Stuff You Should KnowThe strange thing about the story of the Ramree Island Crocodile Massacre is that it didn't happen. Yet the story lives on.
Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck. Ben's here two sitting in for Dave. It's a brain buster, which we like to call short stuff.
That's right. This is when we tell the tale of the Ramri Island crocodile massacre.
It was bizarre, boy, what just happened? So, yeah, you mentioned the Ramri Island crocodile massacret that happens to be the title of this episode. Let's talk about it.
Thank goodness. All right, here's the story. Nineteen forty five, World War two is happening. The Allies had pinned down one thousand Japanese soldier and a mangrove swamp off of what is now Minamar. Back then it was Burma. I imagine they weren't like me and thought, oh jeez, I love mangroves. This is amazing. They were scared and it's all they should have been, because only twenty of those one thousand soldiers made it out alive. And as the story goes, roughly nine hundred of them were eaten by saltwater crocodiles.
Yes, and just an orgy of animal flesh eating horror.
Yeah, which should be the first sign that. Hm, maybe that's not quite right.
Well, you just kind of spoiled the whole thing for everybody.
Well, what else is there?
The idea that Crocodile's a nine hundred Japanese soldiers in a single night in a mangrove swamp on Ramree Island off of me and mar Yeah, well that's the story that was basically generally believed back when people were I don't want to say dumber, because we're pretty dumb now, but maybe well a little more prone to listen to the Guinness Book of World Records.
Yeah, and maybe a little less access to good information, even though you know the Internet give it and take it away of course in that respect. But the origins of the story are there was a Royal Canadian Lieutenant command named Bruce Wright who little side note, he was credited with being the guy who sort of invented the idea of the frogman unit, when these scuba div ring soldiers would scuba dive near something and spy or maybe stick a bomb in the underside of a submarine or something. I don't know what they do. But he was taking part in a joint British and Indian mission there at Ramary Island. He was a leader of the frogmen. He was a reconnaissance guy. He was also a wildlife biologist and author. And then later on in nineteen sixty two, wrote a book called Wildlife Sketches Colon Near and Far in which he detailed partially detailed the story of this crocodile massacre.
Yeah. And so he was a respected naturalist or respected biologist by this time. And if he hadn't a been, we probably wouldn't be talking about this story right now. Yeah, because, like he said at the outsid is so fantastic that it just defies sensibility. But because there was a respected naturalist, Bruce Wright writing about this, it was picked up by another scientist, a conservationist named Roger carus Or Karris, who wrote a book a couple of years later called Dangerous to Man. And even in his account of the Ramriy Island massacre he says, like, if this had come from somebody else, I would not be recounting it here. But not only is Bruce Wright like very respected and a trustworthy fellow, he was on Ramory Island when this happened. So it happened.
Yeah, But here's the deal, and I said he detailed it, Right did in his book. It wasn't that detailed. It was only a paragraph, so it wasn't super robust. I think the more robust account came from Karris's book. But here's the deal is that Right was at Ramriy, but he did not witness this happen. He apparently, we found out later, had picked up on this story second hand from some of his We said that he was, you know, working with the British military, from some of those British soldiers who are patrolling the island. So he picks up that passage second hand. And in the book, if you read his passage, he never even claims to have personally witnessed it.
Yeah, can't touch this, that's right.
So that's another problem. We should probably talk a little bit about the sea crocodiles though, huh? Or should we take a break?
I think we should take a break and come back.
All right, we'll do that, and then she's you're gonna hear so much about sea crocodiles you'll be crazy with it.
Okay, Chuck, we're back. We're talking about the saltwater crocodile Crocodilus porosis poof also known as the esturine. Esturine right, esturine. M I just keep saying the same version over and over again.
I know how to say estuary, but esturine. Maybe that is it.
It's got to be it. Crocodile. There's only one of two crocodile species that will prey on humans. And one reason they prey on humans is because we're basically like a a piece of gum to the compared to their guys. Sure an amuse bouche.
