If you’ve read Embracing Defeat [Amazon.com], this isn’t news, but documents show that U.S. troops made use of “comfort stations” [CNN] set up by the Japanese Ministry of Interior during the early part of the occupation. (HT to reader)
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19 Comments
“Not one Japanese woman has come forward to seek compensation or an apology.”
Maybe that’s because it was the best job available at a time when people where selling samurai swords for sandwiches.
Well. Certainly despicable. Not surprised tho considering what I know about what happens in Korea now every day re: soldiers and prostitues.
But let’s go ahead and handle the news the way the Korean Gov’t saw fit to handle the issue of war crimes committed by Korean soldiers against allied POWs in WWII: our actions were the fault of the Japanese. If it hadn’t been for the Japanese, we wouldn’t have been fighting in Asia, and therefore wouldn’t have visited comfort women.
Hey, this absolute negation of individual responsibility thing is pretty cool!
Wedge,
You totally missed the point.
Japan got defeated. The U.S won. Asking compensation or an apology for what? Blame the US for wining the war?
Stupid.
Besides, there were whole lot more people who suffered great hardships and tragedy (Tokyo bombing, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc) than comfort women.
They’d rather seek compensation from Japan for loosing the war. But they didn’t. Instead, they built today’s Japan.
Now, most Japanese who are interested in the comfort women issue already know that:
*the UN solders used comfort women which administrated by Korean government authority in Korea after the WW2.
*the US solders used comfort women in Japan after having a few thousand rape incidents in Tokyo area.
I’m not familiar with the Korean and American troops in Vietnam, but I hear some nasty stuff as well.
There have been voices among Japan’s warcrime apologists camp that oddly try to make this thing sound as if it was somehow caused by the Americans, who are alleged to have acted no differently than the Japanese in China. This is constructed as a necessary evil, though those voices in general may not even consider prostitution an evil per se. Rather, they levy a charge of apparent hypocrisy in a red herring effort to let the Japanese government off of the hook for what they argue is the same behavior.
But there were significant differences between the two nations in their thinking and behavior at this juncture. One key difference was the acceptability of prostitution in general. American sensibilities in 1945 overwhelmingly saw it as immoral, made it illegal back home, and were genuinely shocked to hear of Japanese sex crimes, which were just starting to be scrutinized as these brothels sprang into action. I would argue that Japanese effort to bring “comfort” to the Yankee invaders shows more than just hospitality, namely, Japanese assumptions at the time, including that men or even soldiers are not expected to exercise self-control and that buying or selling sex is not morally shameful, but an unmitigated need or right. Apparently they projected this morality to some extent on the Americans (rightly or wrongly, though I would argue more the latter). One can imagine that they were sincerely afraid rapes would occur — considering that many rapes were committed by their army in China. On the other hand, I can believe that most Yankee soldiers had never visited a brothel before arriving in Japan (if they had ever even seen one back home), were arguably more constrained by 1945 morality than the Japanese, but that they were no less horny. (It is interesting to consider though the racialized norms of the era and that there must have been some difference in perception of White or possibly Black foreigners having sex with Japanese, as opposed to Japanese sex acts with other Asians, who were seen as subnational subjects of the Emperor. But I digress). Nevertheless, this sudden new enticement under somewhat morally ambiguous conditions must have led many Americans to join the line… perhaps not with shame… and essentially no different from their Japanese counterparts in doing so.
But that still begs the crucial question: Who opened the brothels in the first place? The Japanese government. (Or is someone going to argue here that they were actually set up by Korean opportunists?). More important, in my opinion, ultimately the US condemned the practice, for which there apparently IS documentary evidence. Actually, considering the chaos and demands of setting up the occupation of Japan, it is commendable that SCAP only waited 6 months to try and stop it.
I don’t want to let anyone off the hook in this matter, but the brothels were not set up by the Americans, staffed with WACs, or women held by force by MPs. The Japanese government caused this shameful incident too as a matter of policy, the American military ultimately responded by shutting down brothels and eventually outlawing prostition in Japan completely, if not slowing it much at all. How much the increase in VD cases or racist attitudes may have played in these decisions is another issue. But SCAP displayed what the Japanese sorely needed: moral indignation, even if only due to an accountability to moral voices among the public back home.
“Not one Japanese woman has come forward to seek compensation or an apology.”
Because it was their job! It makes one wonder if the sour grapes in Korea are over the fact that the girls were forced to take Kintammas instead of Kimbaps?
railwaycharm wrote:
“Because it was their job! It makes one wonder if the sour grapes in Korea are over the fact that the girls were forced to take Kintammas instead of Kimbaps?”
So innocent young Korean teenagers tricked into doing some sort of “factory work” but actually ending up sex slaves who got raped repeatedly by Japanese soldiers have no right, as old women, to complain to the Japanese gov’t about what they endured since it was the Japanese gov’t that institutionalized it, railway? Your comment is pretty sick in light of that. And racist. “Kimbap”??
JK, would you fell better if it went the other way and the girls would have to take egg rolls?
Hey, there got to be a statute of limitation on war crimes and wartime illegalities. Wartime is a special time where everyone goes bonkers.
And, these WWII stuffs are more than a half centuries ago. Too ancient to dig through.
Forgeddaboutit. Enough already.
Let’s just bury these stuffs. I even forgive the Japanese for comfort women. I know some women have suffered a lot, but those things happened a long time ago with people who were different. Rehashing them now only brings hatred and vengeance.
War crimes should not be discussed after 15 years(average of ten and twenty years). It is better for human race that way.
Sorry, feel.
Baduk,
This has been my contention for quite some time. What do these Harimonies want? Nothing that Japan could do would satisfy this situation. The pissing and moaning if past tired.
is
Harmonies are just pawns.
More sinister force is at work. NKs are paying SK Commies to raise more anti-Japanese issues. While hating the Japanese, SKs feel brotherhood with NKs as co-sufferers under the Japanese rule.
While feeling love toward KJI, SKs forget that NKs are busy planning a war. The war to finish of SKs.
baduk, you may have something here!
#5 and #7 are okay? Um, these rules on this blog…..um….is railwaycharm exempt from following them?
Someone breastfeed JK, he’s crying again.
Yeah, where’s your mom when we need her, railway?
Now watch who gets deleted.
JK, I was about to take care of it myself. Do you mind hairy nipples?
Now boys, there’s one for each of you
I think you just made my morning Sonagi!