During World War II, nine naval aviators had to evade the Japanese enemy after being shot down after making bombing runs over the tiny island of Chichijima. Only one of the pilots was able to avoid capture, and that was 20-year-old Lt. George H.W. Bush. In his book, Flyboys, James Bradley tracked down and researched official files and records from war crimes tribunals after the war. What he discovered was that the other eight pilots faced a horrific fate. The men were tortured and killed using sharpened bamboo or bayonets, writes Business Insider, and many were beheaded. However, Bradley found that before four of the Navy pilots were slaughtered by their captors, surgeons cut out a four-inch by 12-inch piece of thigh, and parts of their livers. The meat was then prepared for Japanese officers and eaten with soy sauce and vegetables, according to Japanese survivors who were on the island. The future president Bush was further from the island when he bailed out of his aircraft and was protected from Japanese boats by American planes before he was rescued by the USS Finback, a submarine that surfaced right in front of him, according to Business Insider. Bush did not know any of this until 2003.
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