Japan's Comfort Women (29 page)

Source
: Australian War Memorial, transparency number 145831

about a month the sergeant took her in his car on a picnic during a day off. He stopped the car in a forest and raped her. He kept promising that he would marry her in the near future, and continued the relationship. Eventually, however, she was fired.77

Another woman, Hamada Mieko ( pseudonym), worked as a typist in a ware-house office at one of the US bases. One evening GIs at her office held a farewell party for one of their colleagues who was going back to the US. The Japanese staff were also invited. When Mieko went to the restaurant where the party was held she was surprised to find a musical band and two striptease artists. Before long the GIs became drunk and started frolicking with the strippers. While this spree was going on, the GIs made her and other Japanese staff drink. When the striptease show finished, the GIs started dancing with Japanese women, touching their hips and thighs and kissing them. Feeling nauseous, after drinking more alcohol than she was used to, Mieko decided to go home. An officer named Major Wilson offered to take her home. She accepted this offer and got into his car. Wilson took her to a barley field far from town and raped her in the car.

Eventually he left her at a nearby railway station.78

Mieko did not go to the office for the following four days. However, she eventually decided to return to work, blaming herself over her carelessness that 130

Japanese women: 1945–1946

invited Wilson’s misbehaviour. Just a few days after returning to work, another GI raped her in the office. It took place when she was working overtime and everyone else had gone home. While she was being raped a member of the military police watched through an office window. Far from trying to stop the rape, he said, ‘Hey, hey, nice’ and disappeared. Indeed, all the other GIs at the same base knew that she had been raped by Wilson.79 As a result they probably believed that Mieko would consent to having sex with anyone.

There are a number of similar testimonies of women employed by the occupation forces. In fact, according to some Japanese men who worked as interpreters for the occupation troops at various camps, lists of names of officers and junior officers were put up on the wall in the officers’ club and in their canteen. Next to each officer’s name appeared lip marks signifying how many Japanese women that officer had “conquered.”80

At Camp Sendai, there were two different kinds of lists. One was similar to the above mentioned officers’ lists with “MV” (abbreviation of Military Victory) marks instead of lip marks. The other was a series of pictures of all the female Japanese workers. These pictures were pinned on the wall and above some of the pictures a cross was marked to identify that that woman had lost her virginity. According to Itsushima Tsutomu, one of the former interpreters at this camp, of the 200 photos only about ten photos did not have cross marks; they were all newly employed women. These lists were organized by a group called “Charming Members to Musumesan.” This group consisted of about 500 officers, including all the junior officers at the camp. They competed with each other over how many women they had “conquered.” GIs called this competition “hunt-ing for moose,” punning on the similarity of “musumesan” (“young women” in Japanese) and “moose.”81 Holding parties was only one of their various strategies to create opportunities for them to rape Japanese female workers. According to another former interpreter, he often heard GIs discussing how to take the “virginity” of newly employed women. Indeed, some GIs proudly gave him detailed accounts of the rapes they had committed.82

Here we can see a striking similarity between the sexual conduct of these officers of the occupation forces in Japan and a more recent case of the rape ring at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, USA. In 1997 it was revealed that some officers and drill sergeants at the Aberdeen Proving Ground played a secret game, competing to have sex with newly arrived female trainees.83 The difference is that the victims of rape in the latter case were “fellow American soldiers” rather than foreign “employees,” and that the rapists in the latter case were court-martialed and in some cases convicted rather than getting away with it, as was the case of the former.

There were also many blurred cases which are difficult to define either as rape or as consensual sex. This is particularly so in the cases of women employed as “maids.” For example, in April 1946, Sait
d
Y
e
ko (pseudonym) became a “maid”

at the Officers’ Club of Camp Toneyama. At this club, there were about 20

“maids” doing washing, cooking, and cleaning for about 20 junior officers.

In other words, each junior officer had his own “maid” who looked after him. In
Japanese women: 1945–1946

131

the same building where these officers’ individual private rooms were housed, much smaller maid-rooms were also located. Y
e
ko was assigned to look after an officer, First Lieutenant Sallet. The first night she moved into this building, Sallet came into her room and slept with her. In the same camp, there were many individual houses built for married officers, but less than one-third of these houses were occupied by married couples. The remainder were occupied by single officers, each with his own “maid.” About a month after Y
e
ko had started work at the club, Sallet left for the US and she was fired. Several months later she gave birth to a mixed-race child.84

Kitabayashi Yoshiko worked for a couple of months from April 1946 as a typist at one of the base camps of the US occupation forces in Kanagawa prefecture. Among the typists and “maids” working at the camp were many women from Nagoya. The women had come from Nagoya when the men of the unit had been transferred to Kanagawa. The women totally depended on the US troops for meals and income; they had become virtual “camp followers.”85

