One of the top stories on Yahoo's main page right now is about the system of "comfort women" Japan implemented to service American occupation troops after the Japanese surrender in 1945.
The AP story is presented in such a way as to imply that this is something like a new discovery:
Japan's abhorrent practice of enslaving women to provide sex for its troops in World War II has a little-known sequel...
[...]
An Associated Press review of historical documents and records shows American authorities permitted the official brothel system to operate despite internal reports that women were being coerced into prostitution.
As so often is the case, in reality this is hardly some kind of new revelation. Here is
a short excerpt from
this book, by
Saburo Ienaga (家永 三郎), published in Japanese in 1968, and in English translation in 1979:
Surrender avoided the mass violence and slaughter of an invasion; American forces landed and occupied Japan peacefully. The violence came later, however, in the assaults, robberies, and general mayhem committed by American troops against civilians. The Higashikuni cabinet succeeded the Suzuki cabinet on August 17 as a caretaker administration to carry out the surrender. The following day, Tanaka Naraichi, director of the police bureau, Ministry of Home Affairs, ordered all police chiefs to “establish sexual comfort facilities” for the occupation army. Brothel operators were summoned to the Metropolitan Police Bureau in Tokyo and provided with ¥100 million in government funds. A special comfort association, known in English as the Recreation and Amusement Association (RAA), was established. Announcements appealed for “employees”: “Women of the New Japan. Comfort stations for the occupation forces are being established as one of the national emergency measures for the postwar period. Your positive cooperation is requested.” Japanese women were offered up as human sacrifices to the American GIs. The objective was to propitiate the victors with sex and save the “good women” from unwonted advances. In this way, the government of Japan “positively cooperated" with the Occupation. The authorities had thought nothing of violating human rights during the war; they lost the war but not that attitude. The only difference was that now they were pimping for the occupation army. War or peace, women were victimized by the state.
Not content with official pleasure quarters, U.S. soldiers frequently accosted Japanese women on the street or sexually assaulted them. Lives ruined, many committed suicide or became common street prostitutes. The truism that women suffer most in war carried over to the postwar years. Japanese women shared the same fate that befell foreign women in the areas occupied by the imperial military forces. Mixed-blood children abandoned by their Japanese mothers and GI fathers were another legacy of the war. The obverse was the many mixed-blood children in the occupied areas fathered by Japanese military men. In the Philippines, where fierce hatred of Japan persisted long after the war, mixed-blood children were desperate outcasts.
U.S. troops committed the other crimes that marked the Japanese army’s reign, including robbery and murder. Victims rarely recovered their property or received any compensation. Families of murder victims got little satisfaction from occupation authorities. Among the miscarriages of justice in the aftermath of the war was the treatment by Allied courts of the B and C class war criminals. The executed prisoners included many who had no chance to defend themselves properly and many cases of mistaken identity where the wrong man was put to death. The executions were more expedient revenge than careful justice.
Here in our house, we're striving for a measured understanding of contemporary history. As Abraham Lincoln said at the beginning of his
famous "House Divided"
speech:
If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do and how to do it.
That, in turn, requires a requires a measured understanding of the history that's slipped or slipping over our horizon. Many Americans have this idea that the last few years represent some kind of basic break with traditional American values and practices. It seems to us that that narrative doesn't hold up very well to historiographically informed scrutiny.
