United States:
"We boiled the flesh off enemy skulls"
"Japanese skulls were much-envied trophies among U.S. Marines in
the Pacific theater during World War II. The practice of collecting
them apparently began after the bloody conflict on Guadalcanal, when
the troops set up the skulls as ornaments or totems atop poles as a
type of warning. The Marines boiled the skulls and then used lye to
remove any residual flesh so they would be suitable as souvenirs. U.S.
sailors cleaned their trophy skulls by putting them in nets and dragging
them behind their vessels. Winfield Townley Scott wrote a wartime poem,
'The U.S. Sailor with the Japanese Skull" that detailed the entire technique
of preserving the headskull as a souvenir. In 1943 Life magazine published
the picture of a U.S. sailor's girlfriend contemplating a Japanese skull
sent to her as a gift - with a note written on the top of the skull.
Referring to this practice, Edward L. Jones, a U.S. war correspondent
in the Pacific wrote in the February 1946 Atlantic Magazine,
"We boiled the flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments
for sweethearts, or carved their bones into letter-openers." On occasion,
these "Japanese trophy skulls" have confused police when they have turned
up during murder investigations. It has been reported that when the
remains of Japanese soldiers were repatriated from the Mariana Islands
in 1984, sixty percent were missing their skulls."
Source: Kenneth V. Iserson, M.D., Death to Dust: What happens
to Dead Bodies?, Galen Press, Ltd. Tucson, AZ. 1994. p.382.
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