With reference to a couple of the cases above, one may question why a woman would return to an office after she had been sexually abused by one of the staff there, or why a woman would continue to consent to sex with an officer because he had forced her to sleep with him the first time. To understand the patterns of rape and sexual exploitation in the early occupation of Japan, it must be remembered that the economic conditions in immediate postwar Japan were appalling and most Japanese civilians were desperately struggling to survive from day to day. Many families lost their breadwinners – fathers or young able-bodied sons – in the war, leaving mothers or daughters of poverty-stricken families to seek any means to earn a living. In these circumstances, to be employed by the occupation forces was an extremely attractive option. Salaries were relatively high compared to those of ordinary Japanese workers and “free lunch,” which was provided, was particularly attractive, given the general food shortage.86 The following extracts from a letter home from an Australian soldier of the BCOF, who traveled from Hiroshima to Osaka during leave in 1946, clearly illustrate this point: Up in Osaka some thousands of people sleep in the enormous central railway station, and each morning half a dozen stiffs are carted off to the potter’s field, or its Jap equivalent . . . It is a pathetic sight to see women with breasts little thicker than paper trying to nurse babies who themselves look like skeletons. There is nothing one can do, personally, to alleviate the position. Money wouldn’t help because all that one could afford would be a drop in the bucket and the odd scrap of food that one could smuggle from the kitchen would probably be vomited up again . . . I was talking in Osaka to a Christian, English-speaking Jap who is assistant managing editor of the Osaka ‘Mainichi’, an English language newspaper. He told me that each Jap is allowed 500 yen monthly plus 100 yen for each member of his family.

This bloke gets 800 yen. He had that day bought 4 cho (about 10 lbs) of rice which, if spun out, would last the family ten days. And the cost? 400 yen. . . .

Until the rice came to light his family had no food for two days.87

132

Japanese women: 1945–1946

Plate 5.6
Even in October 1950, five years after the war, widespread poverty was a serious national problem in Japan, as seen in this photo of a group of homeless people gathering in an underground causeway near Ueno Railway Station in Tokyo.

Source
:
Mainichi Shimbun
We must not forget the economic and social situation in which rape and other forms of sexual abuse of Japanese employees was committed by female workers’

“supervisors” and other “employers” of the occupation forces. This sexual abuse suffered by Japanese women at the hands of the occupation troops can be seen as violence on two levels: one being direct physical (military) violence and the other psychological violence, in other words, “economic exploitation.” Poverty can be described as one of the worst forms of violence.

The grim reality of this two-tiered violence further unfolds in the next chapter, which examines the historical process of the establishment and expansion of the Japanese sex industry to cater to the demand of the occupation troops in the immediate postwar period.

Japanese comfort women for the Allied forces
133

6

Japanese comfort women

for the Allied occupation

forces

The Japanese government creates a comfort women
system for the occupation forces
In the week following its surrender, and before occupation forces arrived, the Japanese government had discussed ways of dealing with the anticipated problem of sexual violence by occupation forces. On August 21, Prime Minister Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko called a special meeting of several of his ministers. The subject of discussion was the various demands put forward by the Allied forces regarding the actual procedures for ending the war. The details of these demands were brought back by Lieutenant-General Kawanabe Torashir
d
, an envoy ex-traordinary, who had just returned to Tokyo that morning from a meeting with the military commanders of the Allied forces in Manila in the Philippines.1

At this cabinet meeting, Prince Konoe Fumimaro, then Deputy Prime Minister, who had served as Prime Minister three times during the Asia-Pacific War, expressed grave concern about the possibility of “mass rape” of Japanese women by Allied troops. He suggested setting up a comfort women system to protect Japanese women and girls. The suggestion seemed to come out of his anxiety over the possibility of “mass rape” such as that committed by Japanese troops against civilians in occupied territories during the war.2 It was during Konoe’s first term as Prime Minister that Japanese troops committed mass rape in Nanjing city – the so-called “Rape of Nanjing.”

Lieutenant-General Kawanabe by contrast praised the strict morals of the Allied forces. He told the cabinet members that the Allies probably would not accept a scheme of military-controlled prostitution, even if offered by the Japanese.3 However, after a long discussion, Konoe’s proposal was endorsed by the attending cabinet members. In fact, the government had already taken the first step towards establishing such a system four days earlier – the day that Prince Higashikuni formed the new government. This comfort women scheme was probably initiated by Konoe, together with Prime Minister Higashikuni and the Minister of Home Affairs, Yamazaki Iwao, without consulting other cabinet members, as it was regarded an urgent matter.

On August 18, the Police and Security Department of the Ministry of Home Affairs telegraphed the following instructions to the governors and police chiefs of all prefectures:

134

Japanese comfort women for the Allied forces
With regard to the comfort facilities in areas where the foreign troops are going to be stationed:

In the areas where foreign troops will be stationed, the establishment of comfort facilities are necessary as outlined in the following separate nota-tion. As the handling of this matter requires circumspection, please take every possible precaution by paying attention particularly to the following items.

1

It is still beyond speculation where the foreign troops will be stationed and when they will arrive. Therefore, do not cause public unrest by forming a hasty conclusion that it is inevitable for those troops to advance to your prefecture.

2

Make preparation of such facilities now confidentially as their prompt establishment is required in the case of the troops’ station, but ensure that the information not be revealed to the outside.

3

In carrying out this plan, avoid arousing misunderstanding among local people by explaining to them that this scheme will be implemented for the purpose of protecting Japanese citizens.

[Separate Notation]

The outline of the preparation for the establishment of comfort facilities for the foreign troops:

1

Allow the business for the foreign troops within limited quarters, regardless of existing regulations of control.