Seems like a made up story?
According to Hickey (1998), "the Japanese were forced into one corner of the island where, among the crocodile-infested swamps, most of them died from poor internet reception. most of them died from drowning, disease or starvation. Only 20 surrendered."
edit: for the inevitable "i dont get it" https://www.washington.edu/news/2017/11/15/what-counts-as-na... https://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/younger-generation-...
There's a reason Man vs Nature is a fundamental literary conflict even if we've long since pacified and destroyed the land around us.
England isn’t an island, it shares land borders with Scotland and Wales.
I feel like i'm in a unique position to talk about this. My family has been involved in crocodiles in one way or another since the 1950's, from a close family being eaten, to working in their preservation and tourism.
Crocodiles are definitely a high level predator. Mangrove swamps make an ideal breeding and hunting grounds for pubestant crocodiles.
Each male crocodile will consider humans (and other animals) a challenge to its territory. When they have an opportunity to overpower a threat, they will do so and drown their prey and stashing the corpse under a log usually under water.
These humans would likely be forced to sleep in the mangroves, the British had control of the non mangrove areas forcing them directly into the territory of the crocodiles, the humans in the dark and asleep would EASILY be taken and drowned.
My uncle (deceased last year) tells me of the time when my family friend was taken by a local crocodile. She was knee deep in the water, splashing herself with the water on a hot new years night, the other party goers around heard a splash and not even a chance of a scream. Imagine this when you are 500 strong, in a thick area of crocodiles with mangrove swamp blocking noise.
I can't bring myself to watch narration on the story but ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s4lrLtMjwA ) is supposed to be pretty accurate. Its possible that I'm doxing myself and a clever person maybe can figure out my family from this.
This is one crocodile, with a territory size of about 200m. Imagine this across an mangrove area of the island, while you are hunted, tired and can't hear your team.
The worse part is, the japanese soldiers probably were not aware of the existence and the the sheer number of crocodiles in Ramree, it is a recipe for disaster. If the crocodiles didn't kill them, the bites and infections from them likely would.
There is a good point in a comment there - at the time crocodiles were not expected:
"""
@thebackwardpointinggodwit8080 1 year ago
To all those people saying how could someone swim in waters with all those crocs around? Well the bit this account misses is that for many years crocs had been hunted to near extinction in that area and right across the north of Australia. Croc attack had become just a distant possibility in the most remote of locations. Then croc hunting was outlawed in the 70s and croc numbers recovered quickly and their distribution moved southwards to include places like the Daintree over the next decade or so. No-one really expected to see big crocs in the Daintree in the early 80s and what these people did was normal and considered not dangerous at the time. I was in Australia at the time and I remember when that attack happened - it didn’t seem possible. I and most people thought it was much more likely that she simply drowned or disappeared - or maybe some foul-play had occurred and people were covering it up - but we were very skeptical that it was a croc. Now crocs are common right across the north of Australia and sadly attacks keep happening, but Beryl Wruck just had the misfortune to be the first person to find out the hard way that things had changed and what everyone considered safe no longer was.
"""
So it was a policy choice to increase safety for crocodiles while decreasing safety for humans.
Humans are entirely capable of eradicating crocodile attacks, we just choose not to.
Why would you do that. They have been here millions of years before us. Leave them alone?
Think of how many stories warn children about the "big bad wolf" vs how many wolf deaths have you ever heard of?
The stories might be a legacy of times past before we killed off most of the wolves near us.
Ye I guess it is plausible but dunno if there would be enough crocodiles.
War stories like these are often just made up for propaganda or jingoist gossip purposes.
Like, Wikipedia references a source saying the "crocodile massacre" didn't happen.
I have had enough experience in the real life to know that the wikpedias truth is held by the most persistent editors, not what actually happened.