Vol. 71/No. 20      May 21, 2007

A similar system had previously been put in place by the Japanese government in which some 200,000 women, mostly Koreans and Chinese, were coerced into being sex slaves for Japanese troops in the 1930s and into the mid-1940s. This operation, with the addition of many more women from Japan, was now put at the disposal of U.S. occupation forces.

In August 1945, as Tokyo was surrendering to Washington and its allies, "police officials and Tokyo businessmen established a network of brothels under the auspices of the Recreation and Amusement Association (RAA), which operated with government funds," stated an April 25 dispatch by Associated Press.

Many young women ended up in these brothels after answering job ads appealing for "Women of the New Japan," wrote Seiichi Kaburagi, chief of public relations for the RAA, in his memoirs.

"Natsue Takita, a 19-year-old Komachien worker whose relatives had been killed in the war, responded to an ad seeking an office worker," AP said. "She was told the only positions available were for comfort women and was persuaded to accept the offer." A few days after the brothel started operations, she killed herself, jumping in front of a train, according to Kaburagi's memoirs.

By the end of 1945, there were 350,000 U.S. troops occupying Japan. RAA at that time employed 70,000 sex slaves. Private brothels operating outside those run by the government boosted this figure even higher.

In March 1946 more than a quarter of all U.S. GIs occupying Japan had a sexually transmitted disease, noted Toshiyuki Tanaka, a history professor at the Hiroshima Peace Institute. In response to this fact and in an effort to counter adverse publicity about the U.S. occupying forces there, Gen. Douglas MacArthur announced on March 25 of that year that all brothels would now be off limits to U.S. soldiers in Japan.

A nonbinding resolution currently being circulated in the U.S. House of Representatives calls on Tokyo to apologize for the role played by the Japanese armed forces in coercing women into sexual slavery. The resolution, however, fails to mention the U.S. military's responsibility in aiding and abetting sex slavery for a time.

In another development, Japan's highest court on April 27 rejected compensation claims filed by former sex slaves. In its ruling the court did admit that two of the plaintiffs, Chinese girls who were 13 and 15 at the time, were kidnapped by Japanese soldiers in Shanxi Province, China, in 1942 and forced to work as sex slaves.

The court also rejected compensation for Chinese men forced to work at no pay at a hydroelectric plant in 1944. According to Japanese government data reported in the April 28 New York Times, "about 38,935 Chinese men were forcibly brought to Japan, most of them after March 1944. They were made to work in 135 sites for 35 companies."  
 
 
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