Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-1945 (The Pacific War Trilogy Book 3)

by Ian W. Toll

A landing on Mindanao followed on April 17, followed by smaller landings on Panay, Cebu, Negros, and smaller islands to the south. Casualties were minimal, as Japanese forces generally retreated into mountainous terrain and then wasted away for lack of provisions and support. Surviving Japanese troops dispersed into the backcountry, roaming around in small bands like jungle hoboes, gradually starving or succumbing to tropical diseases. Native guerillas hunted the stragglers, often torturing them to death and mutilating their corpses. Discipline collapsed. Enlisted soldiers turned against their officers. Men fought over food, even to the point of murder and cannibalism. Takamaro Nishihara recalled that a fellow soldier, dying of disease, invited him to prolong his life by eating his buttocks. The starving Nishihara exclaimed that he could never do such a thing, “but I couldn’t take my eyes off the flesh on his rear.”