By Ashley Branam

     In the process of writing an annotated bibliography on trophy skulls for my Forensic Anthropology class—my last project as an undergraduate—I came across a fact of history that society had concealed from me. Apparently, throughout the history of warfare and even as recently as World War II, soldiers mailed home trophy heads. I’d heard about people mailing home military vehicles pieces at a time and robbing the dead of their weapons and even fingers. But heads? Decapitating the fallen enemies, boiling off the flesh, and shipping the skull back their beloved family members? In his article “Skull Trophies of the Pacific War,” Simon Harrison, a professor at the University of Ulster, Coleraine, showcased numerous of letters and news reports detailing that the Euro-American forces performed exactly that with Japanese skulls.

     Trophy skulls are predominately a phenomenon found in Indonesia, Neolithic western Asia and pre-Colombian North and South America, though some tribes in the Amazon still practice similar rituals. According to Western culture, however, headhunting is reserved for uncivilized people. Or at least it was. Now with Euro-Americans implemented in what are most certainly war crimes, it casts an ever-elongating shadow over the moral achievements of civilization.

     Harrison explains the Pacific War headhunting in terms of racism. Only Japanese skulls were taken as trophies during WWII. There are no records of Euro-American soldiers stealing German heads and he suggests that racism made it easier to dehumanize Japanese soldiers, which lead to the consideration of Japanese skulls as property. Also, Harrison explains that Western culture typically rewards males for hunting success and emphasize the notion of man, the hunter. He continues on to say that the reason Western society doesn’t publicize wartime trophy heads is that many owners of the trophy skulls became burdened by them and opted to return them to Japan for proper interment. Foreign affairs and the military concealed the information to downplay Euro-American involvement in war crimes.

     This may all be true, but Harrison doesn’t push far enough. The commonness of wartime trophy-taking is why the behavior is concealed. If it were just a couple people, it would be front page news. We like reading about morbid black sheep. But with the sheer volume of trophy heads (in some battles occurring to as much as 60% of Japanese war dead, according to Harrison), the morbid black sheep become a morbid herd of otherwise normal Euro-Americans turn savages, which contradicts the concept that civilization is innately morally right and exemplifiable and non-civilization is innately immoral and barbaric. The rules may be different, but we’re all the same. And that is something Western culture doesn’t want to advertise.

     Ashely