Japan's Comfort Women (27 page)

Around 12:30 am on September 1, three American soldiers intruded in to the house of Mr. B. I., [the details of the address], Awa district in Chiba prefecture. These intruders showed something like a ten yen bank note to the housewife N., 28 years old and claimed intimacy to her by making gestures while upon receiving her flat refusal they brought her to the inner room and raped her in succession.

2

At about 2:00 pm the same day another four American soldiers intruded into the house of Mr. A. T., [the details of the address], the same village.

They threatened the wife, T. aged 30 as well as his mother and then chased the three to the next room and one of the Americans violated T. in the first place. But at that time another three American soldiers entered the same house. They withdrew from the house without attaining their intended purposes satisfactorily.

3

At the same hour on that day seven American soldiers while ransacking the village office in Nishiki village, resorted to indecent acts such as touching breasts of the girl clerks or rubbing their cheeks.

4

Another several Americans resorted to the same acts to the girl clerks in the post office located in the same village.34

In addition to these cases, six cases of attempted rape, one case of kidnapping, three cases of indecent acts, six cases of extortion and 16 cases of house-breaking were reported on the same day in this area.35 In this instance GIs committed rape in a fishing village during the day when most elderly men of the community were at sea fishing. There were very few young men in the village, as they had been conscripted to the Japanese military forces.36 However, as we will see later, the presence of men at home did not guarantee the safety of women.

One aspect of the above-mentioned first rape case is that the woman was offered “something like a ten yen bank note.” It seems that this refers to the currency known as B-Yen notes, distributed by the US forces to their members before the landing. At the request of the Japanese government, the use of this military currency was banned by the GHQ on September 3.37 It is interesting to note that there were many rape cases in which perpetrators first offered a woman a small gift, such as a handkerchief, candy, chewing gum, chocolate, or cigarettes, and, when the offer was refused, they resorted to violence. Sometimes they were
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holding a gun when offering such gifts, thus forcing the victim to “consent.” For example, on September 9, a 14-year-old girl living near Tachikawa air base was suddenly confronted by a naked GI in the backyard of her own house. Holding a gun, he offered her candy and demanded she perform oral sex.38

As US troop “inspections” became more frequent, cases of kidnapping young women for purposes of gang rape occurred. The following is the first reported case of this kind:

About 6 o’clock, in the afternoon of September 1st, two American soldiers in a truck forced two Japanese to guide them around the Yokohama city.

When they came to Shojikiro, at Eirakucho, Naka-ku they forced Miss K. Y., aged 24, a maidservant, to board the truck against her will and absconded to the US Barracks in Nogeyama Park. There altogether 27 of the American soldiers violated her in turn and rendered her unconscious, though she later recovered her consciousness through the care of some other American soldiers and was sent home on September 2nd.39

In another abduction case, at about 3:30 pm on September 2, a policeman and some civilians walking down a street in Isogo ward, Yokohama city, saw a woman in her thirties who was madly crying for help in a car driven by a GI.

Another GI was in the car, too. Neither the policeman nor the civilians could do anything to rescue her.40

At around 6:00 pm on September 4, a 28-year-old married woman was walking in a street in Yokosuka city on the way home from the funeral of an acquaintance. She was escorted by a male friend. Two GIs in a truck ordered her at gunpoint to get into the vehicle. The man escorting her insisted that he should go too and the GIs agreed. However, when the truck was several blocks away, the GIs forced the man to get out and drove away with the woman. 41

On September 5, at about 4:30 pm, two GIs forced a 23-year-old woman, Hosono Mieko, to get into their car in the street near Ashina Bridge in Yokohama.

As they drove away she desperately tried to escape but the car was going too fast.

However, when the car slowed down at a crossroads, she jumped out of the car and escaped.42

There are many other similar cases in Yokosuka and Yokohama. Cases arose in Tokyo, too, as the US troops moved into the metropolitan areas from September 8. As already mentioned, many of the vehicles used by GIs for this purpose were stolen, making it difficult to find out to which unit the soldiers belonged.43

It was not just healthy young women who fell victim to GIs sexual violence.

Some sick and retarded women were also violated. For example, on September 9, two American soldiers guided by a Japanese man came to the house of Mr. K.

T. in a village near Atsugi airbase. They asked to exchange a packet of their cigarettes for 10 onions. K. T. accepted this barter. However, at around 4:00 pm on the same day, these soldiers, then heavily intoxicated, returned and gang-raped K. T.’s sister, a 47-year-old woman, who was in bed suffering from spinal caries.44 It seems that the purpose of their first visit was not to obtain onions but 122

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to find out whether any women were at home. On September 26, a 26 year-old, mentally handicapped woman was gang-raped by five GIs in Yokohama. One of the GIs took a photo of this woman’s vagina after they raped her. This was witnessed by an 11 year-old boy.45

From mid-September, reported cases of attempted rape at night increased in the area near the base camps of the Allied troops. In many of these cases, small groups of GIs would intrude into a Japanese civilian house while the family members were asleep to rape the women. Typically, while a few of the soldiers were inside the premises, others were on watch outside the house. If any family members dashed out of the house to call for help, the men on watch would grab and beat them.

