Monday, April 26, 2010

Changing attitudes

In the previous blog I told of a Japanese Kokoda WW2 veteran who fessed up to eating flesh of the enemy to survive when the Japanese push to capture Port Moresby started to fall apart and supplies dwindled because of the Allies' control of the supply routes.

Yesterday I watched quite a few docos of the time and one of them was about war crime trials in 1945/6. One trial was of a Japanese soldier who was accused of eating the flesh of a dead Australian soldier. He was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging.

The change in attitude about cannibalism is interesting and probably changed after an air crash in the Andes mountains in 1972. The passengers and crew were not found and eventually the survivors turned to cannibalism to survive. They were all Catholics and some equated the act of cannibalism to the ritual of Holy Communion. Read about the crash and rescue here.

Eventually survivors were rescued and no charges were laid, probably because they weren't the enemy?

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