President Joe Biden (AP/Meg Kinnard)/Ambrose Finnegan, photo: USAAF
President Joe Biden’s recent comments about his uncle’s World War II fate, suggesting his uncle was eaten by cannibals, have been clarified by the White House. The White House explained that Ambrose Finnegan actually died when his military plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean.
Biden’s remarks came during a visit to Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he shared the story about his uncle’s tragic end, implying that cannibals in New Guinea prevented the recovery of Finnegan’s body.
“He got shot down in an area where there were a lot of cannibals at the time. They never recovered his body, but the government went back when I went down there, and they checked and found some parts of the plane,” Biden said to reporters, The New York Post reported.
Later he added to the story while talking with steelworkers. He said that Ambrose Finnegan “got shot down in New Guinea 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.”
However, the official account from the Pentagon’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency contradicts Biden’s narrative.
The agency’s report states that Finnegan’s plane was forced to ditch in the ocean off the north coast of New Guinea due to engine failure, leading to the loss of three crew members, including Finnegan, whose body was never recovered, The Daily Beast reported.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre addressed Biden’s comments while aboard Air Force One. Jean-Pierre noted Biden’s emotional visit to a war memorial and clarified the circumstances of Finnegan’s death, attributing it to the plane crash rather than cannibalism.
“You saw the president, he was incredibly proud of his uncle’s service in uniform. You saw him at the war memorial. It was incredibly emotional and important to him,” Jean-Pierre said en route to Philadelphia, where Biden was making his third consecutive day of campaign visits to the Keystone State.
“You saw him respond to all of you when asked about the moment yesterday and his uncle, who lost his life when the military aircraft he was on crashed in the Pacific after taking off near New Guinea.”
Biden’s comments did offend some in New Guinea.
“The Melanesian group of people, who Papua New Guinea is part of, are a very proud people,” Michael Kabuni, a lecturer in political science at the University of Papua New Guinea, told The Guardian. “And they would find this kind of categorization very offensive. Not because someone says ‘oh there used to be cannibalism in PNG’ – yes, we know that, that’s a fact.
“But taking it out of context and implying that your [uncle] jumps out of the plane and somehow we think it’s a good meal is unacceptable.
Kabuni did say cannibalism was practiced by some communities in the past in specific contexts, such as eating a deceased relative out of respect, to prevent their body from decomposing. “There was context. They wouldn’t just eat any white men that fell from the sky,” said Kabuni.
President Joe Biden (AP/Meg Kinnard)/Ambrose Finnegan, photo: USAAF
