, was one casualty of the battle for Saipan, killing himself rather than surrendering to the United States. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the mastermind of the Pearl Harbor attack, had been killed in a US aircraft raid the previous year.

The capture of the Mariana Islands was crucial because it put the Japanese Home Islands within range of American B-29 bombers. Previous bombing raids on Japanese territory, including the famed “Doolittle Raid,” had been sporadic and intended to send a message of resolve rather than a strategic purpose. After securing the rest of the Mariana Islands in 1944, the strategic bombing campaign could begin in earnest.

The next stop along the way was the Bonin (Ogasawara) Islands, which sat astride the B-29’s most direct route to Japan and threatened the coming naval offensive’s right flank. That threat led to the identification of Iwo Jima as a major target, and its capture the following year to support the bombing campaign.

But in late 1944, another island 150 miles north of Iwo Jima was also seen as a threat. Chichijima Island was a small volcanic rock with a 25,000-man Japanese garrison, supported by a small seaplane base and a few gunboats. The rough terrain was unsuitable for long runways, and Japanese troops’ inability to sortie from the island meant that it was never seen as a target for landings, as Iwo Jima would be. The island was more significant because of a pair of large radio relay stations located atop its two mountain peaks. Those towers allowed the garrison to relay reports of American bomber formations passing overhead back to Tokyo, keeping the Japanese defenders on the Home Islands aware of US aircraft movements. As such, they became prime targets for the US Navy, which was ranging farther north in preparation for the offensive’s next steps.

By this time, Admiral Marc Mitscher’s Task Force 58 was the US Pacific Fleet’s most potent offensive weapon. It consisted of eight large fleet aircraft carriers, nine light carriers, supporting battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, and over 1,000 aircraft. Detached from the US Fifth Fleet, TF 58 bombed Chichijima on September 1 and 2, 1944. The mission was to degrade the island’s facilities, crater its runway, destroy planes and equipment, and take out the two radio towers.

Lieutenant Bush’s Fateful Flight over Chichijima

Among the pilots assigned to attack the towers was a 20-year-old torpedo bomber pilot, Navy Lieutenant (Junior Grade) George Herbert Walker Bush, flying from the light carrier USS San Jacinto. Bush’s Grumman TBF Avenger—named “Barbara II,” in honor of his then-fiancée Barbara Pierce—could carry conventional bombs as well as torpedoes, and he had four 500-pounders strapped on that day.

Bush’s aircraft was third in line, in a four-plane flight, to attack his assigned tower. His 30-degree glide was true, and all his bombs reportedly hit the target. But the Japanese understood their towers’ importance and ringed them with anti-aircraft guns. Bush and his two fellow airmen, radioman John Delaney and gunner William White, flew through a storm of lead and explosive, and several planes, including Barbara II, were hit.

Bush’s Avenger burst into flame as he pulled out of his glide. The lieutenant stayed in the cockpit as long as possible, hoping to get as far away from the island as possible before ditching. Finally, he ordered the other crewmembers to “Hit the silk”—abandon the aircraft and parachute out.

Unfortunately, Delaney’s parachute failed to open, and White went down with the aircraft. Both men were lost. Bush bailed out, sustaining injuries as the slipstream blew him into the tail assembly, but he parachuted safely in the ocean.

Nine American air crewmen survived being shot down during the raid. Bush was the only one who wasn’t captured, being rescued by the submarine USS Finback. He was luckier than he realized.

The Japanese Commander on Chichijima Had a Taste for Liver

The Japanese garrison on Chichijima saw several aircraft go down in the water after the raid, and dispatched patrol boats to pick up survivors before they could be rescued. These boats recovered eight Americans from the water and took them back to the island.

The Japanese never honored the Geneva Convention entitling prisoners to fair treatment in the Pacific Theater, and the American pilots were brutally beaten and summarily executed—a development that was shocking but hardly unique to Chichijima.

What was mostly unique to Chichijima was what happened next—causing a scandal that led both the United States and Japan to bury the stories of the men’s ultimate fate. The details were not made public until the release of historian James Bradley’s Flyboys: A True Story of Courage in 2003. Bradley, who also wrote the bestselling Flags of Our Fathers, noted the silence surrounding the men lost over Chichijima on September 2, 1944 and decided to investigate.

Immediately after executing one pilot, the Japanese garrison commander, Lt. General Yoshio Tachibana, suggested eating the man’s liver. Some Japanese officers believed the practice demonstrated fighting spirit and had health benefits. At Tachibana’s suggestion, Major Sueo Matoba ordered his soldiers to cut the organ from the dead man’s body. They did, along with flesh from his thighs.

All told, four of the eight dead Americans were cannibalized for their livers and other meat. Matoba explained to another officer that one liver was “pierced with bamboo sticks and cooked with soy sauce and vegetables.” It was consumed in small pieces as “good medicine for the stomach.”

The US Government Executed the Cannibals—but Hid the Truth

Tachibana, Matoba, and several other officers were later tried for war crimes regarding the incident. Matoba insisted the men were starving and merely ate the pilots for sustenance, but the war crimes tribunal rejected that defense. At that point in the war, food shipments had been drastically reduced by American submarine activity, but the garrison did not reach actual starvation levels until the spring of 1945, some six months later. Added to the cannibalism, of course, was the fact that Matoba and the others had murdered the American prisoners after they had surrendered. Finally, in the opinion of the tribunal, the reported ritual nature of some of the killings—and the way that Japanese officers consumed the portions of liver at formal meals—indicated deliberate decisions, as opposed to a spur-of-the-moment action of starving men.

Tachibana, Matoba, and a Captain Shizuo Yoshii were all found guilty of war crimes and hanged for the incident. Military law did not cover cannibalism, so they were convicted on charges of murder and “prevention of honorable burial.” Vice Admiral Mori Kunizo, who commanded Chichijima’s air base at the time and knew of the incident, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison; he was later executed by the Dutch for atrocities committed in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). All the enlisted men who were involved, along with Probationary Medical Officer Tadashi Teraki, were imprisoned, though none served more than eight years.

The American and Japanese governments each covered up the incident after the war, conscious of the outrage it would provoke in the United States. The US military classified the tribunal’s proceedings, in part to spare the men’s families the anguish of learning what had truly happened to their sons and brothers. Those families were in the dark until Bradley revealed the truth to them in 2003, nearly 60 years later.

Bush himself, who had visited Chichijima for a war commemoration in 2002, had no idea until Bradley told him. The former President’s reaction was subdued. As Bradley recalled, “There was a lot of head-shaking, a lot of silence. There was no disgust, shock, or horror. He’s a veteran of a different generation.”

About the Author: William Lawson

William Lawson is a military historian focusing on World War II and 20^th century conflicts and the American Civil War. His specialty is operational level warfare, especially American amphibious doctrine. He writes on history, politics, and firearms for multiple publications and historical journals. He serves on the editorial advisory board for the Saber & Scroll Journal and Military History Chronicles and is a member of the Society for Military History and the American Historical Association. Lawson is based in Virginia.

The post A US Navy Pilot Was Nearly Eaten in World War II—and Later Became President appeared first on The National Interest.