Biden, His Uncle, Cannibalism, and Papua New Guinea

Joe Biden was at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania last week, when he decided — it’s unclear what prompted him — to share the information that the body of his uncle, a downed airman named Ambrose J. Finnegan, whose plane had crashed during World War II in the Pacific, near Papua New Guinea, was never found because, said Biden, most likely it had been “eaten by cannibals.” This caused a furor in Papua New Guinea, which the Americans, in their contest with China for influence in the region, have been trying to woo. Just last year, Washington signed a security pact with Papua New Guinea. Now Biden’s comment may make it harder for Washington to improve upon that initial pact. More on this comical contretemps can be found here: “Papua New Guinea leader defends nation after Biden’s ‘cannibals’ comment,” by Mithil Aggarwal, NBC News, April 22, 2024:

The prime minister of Papua New Guinea defended the Pacific Island nation after President Joe Biden appeared to imply that his uncle’s body was eaten by “cannibals” there during World War II, urging the United States to clean up the remnants of the conflict in the region.

Biden did not merely “imply” that his uncle’s body was eaten by cannibals; he stated that his uncle was very likely eaten by them..

“President Biden’s remarks may have been a slip of the tongue; however, my country does not deserve to be labeled as such,” Prime Minister James Marape said in a statement Sunday, referring to Biden’s comment about cannibals.

Speaking at an event in Pennsylvania last week, Biden said that his uncle, Army Air Corps aviator Ambrose J. Finnegan, had been “shot down in New Guinea.”

According to the records of the U.S. military, Finnegan’s plane was not “shot down,” but the plane was ditched — either because of an engine malfunction or because it ran out of fuel — in the Pacific. Biden likes to embroider his stories; far better to describe his uncle’s plane as having succumbed to enemy fire than to reveal that his plane simply ran out of fuel or had engine trouble. Biden, you see, has kissed, many times, the Blarney Stone. If you come from Skeheenarinky or Ballybunion, you’ll know just what I mean. That Irish osculation has given him not eloquence, but something more downmarket — the gift of the gab — as well as making him a dab hand at those little white lies he loves to tell, half-convinced himself that they are true.

“They never found the body because there used to be — there were a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea,” he said.

The US military records about Finnegan’s death make no mention of the aircraft being downed or of cannibalism, saying the plane was forced to ditch in the ocean off the north coast of New Guinea for unknown reasons and that the three men killed in the crash were never found.

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates did not address Biden’s apparent mischaracterization but told NBC News in a statement last week that Biden was “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.”…

Note that the White House spokesman Andrew Bates now makes no mention of the plane being “shot down,” as Biden claimed, nor of that plane “crashing on Papua New Guinea,” another Biden claim, but instead, he describes Finnegan’s plane as having “crashed in the Pacific.” Nor is there any mention of cannibalism.

The Asia-Pacific was a theater of heavy fighting during World War II; the remains of bodies, plane wrecks, shipwrecks, tunnels and bombs still litter Papua New Guinea and other countries more than seven decades later. Marape pointed out that residents live in daily fear of being killed by unexploded ordnance.

Marape said many unsolved mysteries of World War II remained in the seas, mountains and jungles of Papua New Guinea.

“I urge President Biden to get the White House to look into cleaning up these remains of WWII so the truth about missing servicemen like Ambrose Finnegan can be put to rest,” he said….

President Marape has decided to use Biden’s lapsus linguae as an occasion to hold out his hand in the eleemosynary position, suggesting that the US pay for the search and cleanup of aerial detritus and unexploded ordnance in his island nation (that is shared with Indonesia). Biden, stung by the furor his cannibalism remark created, is likely to grant Marape’s request. Papua New Guinea has become a strategic ally of the U.S. in its great contest with China over influence in the Indo-Pacific region, one that Biden can ill afford to lose.

Marape met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Sunday, and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is visiting this week.

Biden’s remark could not have come at a worse time, when the Chinese are engaged in a charm offensive in Papua New Guinea, no doubt hoping to wean the country away from its recent security pact with the U.S.

And Biden’s remark about the natives of Papua New Guinea practicing cannibalism in the 1940s (times have changed, and palates, too — cannibalism is now frowned upon in that country) is likely to offend African-Americans, who will see Biden’s remark as expressing deep-seated prejudice against black and brown people, “unfairly” accusing some of such savage practices as cannibalism. Biden must now wish he had never mentioned his story about his uncle Ambrose J. Finnegan. And yet the funniest part of this story is that Biden was quite possibly right about his uncle’s end. Cannibalism was widely practiced in Papua New Guinea at the time, and it is not at all implausible that his uncle’s body washed up on shore and was retrieved, so as to make a feast of what cannibals of the southwestern Pacific rim called “Long Pig.” That cannibalism was still being practiced in the 1940s, but under pressure from Australia, it died out on Papua New Guinea by 1960. This, however, is something Biden cannot allow himself to say. The truth here is no defense; it is instead offensive to many, and likely to cost him votes among African-Americans. You can visualize the Republican ads that will show Biden stating over and over that “my uncle’s plane was shot down” 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 will be accused of visualizing the Papua New Guineans as grass-skirted cannibals with brown skin and negroid features, and bones through their noses, stirring a large pot in which a pith-helmeted white man — tonight’s supper — can be seen. And all of this is the result of Biden going off script to riff on the death of his uncle, Aviator Ambrose J. Finnegan. Perhaps the rest of this presidential election year will throw up something else that is equally amusing, but I doubt it.