On Wednesday, President Joe Biden twice implied that the United States couldn't retrieve the remains of his uncle, Ambrose Finnegan, following Finnegan’s plane crash near New Guinea during World War II, stating, "because there used to be a lot of cannibals" in the area.
Biden's recounting of his uncle's death, including the suggestion of possible cannibalization, contrasts with the account provided by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. According to their report, Finnegan's plane, an A-20 Havoc en route to New Guinea on a courier mission, was "forced to ditch in the ocean" near the island's coast due to "unknown reasons."
“And my uncle, they called him – Ambrose, they called him Bosie… and he became an Army Air Corps, before the Air Force came along, he flew those single engine planes as reconnaissance over war zones,” Biden stated at the United Steelworkers Headquarters in Pittsburgh. “And he got shot down in New Guinea, and they never found the body because there used to be a lot of cannibals – for real – in that part of the New Guinea.”
The president also recounted the same story before leaving Scranton, Pennsylvania, earlier in the day.
It's worth noting that there is documented evidence of cannibalism in the region during the mid-20th century.
According to the entry for Finnegan by the DPAA, three men “failed to emerge from the sinking wreck and were lost in the crash.” Despite an aerial search the next day, neither the missing aircraft nor the lost crew members were found. The report also notes that one additional crew member survived the crash.
Biden's assertion, that the military was ultimately unable to recover Finnegan's remains, appears to be accurate, as per CNN. Finnegan is commemorated on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines. During his visit to Pennsylvania earlier on Wednesday, Biden paid tribute to his uncle at a veterans' memorial in Scranton, where Finnegan is also honored.
White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates stated to CNN, “President Biden is proud of his uncle’s service in uniform, who lost his life when the military aircraft he was on crashed in the Pacific after taking off near New Guinea. The President highlighted his uncle’s story as he made the case for honoring our ‘sacred commitment…to equip those we send to war and take care of them and their families when they come home,’ and as he reiterated that the last thing American veterans are is ‘suckers’ or ‘losers.’”
The White House did not offer further details regarding Biden's mention of cannibals hindering the recovery of Finnegan's remains.
During parts of his speech, Biden criticized former President Donald Trump over a 2020 report alleging that Trump had made derogatory remarks about US service members killed in action and had opted out of attending a veterans' ceremony. While Trump has contested these reports, former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly later confirmed them to CNN's Jake Tapper.
