Stories about encounters with mermaids can be found in almost any country. In Indonesia, such creatures are called Orang Ikan and there is a particularly interesting case of meeting them in 1943 in the area of the Kai Islands, Maluku province.
The Cai Islands are famous for their beautiful white sandy beaches and films about life in Paradise can be made here. But in 1943 there was a war and a Japanese detachment landed on one of these islands.
Almost immediately, the soldiers began to talk about seeing strange creatures floating in the water near the shore. They described that their hands and faces are like those of a person, but the mouth is very wide and similar to the mouth of a carp.
In length, these creatures barely reached one and a half meters, their skin was pink, and there were some thorns on their heads. At the same time, unlike classic mermaids, they had ordinary human legs, and not fish tails.
These creatures mostly frolicked in small lagoons or in waters near beaches. The style of their swimming seemed to the Japanese like breaststroke. One night one of the soldiers went for a swim and saw a creature on the sand, which at first he took for a child.
But when it turned to face him, he saw that his features were not human. Immediately after that, the creature rushed headlong into the water and disappeared from view. The soldier peered into the water for a while, but the creature did not emerge to the surface.
When the soldiers met the local residents and asked them about these sea creatures, they told that these creatures are called Orang Ikan. Orang means man and Icahn means fish. According to local fishermen, these fishmen sometimes even get caught in their nets and then the Japanese asked them to notify them if this happens again.
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One evening Sergeant Taro Horiba was summoned to a nearby village. When Horiba arrived, he was told that the dead Orang Ikan had been washed ashore and that he had been carried to the hut of the head of the village.
Horiba went to examine the body. He described the creature as 160 cm long with shoulder-length reddish brown hair. There were sharp thorns on the neck, and the face was very ugly and looked more like the face of a monkey with a short nose, a wide low forehead, and small ears. The mouth was lipless and wide like a fish, and the teeth in the mouth were very small, but sharp as needles.
The fingers and toes of the creature had membranes, and the rest of the body was covered with some kind of growths that looked like algae.
Sergeant Horiba could not understand what kind of creature it was and what kind it belonged to. He had never heard of such creatures before and the sight of this creature frightened him.
Unfortunately, Horiba did not take any photographs or drawings of the found creature, and upon returning to Japan, no one believed his story. And then he was completely ridiculed, considering him a liar.