ABSTRACT
In September 1942 the people of Tamparan, an area on the eastern shore of Lake Lanao in the southern Philippines, attacked and nearly annihilated a Japanese infantry company. For many years historians of the Philippines largely ignored this incident, for there was little interest in the wartime experiences of minority groups, and scholars sought the significance of such affairs in the history of the nation as a whole. In the Philippines new research on Lanao Province during the war years began appearing in the 1980s,1 and the Tamparan Incident has since undergone historical reevaluation as part of a movement to study local history and ethno-history.2 In Japan there has been virtually no re-consideration of this episode. It is mentioned in the memoirs of military personnel involved, but these accounts reveal little more than anger and resentment over the whole affair.3
