Japan's Comfort Women (26 page)

Almost every day until August 29, the day after 46 planes of the US advance party arrived at Atsugi airbase on the outskirts of Tokyo, almost all major Japanese newspapers ran such ambivalent and sometimes clearly contradictory articles on the same page. This fact is indicative of the situation at the time, in which the Japanese government somehow tried to persuade the populace to keep calm by influencing media publications, yet the press itself was extremely skeptical about the government view. It also showed that the government’s wartime power to tightly control the press was rapidly diminishing.

Not surprisingly, these newspaper articles failed to reassure people that the Allied troops would not misbehave or commit serious crimes against Japanese citizens, in particular against young women. Some neighborhood associations in Tokyo circul-ated a notice warning female residents not to go out for a period after the landing of the Allied forces. It also instructed women, if they had to go out for some reason, to put on two or three pairs of underwear under
monpe
(women’s work-pants).17

Indeed, political leaders and government bureaucrats themselves were far from confident that the Allied troops would behave decently. As we will see in more detail later, on August 21, less than a week after the announcement of Japan’s surrender, Prime Minister Prince Higashikuni Naruhiko and his cabinet members held a meeting to discuss ways of dealing with the anticipated problems of “mass rape” by the Allied occupation forces. Along with the military leaders, they had been responsible for promoting wartime propaganda against the US in which Americans’ proclivities to commit heinous crimes, such as rape and massacre, had been strongly emphasized. As a result of this mass indoctrination, it 116

Japanese women: 1945–1946

was a common belief of ordinary Japanese people during and immediately after the war that women would be raped and men would be massacred by the US

soldiers if they surrendered or were captured alive. The most telling evidence for how deeply and widely this indoctrination had permeated into Japanese popular thought can be found in the historical fact that a large number of Okinawan civilians during the Battle of Okinawa committed group suicide in the caves in which they were hiding, having convinced themselves that they were going to be raped and massacred sooner or later.

In some sense it is therefore ironic that the Japanese Imperial Government, which had been guilty of creating this popular image of the enemy soldiers, suddenly instructed the Japanese people not to fear the US soldiers who were coming to Japan as an occupation force. A further irony is that they did so despite of their own fears of widespread misconduct by US troops. Beneath their anxiety undoubtedly lay one key factor – their acute awareness of the fact that their own soldiers had committed numerous crimes against civilians in many occupied territories during the war, most notably the case of the “Rape of Nanjing” in 1937, but numerous other instances throughout areas of Japanese occupation. They must have felt that this time their own women might become victims of military sexual violence.

Official reports on sexual violence committed by the
occupation forces against Japanese women
The full-scale advance of US occupation forces began on August 30. From 6:00

am, every three minutes, a US troop transport plane landed at Atsugi airport, bringing a total of 4,200 airborne troops in that day alone. At 2:00 pm General MacArthur flew into Atsugi in his special C-54 plane, named “Bataan.” The previous day about 380 ships (including 15 British ships) led by Admiral Chester Nimitz entered Tokyo Bay. From early morning of the following day, troops started landing at the port of Yokosuka. By 3:00 pm about 7,500 marines (including 450 British Navy staff ) had landed.18 The large influx of US troops continued for several months. By early December 1945 more than 430,000 US

troops were stationed throughout Japan from Hokkaido to Kyushu. By then, 85,037 US troops had been stationed in Kanagawa prefecture, where Yokosuka, Yokohama, and Atsugi were located; in Tokyo, there were 33,890 US soldiers; in Aichi prefecture, of which Nagoya is the prefectural capital, there were 32,320; in Hokkaido, 20,241.19

The mass rape and murder of civilians, like that committed by Japanese army troops in Nanjing in December 1937 (and that the Japanese political leaders and civilians feared would occur when the Allied troops landed), did not take place.

However, rape and other crimes committed by US soldiers were rampant from the first day of the occupation.

Japanese police intelligence reports compiled by the Police and Security Bureau of the Ministry of Home Affairs contain statistical data on crimes committed by Allied soldiers against Japanese civilians in Kanagawa prefecture.20

Japanese women: 1945–1946

117

Plate 5.2
General MacArthur arrived at Atsugi airport in his special plane “Bataan” on August 30, 1945.

Source
: Australian War Memorial, transparency number P0633/03/02

According to this data, on August 30, two rape cases were reported, together with one case of kidnapping, one case of bodily harm, one act of violence, and 197 cases of extortion. On August 31, one rape case and 212 cases of extortion were reported. The record for September 1 shows 12 rape cases, one case of bodily harm and 75 extortion cases. Almost every day from August 30

till mid-September, rape, bodily harm, extortion, burglary, and murder were reported. According to this data, the number of reported criminal cases committed by the occupation troops in Kanagawa sharply declined from September 19.

It is not certain whether this is due to the fact that the Japanese victims gave up reporting to the police because they soon found that their police had no power to investigate the cases, let alone arrest the American perpetrators, or because the US soldiers’ conduct improved. Probably both factors contributed to the decrease.

