During World War II, around 1,000 Japanese soldiers were reportedly massacred by saltwater crocodiles on Ramree Island, Burma. But historians and experts doubt the veracity of the story — which no official military reports from either side confirm.
In early 1945, as part of the Pacific War during World War II, Allied forces trapped 1,000 Japanese soldiers in a mangrove forest off the coast of Burma, now Myanmar.
Only 20 of the Japanese fighters they managed to get out alive. The remainder were allegedly eaten alive by hordes of crocodiles salt water of prehistoric appearance.
This horrible event, says , is known as the “Ramree Island crocodile massacre“.
“That night was the most horrible that any member of the motorboat crews had ever experienced.“, reports an Allied commander, Lieutenant Commander Bruce S. Wright.
“The scattered rifle shots in the pitch-black swamp, pierced by the screams of wounded men crushed by the jaws of the enormous reptiles, and the murky, unsettling sound of the whirling crocodiles, created a hellish cacophony that has rarely been replicated on Earth,” continues the Wright’s testimony.
“At dawn, the vultures arrived to clean up what the crocodiles had left… Of the approximately one thousand Japanese soldiers who entered the marshes of Ramree, only about twenty were found alive“, concludes the lieutenant commander’s report.
In 1968, the Guinness Book of World Records awarded the massacre the dubious distinction of “highest number of human deaths in a crocodile attack“, with around 900 deaths.
But in recent decades, historians and herpetologists have cast doubts about this horrible story.
Although it is evident that many Japanese soldiers died in the battle for Ramree Island, There is no mention of a “crocodile massacre” in official military reports — British or Japanese. Additionally, saltwater crocodiles are not known to “food feasts” of this scale, especially in living human prey.
Then, What is the origin of this apocryphal tale? and how did it spread so far?
The origins of the “Ramree Island Massacre”
The above-mentioned report was written by Bruce S. Wrighta Canadian lieutenant commander credited with inventing the idea of “frogman units”diving soldiers who could spy on the enemy from the water.
Em 1945, Wright participated in the joint assault British and Indian troops to the island of Ramree, which the Allies hoped to capture from the Japanese and use as a strategic airfield.
As leader of his frogman unit, Wright was in charge of reconnaissance of the terrain, but also spent hours documenting life local marine, which included sharks and octopus. After the war, Wright became a respected wildlife biologist and author.
Interestingly, it may have been the Wright’s influence as a naturalist that helped launch the myth of the crocodile massacre in the public imagination.
Wright wrote his account of the killer crocodiles in a , published in 1962 under the title “Wildlife Sketches: Near and Far“. But the story was later taken up by another scientist, the conservationist Roger Caras.
In his 1964 book, “Dangerous to Man“, Caras called the Ramree incident “one of the most deliberate and massive attacks on man by large animals that are registered”.
Caras admits that “if the story had come from another source other than Bruce Wright, I would be tempted to disregard it. But Bruce Wright, a highly trained professional naturalist, was there in Ramree“.
The problem is, although Wright was technically in Ramreewas not among the witnesses who claimed to have heard the screams of the Japanese as they were attacked by the giant crocodiles.
According to a later version of the story in his memoir “The Frogmen of Burma“, Wright heard the story from British comrades in the crews of the boats that patrolled the island.
In your report, Wright never says he witnessed it in person the massacre. “That night was the most horrible night any of the boat crews had ever experienced,” Wright wrote, using the third person.
But it is precisely due to Wright’s reputation as a keen observer of the natural world that his second-hand, and probably embellished, account was accepted as fact.
Do saltwater crocodiles eat humans?
Yes, according to the herpetologist Steven Platt, the saltwater crocodile, Crocodylus porosusalso known as the estuarine crocodile, is one of two species of crocodiles that “regularly attack humans“.
Saltwater crocodiles can reach 7 meters long and weigh more than a ton, and, unlike smaller alligators and crocodiles, saltwater crocodiles aggressively defend their territory — and occasionally eat a human.
