Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister James Marape has pushed back at President Biden's suggestion that his uncle, a U.S. serviceman whose plane crashed in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of New Guinea during World War II, was eaten by cannibals there.
“President Biden's statement may have been a gaffe, but my country does not deserve to be labeled as such,” Marape said in a statement provided to news outlets including The Associated Press and Reuters. Stated.
Mr. Biden has suggested twice in the last week, without evidence, that his uncle was eaten by cannibals.
“He was shot down in New Guinea, but his body was never found, because there were actually a lot of cannibals in that part of New Guinea,” Biden said of his uncle in a speech on Monday. Steel and aluminum tariffs went into effect in Pittsburgh on Wednesday.
Papua New Guinea is an important strategic partner of the United States in the region. Marape has visited the White House twice. His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
Biden's account of his uncle's death does not match military records. Ambrose Finnegan, Biden's mother's younger brother, was aboard a plane that had to make an emergency landing in the Pacific Ocean off the northern coast of New Guinea for “unknown reasons” on May 14, 1944, according to the Pentagon's Defense POW report. He was said to have been a passenger. MIA Accounting Office. Both of the plane's engines failed at low altitude. There is no evidence that the aircraft was shot down.
Finnegan and two others “were unable to extricate themselves from the sinking wreck and were lost in the crash,” Pentagon records said. “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 missing crew.”
As part of a three-day campaign tour in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, Biden visited a war memorial that bears Finnegan's name in his childhood hometown of Scranton, where he revealed that his uncle was a cannibal. He made a similar suggestion that he may have been involved in an accident.
Biden's comments were made in the context of criticizing former President Donald J. Trump's comments in which he reportedly called Americans killed in combat “sucks” and “losers.” (Mr. Trump denies that statement.)
“President Biden is proud of his uncle's accomplishments in uniform,” White House Press Secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement. “He lost his life,” he said, adding: The president highlighted his uncle's story and insisted on honoring what Biden called a sacred duty to “equip the men we send to war and care for them and their families when they come home.”
Bates did not address the president's false statements about the circumstances of his uncle's death or Marape's response.
In a statement, the prime minister called on the United States to remove wartime materials and properly dispose of remains remaining in the area from World War II.
“The battlefields in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands are numerous and littered with the remains of World War II, including human remains, plane wreckage, ship wreckage, tunnels and bombs,” Marape said. “Our people live every day in fear that they may be killed by an exploded World War II bomb,” he added.