The source of information for the above-mentioned statistics is not clear, although it is presumed to be the Central Police Office of Kanagawa prefecture.

According to the official published history of the Kanagawa prefectural police, 1,900 criminal cases were reported to the police by the end of January 1946.

Among them were 58 rape cases.21 However, these official figures hardly reflect the reality of the time. The real situation was far worse than this data indicates.

Due to the chaotic circumstances of immediate postwar society, communications 118

Japanese women: 1945–1946

between different levels of the police force were extremely poor. And the methods used to collect accurate data were not well established.

Thus, internal information available from the Central Liaison Office (CLO), for example, offers quite a different picture. The CLO was established by the Japanese government on August 26, 1945, as a body attached to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.22 Its function was to liaise with the GHQ of the Allied occupation forces. According to a document that the Yokohama city police office submitted directly to the CLO, 957 crimes committed by GIs were reported in Yokohama city alone during one month between the beginning of September and the beginning of October, 1945. Among them were 119 rape cases.23 As rape victims were usually extremely reluctant to report to the police, the real number of rape cases was probably several times greater than the official figures.

Many of the extortion cases involved attempts by GIs to steal sabres and pistols from Japanese policemen. In some cases a small group of GIs surrounded a few policemen on patrol in the street or on duty in a police box and forced them to hand over their weapons.24 It seems that many GIs wanted to take these arms back home as “spoils of war.” Some of these extorted pistols were also used later in burglaries of Japanese homes and shops.

Many privately owned and public cars and trucks were also extorted. For example, in Yokohama city alone, at least 32 vehicles were extorted within one month of the Allied landing.25 One day, when a US soldier demanded that a Japanese civilian in Yokohama “lend” him a car, the Japanese man asked the soldier to write a letter guaranteeing that he would return the car. The following is what he wrote:

One car (Buick)

Model “1930”. To be used by the U.S. Gov. for purpose of transporting high ranking officers on official business. After all who won the war, you or me? This certifies that
this car is to be used to pick up any girls who fuck
, and further more who cares what the hell is it to you.

G. I. Johpha (signed)

17-fort [sic] soldiers of the winning army, U.S.A.

on this date 19. Sept. 1945.26

[Emphasis added]

Indeed, some of these vehicles were used for kidnapping and raping young women and for transporting goods (particularly, beer and
sake
) extorted from shops and storage.27 Stolen vehicles made it difficult for the authorities to find the GIs involved in such crimes, and the Japanese police were helpless to intervene in such cases anyway.

Let us examine more closely the sexual violence against Japanese women that GIs committed in the first several weeks of the occupation. As far as the major official reports on crime committed by the Allied occupation troops are concerned, I have so far found four groups of documents. The first is a series of secret daily reports that the Governor of Kanagawa prefecture, Fujiwara Takao, submitted

Japanese women: 1945–1946

119

Plate 5.3
A group of Japanese policemen in Yokohama in September 1945. Japanese policemen were often harassed by the members of the Allied occupation troops.

Source
: Australian War Memorial, transparency number OG3439

to the Minister of Home Affairs, Yamazaki Iwao.28 Although these reports do not specify the sources of information, it is almost certain that information was gathered by the Central Police Office of Kanagawa prefecture. Second is the above-mentioned series of secret reports entitled
Chian JDsei
(Conditions of Public Peace and Order) prepared by the Headquarters of the kempeitai.29 The information in this case was provided by various regional offices of the kempeitai throughout Japan. Third are the letters and radio messages from the CLO

addressed to the GHQ, complaining about various crimes committed by the US

occupation troops, which include the details of some crime cases.30 In addition to these groups of documents, there are reports prepared by the Police and Security Bureau of the Ministry of Home Affairs.31 These last reports include the documents collected and analyzed by Tokk
d
, the notorious Special Intelligence Police, which was the Japanese equivalent of the Gestapo during the war.

As mentioned above, two rape cases were reported in Yokosuka on August 30, the day that the US marines landed there. At about 11:00 am, only a few hours after the landing began and three hours before General MacArthur stepped out of his plane at Atsugi airport, two marines on an “inspection tour” entered a civilian house in Yokosuka, and raped a 36-year-old mother and her 17-year-old daughter at gunpoint.32 About 6:00 pm that day, two other marines entered another home in Asahi-ch
d
and found a housemaid at home alone. While one of the marines was on watch at the door, the other made lewd gestures and tried to 120

Japanese women: 1945–1946

grab her. In fear she fled upstairs. The marines followed and raped her in turn in a small room upstairs.33

On August 31, a US Marine advance party landed at Tateyama in Chiba prefecture. Three days later the US occupation forces to be stationed in Chiba arrived there under the command of General A. Cunningham. On September 1, many small groups of marines from this advance party visited villages nearby and entered some public buildings and private houses, claiming that they were conducting “inspections.” The following are some of the incidents that occurred at that time and were eventually reported to the Adjutant General’s Office of the GHQ through the CLO:

1