Every year, dozens of people are killed by crocodiles saltwater, like the unfortunate 8-year-old girl who was attacked and eaten in front of her friends in Indonesia in 2021.
Saltwater crocodiles (Crocodylus porosus) are one of the most aggressive types of crocodiles.
But how common are saltwater crocodile attacks? In 2015, there were a total of 180 crocodile attacks in Southeast Asiain coastal India and Oceania, the regions where saltwater crocodiles live. 79 of these attacks were fatal.
Given that less than 100 people are killed by saltwater crocodiles every year throughout Southeast Asia and Oceaniawhat are the probabilities of 900 Japanese soldiers being eaten alive by voracious crocodiles during a horrible night, on a small island?
The historian Frank McLynnin his book about the battle for Burma, concluded that the Ramree Island crocodile massacre “offends all canons of historical verifiability” and challenges ecological logic.
“If thousands of crocodiles were involved in the massacre, How did these voracious monsters survive before and how did they manage to survive afterwards?”, he asks in a 2019 article on the subject.
The True Story of Ramree Island
First of all, it should be noted that the battle took place over the course of a month and was not an overnight event. But if the 900 Japanese soldiers were not devoured by crocodiles, as Wright reports, So how did they die??
Well, for starters, the Japanese did not lose 900 soldiers in Ramree.
According to one of the herpetologist Steven Platt and an investigation of the program “Nazi World War Weird“, da National Geographic, about 500 of the original 1,000 Japanese soldiers managed to escape with their lives of mangroves — information that is confirmed in Japanese military archives.
There are still 500 dead Japanese soldiers left in Ramree — enough to make a good feast; but very few of them, if anywere victims of crocodiles.
According to local Burmese villagers who were alive during the Battle of Ramree, including some who were recruited by the Japanese military, the majority of Japanese casualties in the swamp was due to dehydration and illness caused by exposure and lack of clean food and water.
Then, what were the terrifying sounds What would British patrols have heard on that fateful night in February 1945? Maybe there is an answer to that too.
According to British military records to which the National Geographic investigation had access, in the early hours of February 18, 1945, the Allies discovered aa “desperate attempt” by hundreds of soldiers Japanese to swim across a channel that separated the island of Ramree from the Burmese mainland.
“With the exception of a few swimmers, It is doubtful that any survived to cross“, reads the official British report. “It is estimated that at least 100 Japanese have died or drowned that night… 200 dead is considered a conservative estimate.
“I know that around 40 loaded boats sank. Possibly another 50 Japanese died in the mangrove due to exposure and lack of food and water. 14 prisoners were taken“, details the report.
This was, most likely, the real massacre of Ramree Island, perpetrated by human soldiers in a terrible war, not by bloodthirsty predators.
But there were crocodiles there
Although the vast majority of Japanese casualties on Ramree Island were caused by conventional causes, Is there any credibility in the history of crocodiles.
When Steven Platt’s team interviewed local villagers, they said that 10 to 15 Japanese soldiers may have been attacked and killed by crocodiles when they tried to swim in the canal.
Another Allied commander reported that the fleeing Japanese soldiers were victims of naval patrols — and sharks — when they tried to reach the mainland. Therefore, there is evidence that at least some soldiers were killed for big predators that lurked in the water.
And then there’s a horrible clue about the origin of the myth of Ramree Island. The morning after Allied forces shot down hundreds of fleeing Japanese soldiers, the British military became aware of the arrival of some opportunistic hunters to feed on the dead.
“The next day presented a gloomy aspect to increase the horror of the scene.“, says the official British report. “Crocodiles that were previously considered rarely seen have appeared on the canal banks in increasing numbers.”
Some crocodiles may have had their feast… but the soldiers they devoured would already be dead.
Like this, the strangest in history of the Ramree Island Crocodile Massacre is the fact that it didn’t happen. However, the myth…
