Fact Check

WWII Veteran Emerges from Coma After 69 Years

Rumor: A veteran injured during the 1945 battle of Iwo Jima finally came out of his coma 69 years later.

Published March 23, 2015

Claim:

Claim:   A veteran injured during the 1945 battle of Iwo Jima finally came out of his coma 69 years later.


FALSE


Example:   [Collected via e-mail, March 2015]


I researched and Found this on Google:

From Grunt.com, Article by SGT.GRIT "69 Year Coma and a Wake Up":
An American Marine injured during the Second World War and stuck in a deep
coma ever since, has finally regained consciousness this Monday at the
Naval Medical Center (NMCSD).


 

Origins:   On 6 June 2014, the 70th anniversary of the World War II D-Day landings in France, the World News Daily Report web site published an article positing that a 95-year-old veteran of that conflict had (with the help of an experimental treatment) finally emerged from a coma he had entered after having been injured during the 1945 battle for Iwo Jima:



An American marine injured during the Second World War and stuck in a deep coma ever since, has finally regained consciousness this Monday at the Naval Medical Center (NMCSD). James Hill, a 95-year old former sergeant who is decorated with two purple heart medals and a navy cross, was severely injured by the explosion of an artillery shell during the battle of Iwo Jima, on the 27th of February 1945. Doctors had been able to miraculously save his life, but the shock was so violent and the brain damage was so severe, that they thought he was condemned to remain inert for the rest of his life.

It is a controversial new treatment that was recently applied to Mr Hill, that somehow extracted him from his unconsciousness. This new approach developed by a German scientist, Professor Hans Friedritch Müller, is based on the use of various experimental drugs and repeated series of low voltage eletroshocks. This technic [sic] is still in its development phase and had been allowed to be tested only on four patients who were considered to have "very low probabilities" of recovering.


This article gained additional traction long after its initial appearance when it was uncritically republished as if it were a straight news story on sites such as Body Mind Soul Spirit and the Marines Corps-related Sgt Grit (Grunt.com). However, this item is just a bit of fiction from World News Daily Report, a site whose stock in trade is the posting of fake news articles. World News Daily Report's disclaimer states that all "news articles contained within worldnewsdailyreport.com are fiction, and presumably fake news."

The photograph used at the head of the World News Daily Report article was not in fact that of a 95-year-old U.S. World War II veteran named James Hill, bur rather a picture of a hospitalized 81-year-old British man named Norman Betchley who choked on a pill and died in 2009.

Last updated:   23 March 2015

David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994.