Yeah, they're big. They can get up to twenty three feet, they can weigh a ton. They are, like you said, they're pretty aggressive. Like you know, we've done stuff on crocodiles and alligators even they're not super aggressive animals. But these saltwater crocs are pretty territorial, and I think they've done some stats. The most recent I found was twenty fifteen seventy nine fatal saltwater crocodile attacks out of one hundred and eighty in one year in Southeast Asia and coastal India and Oceania.
So yeah, which is where they live, so basically throughout the world. That's how many people were.
Attacked, Yeah, exactly, But seventy nine fatalities in a year is a lot for you know, talking about eating by crocodile, but when you talk about nine hundred men being eate, like eaten overnight, that doesn't sound possible.
Yeah. And there was a historian named Frank mclenn who wrote a book on the Battle and the Pacific, specifically on or the War in the Pacific is specifically the battles in Burma, and he mentions this crocodile story and he says that it quote offends every single canaan of historical verifability.
Every single cannon.
Verifiability. What is going on?
I don't know. You didn't say battle was specific there, so I was kind of proud of.
You, the Battle of Pisketti. Yeah, So Frank mclenn's onto something. He's like, this doesn't even make sense, because seriously, by this time, the story is that nine hundred Japanese soldiers were eaten in a single horrific night in an island off of Burma, in a mangrove swamp, and that the British who were fighting them heard their horrific cries as they perished. And finally, Frank mclan's like, this does not make sense everybody, let's just stop and use our noodles for a second.
Yeah, the whole thing starts to kind of fall apart. First of all, that neither one of the official either Japanese or British military records mentioned this at all, so that's a big one. Second of all, they didn't lose nine hundred soldiers there at Ramrey. Apparently there were a couple of investigations and about five hundred of the original one thousand did get out alive. So I went on to five hundred, that would still be too many, And so apparently they did more investigating. They talked to Burmese villagers who were alive during that time. Some of them were actually conscripted by the military of Japan, and they said, you know, most of them actually died from disease and dehydration and exposure, and if any were eaten, it may have been like a dozen or so.
Which is still significant. I mean, like, if one hundred and eighty for a year across the world and only seventy nine are killed, a dozen in a couple of weeks is pretty significant. The thing is, it's not like this story is completely without merit. It's just it was so ridiculously embellished that basically everybody's like, this isn't true, but there's still Apparently were sounds, terrible sounds coming from the Japanese soldiers that the British noticed. But there were a couple of investigations into this. Herpetologist Stephen Platt investigated in a national geographic show called Nazi World War Weird also investigated, and I don't remember which one, but they one of them looked into the British military records for that battle, which again was weeks long, a single night and on one particular night though February eighteenth, nineteen forty five, which would coincide with the original story about the crocodile massacre, the Allies were alerted by cries of Japanese soldiers, but they weren't being attacked by crocodiles. They were drowning by the dozens as they were trying to swim from Ramrie Island to the Burmese mainland.
Equally as horrifying. But I also always thought, didn't we even find out for research of drowning as a pretty quiet affair.
Yes, So there were some other things that could have accounted for this one. The British started mowing them down with machine guns as they tried to swim away. That was ultimately what accounted for the massacre at Ramree Island. They were also being picked off by sharks and some of them died as their boats were sinking. And if your boat sinking, I'm sure that can probably get a pretty good loud rise out of you.
Yeah, And I think the next day at daybreak, there were crocodiles feeding on bodies and they were just obviously there was a lot of you know, crocodile food there all of a sudden, so there are a lot more crocodiles in view, and so I think that it sort of helped the story, or at least a legend build.
Yeah. So if you take all that information, put it into Bruce Wright, pick them up, shake them for a little bit, turn them upside down, what pours out is the Ramrie Island crocodile massacres story.
That's right.
Yeah, So there you go, myth busted way to go.
Adam Short stuff out?
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