PITTSBURGH (Reuters) – President Joe Biden The possibility was raised on Wednesday that an uncle who served in the Pacific campaign during World War II could have fallen victim to cannibals after his plane was shot down over New Guinea.
Biden made the comment after visiting a war memorial for the missing in the city of Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he lived in his youth, and placing his hand on the engraved name of Ambrose Finnegan, whose plane was shot down and whose body was never recovered.
“He flew single-engine aircraft and reconnaissance flights over New Guinea. He volunteered because someone couldn’t make it. He was shot in an area where there were a lot of cannibals in New Guinea at the time,” Biden told reporters. in Scranton right after visiting the granite monument.
“They never found his body. But the government went back when I went there, and they checked and found some parts of the plane and things like that,” he said.
Biden retold the story about the man he called “Uncle Bosie” at a separate event in response to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s reported comment that “suckers and losers” die in battle. Trump has denied making the comment.
Biden became emotional as he spoke about his son Beau, who died in 2015 from brain cancer that the president has linked to his son’s military service in Iraq. Biden told the audience of union steelworkers that Trump did not deserve to become commander in chief again.
The comments came at the end of a nostalgic two-day trip to the key battleground state of Pennsylvania for the president as he seeks re-election, including a 90-minute stay at his parents’ home in Scranton.
(Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Susan Heavey and Jonathan Oatis)
