Japan's Comfort Women (33 page)

“Taxi dancers” also became victims of sexual violence committed by GIs.

Rape by GIs drove many “taxi dancers” into “prostitution.” Typically, they were taken out by GIs on a date and then raped or forced to consent to sexual
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intercourse. According to a survey conducted in 1949 by Itsushima Tsutomu on 500 prostitutes specializing in services for GIs, 26.8 percent said that they had become prostitutes in order to earn a living – the most common reason.

The second most common reason (22.8 percent) was the despair that women experienced as a result of rape by GIs.48 As we have seen in the previous chapter, many of these victims of rape were not “entertainers” but ordinary civilians.

Comfort women were subject to numerous instances of sexual violence. For example, on the evening of September 4, three Australian soldiers visited a comfort station at Higashiyama in Kyoto. They were apparently former POWs who had been released from a POW camp somewhere in Japan and were staying at a hotel in Kyoto, waiting to be repatriated. After they were entertained at this station, they insisted on being accompanied by three comfort women to their hotel, where their fellow Australian soldiers were staying. The manager of the station refused the request. However, they forcibly took the women away, shouting at the manager that “Japan lost the war and your police have no power at all!” At the hotel, the women were confined to one room and gang-raped by seven drunken former POWs. In the following morning these women were sent back to the comfort station. The Australian men apparently kept the women’s underwear kimonos.49

For some newly recruited comfort women, who had not been previously associated with the business, it must have been an unbearable experience. For example, Takita Natsue, a 19-year-old girl who had lost all her relatives to bombing, was one of the new comfort women at Komachien. Only a few days after the opening of the station she committed suicide by jumping in front of a train.50

Some of the RAA’s facilities were set up specifically to entertain high-ranking officers of the occupation forces and top delegates of the US government’s mis-sions. These facilities included the
i
kura Villa in Muk
d
jima of Asakusa ward, the Officers’ Club in Sangenjaya of Shibuya ward, and Dream Land in Ichikawa, Chiba prefecture. The
i
kura Villa was a grand mansion on the bank of the Sumida River. The RAA had purchased it from the original owner, Baron
i
kura Kihachir
d
, and used it mainly as a banqueting hall. A large house in Sangenjaya, owned by the president of a large marine transport company, was also purchased and used as a special comfort station exclusively for the high-ranking officers. Dream Land was set up as a cabaret in a former Japanese restaurant, H
d
rai-en, in Ichikawa city, near the border between Tokyo metropolitan area and Chiba prefecture.51 According to Kaburagi, a former RAA public relations officer, the RAA always kept about 20 top geisha in the head office for dispatch whenever high-ranking officers had a dinner party. These geisha were not prostitutes. The RAA also selected some women from “dancers”

at its own cabaret, Oasis of Ginza, to attend the dinner parties held in the
i
kura Villa or the Officers’ Club when requested. It seems that some top officers in GHQ were regular clients of these “dancers.”52

Japanese government officials also used these facilities to entertain delegates sent from Washington, DC. For example, Edwin Pauley visited Japan in November

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Plate 6.4
A US soldier patrolling the red-light district in Sasebo in October 1945. Some military police who patrolled the district of comfort stations demanded “free service.”

Source: Mainichi Shimbun

1945 in order to write a recommendation report to the US President regarding Japan’s war reparations to the Asian nations occupied by Japan during the war.

Five delegates of this mission, including Pauley himself, were taken to Dream Land by staff of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The RAA staff were instructed by the ministry to attend well to these delegates who would determine the amount of war reparations that Japan had to pay. Kaburagi arranged to send to Dream Land 10 top “dancers” (selected from various dance halls), 10

geisha from the head office and the 10 most beautiful looking waitresses from RAA’s restaurants. At the dinner party the “dancers” sought to seduce the delegates, but Pauley and his associates were not drawn in. They left Dream Land after the two-hour dinner and dance entertainment without accepting the offer of sexual service.53

Occupation policies and the spread of prostitution
On September 13, the Governor of Kanagawa prefecture, Fujiwara Takao, submitted a secret report to the Minister of Home Affairs, Yamazaki Iwao. In it
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he reported what one of the high-ranking officers of the 11th Airborne Division of the US 8th Army had told a Japanese police officer shortly after his arrival in Atsugi. The US officer had said:

It is expected that women in our home country would blame us, if we asked you to set up pleasure facilities. Therefore we cannot request you to do so . . . However, if you do not provide us with such facilities voluntarily, many troubles tend to occur. As far as these kinds of facilities are concerned, our MP [military police] is prepared to cooperate with you if necessary. I presume that the occupation of Japan by our troops will be about three years at maximum if no trouble occurs, but if there are many troubles, I am afraid that it might be 10 to 15 years.54

This “suggestion,” which was in reality nothing but naked blackmail, was reported to the Kanagawa prefectural government by Nagai Kiyoshi, a Japanese interpreter for the American officer.

In Chiba prefecture, between September 3 and 5, General Cunningham, commander of the US occupation forces stationed in this prefecture, issued daily orders to the Chiba prefectural government to put up noticeboards declaring the brothel districts within the prefecture “off limits.” However, on September 14, he personally asked the governor of Chiba prefecture to establish military brothels for his troops as they were soon to be granted leave.55 Similar requests from occupation officers were recorded in other prefectures. Therefore, it seems that the expectations of both sides were one on the issue of provision of this kind of “amenity” for US forces.

