American Comfort Women

I mentioned the Japanese practice of forced prostitution during World War II in a previous blog entry. Of course the good church-going Americans immediately stopped this practice in occupied Japan after the war. Didn’t they…?

After its surrender, with tacit approval by US occupation authorities, Japan set up a similar “comfort women” system for the Americans.

Newly translated documents show US authorities permitted the official brothel system to operate despite internal reports that women were being coerced into prostitution.

The Americans by then had full knowledge of Japan’s atrocious treatment of women across Asia.

Tens of thousands were employed to provide sex to US troops until March 1946, when Gen Douglas MacArthur ended it.

Of course, most American GIs, being from church-going America were not involved.  

By that time, Tanaka says, more than a quarter of all American GIs in the occupation forces had a sexually transmitted disease.

Those are the ones that got infected. Many more took precautions. These men have been called America’s greatest generation. I think I will withhold that appellation. Obviously every single soldier was not involved in this, but my guess would be most were. 

While MacArthur stopped the practice officially, it obviously continued. 

One reason the extensive American military bases in the Philippines were lost was the effect these bases had on Pilipino women. 

In Olongapo and Angeles in the Philippines, where the U.S. Subic Naval Base and Clark Air Force Base were respectively located (until the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1992), “[t]here was virtually no industry except the ‘entertainment’ business, with approximately 55,000 registered and unregistered prostitutes and a total of registered 2,182 R&R establishments. By 1985 the U.S. military had become the second largest employer in the Philippines, hiring over 40,000 Filipinos. . . . The sum of their salaries amounted to almost $83 million a year.”

The Americans left behind more than just the buildings they no longer wanted. They left behind other unwanted “things.” 

The withdrawal of U.S. naval bases from the Philippines in 1992 also left behind a legacy of approximately 50,000 Amerasian children in the Philippines, with an estimated 10,000 of them living in Olongapo, which had housed the U.S. Subic Naval Base. The law firm of Cotchett, Illston, and Pitre of Burlingame, California, filed a class action suit against the U.S. government on behalf of Amerasian children left behind in the Philippines in March 1993. The plaintiffs would “ask the federal court to order the Navy to provide funds for the education and medical care of these children until they reach 18 years of age.” The prostitute-mothers of these children and several leading Philippine civic organizations, such as GABRIELA, as well as the Council of Churches, mobilized such legal action.

In this same webpage there was this comment:

i want to find my dad.. can somebody please help me.. my mom wont tell me his name..hes former navy personnel. My mom met him in the philippines while he stationed in olongapo im in america now and ive been searching for him all my life

I was filled with melancholy as I read this comment.

This same book excerpt talks about what became of many of these children. Many Asian countries are prime vacation sites for pedophiles. These children, due to their Caucasian features, are in high demand. 

The American Empire, debauching young women for over 100 years! In fact things are so bad in American Culture that the previous sentence I wrote, if converted to a poster, would probably increase enlistments. 

Let me conclude with a story I heard about an acquaintance who felt the urge to serve his country and joined the Peace Corps. Yes, he felt the urge all right. He told a mutual acquaintance that he had two African women who lived with him while he was there to “help.” I was told by another acquaintance that the practice in one village was to assign one woman to the volunteer in order to keep him from debauching the whole village. The concept of the Peace Corp was a beautiful thing. In practice I wonder how much it has contributed to hatred of America. 

Comments

[Eric Anderson]

I do not justify their behavior, but I do judge them less harshly, because of what they endured, and what they accomplished. In their situation, in their time, I do not know where my own head would be at. I salute them. All you have done is to demonstrate that they were human beings, with flaws and weaknesses. As are we all.