For example, at around, 1:30 am on September 16, an American soldier entered the house of the Hayakawa family in Fujisawa city, Kanagawa prefecture. Only the mother and her 21-year-old daughter were at home at the time, sleeping in the same room. As the mother was struggling to prevent the soldier from attacking her daughter, the daughter managed to run outside, calling for help. She was grabbed by three other soldiers at the door and was severely punched in the face and jaw. Her clothes were ripped off and she was almost raped. Luckily, policemen were on patrol nearby and the GIs ran away after the mother struggled free and called for help.46

At around 2:00 am on September 25, three soldiers entered the house of Mr.

Yamamoto Umekichi in Hiratsuka city, Kanagawa prefecture. Umekichi, his wife, Takiko, and his 18-year-old daughter, Yuriko, were all asleep. One other soldier was on watch outside the house, holding a gun. Both Umekichi and Takiko tried to protect their daughter, but were severely beaten by the men. However, all three kept screaming and calling for help. Neighbors awoke and came out of their houses, causing the four soldiers to run away without harming Yuriko.47 In this case, too, it seems almost certain that the GIs had found out beforehand where young women were living, possibly while on a daytime “inspection tour.”

A number of similar cases appeared in the official reports. All were cases of
attempted
rape. No actual rape cases are found in these documents. However, according to various unofficial information, it seems that many women were victims of rape, but their families decided not to report it to the police or to tell their neighbors about their “family tragedy.”

For example, according to the testimony of Sugita Tomoe (pseudonym), one night two drunken GIs barged into her house on the outskirts of Tokyo at around 10:00 pm. They threatened her father with a knife and demanded money.

Once they got the money, they bound her father to a pillar and raped her mother. While the mother was being attacked, Tomoe and her 15-year-old sister, Naoko, were too terrified to move or call for help. After the soldiers had raped the mother they bound her to the same pillar and proceeded to rape Tomoe and Naoko in front of their parents. Naoko died from blood loss. Her father later reported Naoko’s death to the police station, but he falsely testified that Tomoe and her mother had run out of the house and that only Naoko had been raped. Two policemen and a doctor came to the house and took evidence, but that was the only time that police contacted them about the matter.48

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The fact that rape and other crimes were committed by US troops from the very beginning of the occupation is also confirmed by the diary of General R. L. Eichelberger, the commander of the 8th Army. On September 2, immediately after the surrender ceremony on the
Missouri
, Eichelberger “received an order to report to the Chief [General MacArthur]”49 at 5:00 pm that evening. He wondered what MacArthur wanted. The following sentences in his diary clarify the topic of the meeting: At 1700 I was called to General MacArthur’s quarters for a conference concerning some reported rape cases on the part of Marines. There are also reports of some “acting up” on the part of 11th Airborne troops . . .50

It is interesting to note that the subject of the very first meeting between the top two military men of the US occupation forces immediately after the surrender ceremony was neither “the democratization of Japan” nor “the future status of Emperor Hirohito,” but “rape by Marines.”

The following record in his diary of September 3 also indicates that the crimes committed by the men under his command were already a serious issue: In the evening General Hall, General Swing and a representative from the 1st Cavalry Division met with me to discuss the actions of our soldiers in Japan. We have had assault cases reported and a stern directive was given
Plate 5.4
Commander US 8th Army, R. L. Eichelberger (centre), together with General MacArthur (right) and H. Robertson, Commander-in-Chief of BCOF (left), watching the parade past the reviewing stand to celebrate US Independence Day at the Japanese Imperial Plaza in Tokyo, on July 4, 1948.

Source
: Australian War Memorial, transparency number 145602

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to everyone concerned that rowdyism, looting and vandalism would not be tolerated.51

Almost every day from early September, the Japanese government officially complained to GHQ, through the CLO, about numerous crimes that the US

occupation troops were committing against Japanese civilians and public servants, in particular policemen. The CLO reported the details of the serious crime cases to GHQ and kept requesting that it take strict measures to prevent the recurrence of such incidents.52 In response to these continuing complaints, GHQ

asked the Japanese authorities to provide more detailed information on offenders, claiming that the Japanese victims should be able to identify any offenders by the mark on the shoulder straps of their uniforms.53 Thus, on September 4, some newspapers published the pictures of the US shoulder marks together with an article encouraging local people to strengthen the neighborhood associations’

activities in order to protect themselves.54

At the same time, on September 4, the Japanese government instructed the Kanagawa prefectural government to allow schoolgirls and female college students, particularly those from schools near the Allied bases, to stay at home and study by themselves until conditions improved. The girls were also instructed not to go out of their homes alone. These instructions were also publicized in the major newspapers on September 5.55 According to the
Asahi Shimbun
, on that day the 8th Army instructed all its troops that they had to obtain a leave slip if they were going outside the permitted areas and told them that military police would conduct random inspections of soldiers’ leave slips on the street.56 On September 15, the
Yomiuri HDchi
newspaper reported that, as the result of a request from the Metropolitan Police Office, 5,000 MPs had been mobilized in Tokyo in order to suppress US soldiers’ criminal activities.57

On September 27, GHQ further asked the Japanese government to ensure that any report of criminal offences committed by soldiers be accompanied by some clue to identify the criminal.58 However, it was quite difficult for ordinary Japanese people to describe the particular features of the US soldiers (who wore the same uniforms), let alone to quickly identify and memorize a shoulder mark while being subjected to physical threat. It seems that this request by GHQ also contributed to discouraging victims from reporting to police.

One GHQ report on crimes committed by US troops in Tokyo between October 4 and November 17, says that “of approximately 100 reported cases of rape of Japanese women by US servicemen, only six have been substantiated.”