(NewsWorthy.news) – President Joe Biden has managed to offend Papua New Guinea’s government by suggesting that his uncle, who was an American pilot in WW2, was eaten by cannibals when his airplane crashed on the Melanesian island chain.
The country’s Prime Minister, James Marape, firmly rejected Biden’s claims, saying though the president may have made a “slip of the tongue”, the country did not deserve to be labeled as a nation of cannibals. Biden made the claims when speaking at a Pennsylvania war memorial on April 17 about his uncle Ambrose J. Finnegan, who served in the Army Air Corps. The plane was brought down in a region then controlled by Japanese forces. Referring to the country’s main island, Biden claimed that his uncle’s plane crashed in an area where there were many cannibals at the time, and that his body was never found.
Relatively isolated from the western world until the 1930s, Papua New Guinea gained notoriety for the mortuary feast rituals practiced by the Fore tribe, which involved consuming the brains of the deceased. These feasts were outlawed in the 1950s after rising cases of the fatal progressive neurodegenerative disease known by the tribe as “Kuru”, which was eventually linked to the consumption of human brain tissue. Studies carried out by Papua New Guinea and the UK have found that members of the tribe actually developed a degree of genetic immunity to the disease over time as a result of the practice.
Marape separated Papua New Guinea from any war guilt regarding WW2, saying that the war was not his nation’s doing and that it was dragged into the war. Biden’s comments offended one of the White House’s key strategic allies in a region where China seeks to increase its influence. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited the nation a couple of days earlier to commemorate the two countries’ defense ties, and commented that their security and defense ties had never been stronger.
Biden’s claims about his uncle are not supported by military records. Finnegan was a passenger on a Douglas A-20 Havoc transport plane along with three other crew members. According to a Pentagon report, the plane in fact crashed into the ocean on May 14, 1944 after both engines failed. One crew member survived but no trace of the plane or the other three crew members – including Finnegan – was ever found.
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