James Marape, the prime minister of Papua New Guinea, accused President Biden of denigrating the island nation in the South Pacific by claiming that the US president’s Uncle Bozy had been devoured by “cannibals” there during World War II.
Speaking last week at a war memorial in Pennsylvania, the president mentioned his uncle, Second Lt. Ambrose J. Finnegan Jr., an Army Air Corps pilot, who he said went by “Uncle Bozy,” was shot down over Papua New Guinea, a region that saw intense fighting.
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“He was in the Army Air Corps before there was an Air Force, before single-engine planes, reconnaissance flights over New Guinea, he volunteered because someone couldn’t make it,” Biden said of his relative, Ambrose “Uncle Bozy” Finnegan.
“He got shot down in New Guinea,” said Biden.
“They never found the body because there used to be — there were a lot of cannibals for real in that part of New Guinea,” said Biden.
Marape said in a statement on Sunday that Biden “appeared to imply cannibals ate his uncle.”
“President Biden’s remarks may have been a slip of the tongue; however, my country does not deserve to be labeled as such,” Marape said in a statement to the Associated Press on Monday.
“World War II was not the doing of my people; however, they were needlessly dragged into a conflict that was not their doing,” Marape added.
Reporting on Biden’s comments, the New York Post noted that Biden made this up.
“The Pentagon’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency says that Finnegan’s plane actually was lost over the open ocean on May 14, 1944,” the Post reported.
In its official account, the Pentagon declared, “For unknown reasons, this plane was forced to ditch in the ocean off the north coast of New Guinea. Both engines failed at low altitude, and the aircraft’s nose hit the water hard.”
“Three men failed to emerge from the sinking wreck and were lost in the crash,” the Defense Department added. “One crew member survived and was rescued by a passing barge. An aerial search the next day found no trace of the missing aircraft or the lost crew members.”
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