In fact, independent of the Japanese scheme, US occupation forces from the beginning planned not only to tolerate organized prostitution but to regulate it in ways that would satisfy their troops. Soon after the first contingents landed in Japan between late August and early September 1945, US Army officers inspected red-light districts and set up prophylactic stations. The following memo of September 30, 1945, written by Lieutenant Colonel James Gordon (Public Health and Welfare Section, GHQ ) verifies this point: Subject: Conference with Major Phillip Weisbach, M.C., C.O. 15th Med Squadron, 1st Cavalry Div.

1

Major Weisbach reported that he had surveyed the major prostitution area of Tokyo shortly after the arrival of troops in the city and had set up four prophylactic stations as follows:

a)

Senju area

b)

Mokojuna [sic] area

c)

Yokohama road

d)

1st Brigade area.

These stations are giving 7,000 –10,000 pros a week in addition to distributing uncounted individual items.

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2

He stated that the supply of prophylactic materials, sulfathiazole, calomel ointment, pratorgol, and paper towels is running critically low. Several attempts to obtain additional supplies of these items through 8th Army supply have to date been unavailing.

3

He stated that it is his impression that the 1st Cavalry’s V-D rate is relatively low.

4

He was informed of the contemplated projects to re-establish the system of regulation of prostitution. He offered to cooperate in every way possible with any plan which might be adopted.56

The words “individual items” used in this report probably mean condoms. It is clear that as many as 10,000 soldiers – just from the 1st Cavalry Division alone – were associating with Japanese prostitutes every week. It is not surprising that the stock of condoms and other prophylactic materials was running low within one month of the landing. It is clear that the US command applied the same method of military-controlled prostitution that had operated widely during the war to its occupation of Japan.

The above document also verifies the fact that US soldiers utilized not only the RAA’s facilities but also brothels in traditional red-light districts in Tokyo, such as Senju and Muk
d
jima. According to a Japanese source, this began as early as September 5 – 12 days before the GHQ office was moved from Yokohama to Tokyo. On September 5 eight soldiers of the 1st Cavalry came to Terashima district near Muk
d
jima, where five brothels operated illegally using a total of 12

prostitutes. On the following day, 20 GIs visited these brothels. The number of GIs using the brothels increased exponentially, until a few weeks later about 1,600 soldiers a day were visiting them. By then, with “assistance and encouragement from the supervising authorities,” the number of brothels was increased to 13, employing a total of 60 prostitutes. This meant that, on average, one prostitute served about 27 GIs a day. By November 1945, the district had expanded to become a large red-light district containing 97 brothels and 230 prostitutes.57

Behind this rapid expansion was a close collaboration between the police authorities, the proprietors, and the occupation forces.

On October 14, 1945, the Metropolitan Police Headquarters issued a state-ment reversing the order that it had issued in March 1944 prohibiting brothels, bars, night clubs, expensive restaurants and the like. This legalization of the “entertainment business” gave endorsement to the widespread clandestine prostitution industry for the occupation troops in Tokyo and neighboring areas. The police force itself had helped develop and expand these facilities, which were in addition to the facilities run by the RAA. According to one of the documents prepared by the Public Health and Welfare (PHW ) Section of GHQ , by the third week of October there were 23 red-light districts in Tokyo used extensively by GIs, including traditional brothel quarters such as Muk
d
jima, Hakusan, and Yoshiwara, and central shopping towns like Shibuya and Ikebukuro.58

Within just a few months, the sex industry spread quickly and widely in Tokyo. While ostensibly the services were set up for use by Japanese clients as
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well as the US troops, some brothels adopted the same policy as the RAA and operated for the occupation troops only. Indeed, given the economic hardship faced by the Japanese at that time, the prostitution industry immediately after the war can be said to have serviced almost exclusively US troops.

The largest facility outside the RAA organization was the International Palace, in Koiwa in the east end of Tokyo. This brothel was set up in five of the female workers’ dormitories of the munitions plant that the Seik
d
Company had operated during the war. With advice from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters, a certain Harada Gennosuke set up the brothel. He purchased the dormitories from Seik
d
and converted them into the “world’s largest brothel.” He enlisted the help of 100 proprietors, or chaperones, from the neighboring downtown red-light districts, each of whom brought three or four girls.59 The following is an extract from the diary of Mark Gayn, who visited the brothel with Colonel Logie, Deputy Provost Marshall for Tokyo, and a few other Americans in May 1946, three weeks after it had been placed off-limits.

Only Allied trade was permitted, and when the turnover became heavy the irreverent Americans began to call it “Willow Run” [i.e. a Ford automobile factory in Detroit] – because . . . it processed its product on such a huge scale. . . .

We could see, rising out of the paddies, a series of two story buildings with a sign in English, “Off Limits – VD.” . . .

Our first stop was at the infirmary. It was a huge, bare room, lined with tatami (straw mats). There were about dozen girls lying on the floor, under thick comforters. . . .

A Nisei lieutenant and I began to question a girl in a corner. She said she was nineteen, and never been a prostitute until she joined Willow Run five months ago. She now owed the company ¥10,000 (about $660), mostly for the clothes she bought at the brothel store. We got similar stories from the other girls. Most of them had lost their families in the American fire raids.

Some had lost jobs in the war industries.

. . .

We entered the “ballroom,” in which about a hundred girls, most of them in ugly Occidental gowns – with nothing underneath – danced with each other. . . .