Marrying `The Queen Bee of Anatahan` Was Deadly
Kazuko Higa, whom the Japan Times described as “a diminutive, lantern-jawed woman who could have charitably been called handsome“, did not look anything like Hollywood’s image of a femme fatale. Yet, fate and the vagaries of WW2 cast her into that role in real life, and forced her into a series of marriages that always ended up catastrophically – especially for the husband.
It began in June of 1944, when American airplanes sank a small Japanese convoy off Anatahan, a remote Marianas island 75 miles from Saipan. 36 sailors and soldiers swam to Anatahan. There, they encountered the island’s sole occupants, a plantation owner named Kikuchiro Higa, and his wife Kazuko. The demographics of 37 men to 1 woman would spell trouble.
While the survivors got settled in, assisted by the Higas, the war went on. Later in 1944, the US invaded the Marianas, seizing the main islands and bypassing the smaller ones such as Anatahan. The castaways on that island, cut off from communications with their government and chain of command, were isolated from the outside world.
Life was no picnic for the Japanese in the resources-poor Anatahan, and the castaways were forced to survive on coconuts, lizards, bats, insects, taro, wild sugar cane, and whatever else they could find. Their lot was improved when a B-29 bomber crashed on the island, and the castaways scavenged the wreckage to fashion the plane’s metal into useful items, such as knives, pots, and roofs for their huts.
However, competition for the favors of the island’s sole female soon led to a Lord of the Flies dynamics. The first victim was Kazuko’s husband, Kikuchiro Higa, who disappeared in mysterious circumstances soon after the castaways arrived. So she married one of the castaways for protection from the others. However, one of the other castaways shot and killed her new husband, so Kazuko married him, only for the murderous groom to have his own throat slit soon thereafter by another aspiring beau.
Kazuko became a full blown femme fatale, transferring her affections between a series of husbands, each of whom ended up violently chased off, or murdered, by some of the other frustrated men. Things got worse when the castaways discovered how to ferment coconut wine, then spent days on end drinking themselves into a stupor or into alcoholic rages. By 1951, as the castaways fought over Kazuko, there had been 12 murders, and too many fights to count. One aspirant had been stabbed on thirteen separate occasions by jealous rivals, yet resumed wooing Kazuko soon as he healed from each attempted murder.
In the outside world, the war had ended in 1945. When somebody remembered reports of the Japanese castaways, American authorities airdropped leaflets on Anatahan, informing its Japanese that the war was over. The castaways viewed the leaflets as fake news, however, and refused to believe that Japan could have surrendered. As they were isolated and posed no threat, it was not worth the trouble to root them out. So American authorities coninued dropping leaflets every now and then, repeating that the war was over and directing the Japanese to surrender. The castaways continued to dismiss that as fake news.
Finally, in 1950, Kazuko spotted and flagged down a passing US vessel, and asked to be taken off the island. That was when US authorities discovered that the castaways did not believe that the war was over. So the holdouts’ families were contacted, and they wrote letters to their relatives, letting them know that the war had, indeed, ended years earlier. That an official message from the Japanese government finally did the trick.
The castaways surrendered in 1951, and returned to Japan, where their story became a sensation. Kazuko Higa was nicknamed “The Queen Bee of Anatahan” by the Japanese press, and found temporary fame selling her story to newspapers and recounting it to packed theaters. When her fifteen minutes were over, however, and the public lost interest, she fell into prostitution and abject poverty. She died at age 51, while working as a garbage collector.
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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Sources & Further Reading
All That is Interesting – Andrew Robinson Stoney May Have Been England’s Worst Husband, Ever
Encyclopedia Britannica – Margaret of Valois, Queen Consort of Navarre
Headstuff – Abe Sada, Victim and Killer
History Ireland – Camila O’Gorman, a Rose Among the Thorns
Japan Times, May 3rd, 2014 – A Homage to the ‘Queen of Anatahan’
New York Times, February 13th, 2005 – Heloise & Abelard: Love Hurts
Ranker – The 10 Cruelest, Most Unfair Weddings in the History of Western Culture
Tatler, February 14th, 2017 – The 7 Worst Weddings in History and Literature
Unofficial Royalty – Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, Princess of Wales