ABSTRACT
On December 6, 1946, H.V. Evatt, Australia’s minister for foreign affairs, sent a telegram to Judge William F. Webb, who was then in Tokyo for the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. The telegram asked Webb to advise Evatt as to whether Australia should adopt the British decision regarding the B and C Class trials. There is a certain amount of Japanese writing suggesting that Japanese forces committed acts of cannibalism in the Philippines and New Guinea during the Asia-Pacific War. A typical example is found in the novel Fires on the Plane by Ooka Shohei. The Japanese sources give the impression that in most cases Japanese soldiers themselves were the victims of the acts of cannibalism that occurred in New Guinea and the Philippines toward the end of the war when their supplies had been completely cut off. However, incidents also occurred in which Allied soldiers and members of the local populations became victims.
