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U.S. Courts-Martial in Occupation Japan: Rape, Race, and Censorship :: JapanFocus
U.S. Courts-Martial in Occupation Japan: Rape, Race, and Censorship
Terese Svoboda
Colliers magazine cover depicting US-GIs in the thrall of Japan
We too are an army of rapists, anonymous soldier, letter to the editor, Time Magazine, November 12, 1945. What explains the lack of records regarding the number of rapes in occupation Japan by American servicemen? I briefly review the situation of rape during World War II in the European theater for which there is reasonable documentationto better understand why the names and numbers are concealed or lost.
I then examine the situation postwar, focusing particularly on conditions in Japan at the beginning of the American occupation. I conclude by analyzing what little documentation I discovered about an execution for rape while writing Black Glasses Like Clark Kent, my memoir about my uncle who committed suicide after leaving me tapes about his experiences as an MP in Tokyos 8th Army stockade. Our civilian justice system aims primarily to safeguard the rights of property, community, and the individual, perhaps in that order.
Immediately after the Japanese surrendered in 1945, the Japanese Ministry of the Interior made plans to protect Japanese women in its middle and upper classes from American troops. Fear of an American army out of control led them to quickly establish the first comfort women stations for use by US troops.7
By the end of 1945, the Japanese Ministry of Home Affairs had organized the Recreation Amusement Association (R.A.A.), a chain of houses of prostitution with 20,000 women who serviced occupation forces throughout Japan.8 (Many more women known as panpan turned to prostitution in the struggle to survive in the midst of the postwar devastation.)
Burritt Sabin of the Japan Times reported in 2002 that just days before the R.A.A. was to open, hundreds of American soldiers broke into two of their facilities and raped all the women.9 The situation prompted MacArthur and Eichelberger, the two top military men of the U.S. occupation forces, to make rape by Marines their very first topic of discussion.10 Yuki Tanaka notes that 1300 rapes were reported in Kanagawa prefecture alone between August 30 and September 10, 1945, indicative of the pervasiveness of the phenomenon in the early occupation.11
Historian Takemae Eiji reports that . . .
US troops comported themselves like conquerors, especially in the early weeks and months of occupation. Misbehavior ranged from black-marketeering, petty theft, reckless driving and disorderly conduct to vandalism, assault arson, murder and rape. . . . In Yokohama, Chiba and elsewhere, soldiers and sailors broke the law with impunity, and incidents of robbery, rape and occasionally murder were widely reported in the press. 12
GIs photographing women
Two weeks into the occupation, the Japanese press began to report on rapes and looting.13 MacArthur responded by promptly censoring all media. Monica Braw, whose research revealed that even mention of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and particularly the effects of the bomb on civilians, were censored, maintains that pervasive censorship continued throughout the occupation years.
"It [censorship] covered all means of communications and set up rules that were so general as to cover everything. It did not specify subjects prohibited, did not state punishment for violations, although it was clear that there were such punishments, and prohibited all discussion even about the existence of the censorship itself."14
Censorship was not limited to the Japanese press. MacArthur threw prominent American journalists such as Gordon Walker, editor of the Christian Science Monitor, and Frank Hawley of the New York Times out of Japan for disobeying his orders. Even internal military reports were censored.15 Five months after the occupation began, one in four American soldiers had contracted VD.16
The supply of penicillin back in the U.S. was low.17 When MacArthur responded by making both prostitution and fraternization illegal,18 the number of reported rapes soared, showing that prostitution and the easy availability of women had suppressed incidents of rape. John Dower writes in his Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II that while the U.S./Japanese-sponsored brothels were open the number of rapes and assaults on Japanese women were around 40 a day, but after they were closed, the number rose to 330 a day.19
Yuki Tanaka records two major incidents of mass rape around the same time.20 On April 4, fifty GIs broke into a hospital in Omori and raped 77 women, one a woman who had just given birth, killing the two-day-old baby by tossing it onto the floor. On April 11, forty U.S. soldiers cut off the phone lines of one of Nagoyas city blocks and entered a number of houses simultaneously, raping many girls and woman between the ages of 10 and 55 years.
If these incidents are in any sense indicative, how are we to understand the fact that reports in U.S. archives about rape in postwar Japan are sparse: General Eichelberger issued three documents during the first year of the Japanese occupation admonishing the troops about their behavior, citing looting, rape and robbery.21 General Eisenhower ordered a report about troop behavior on Japan and the Philippines in 1946. (The National Archives has the reports cover sheet, but not the report.)22
Albert Hussey, one of the framers of the Japanese constitution, mentions the rise of institutional rape. Under the cover of screening for venereal diseases, young women getting home from work were arrested in the subway or in the streets, pressed to have relations and/or examined by Japanese doctors in the presence of soldiers.23 Rape continued during the occupation as indicated by the plea reported in the NY Times April 21, 1952, from a prominent woman leader, Ms. T. Uyemura, to Mrs. Ridgway, wife of MacArthur's replacement, General Ridgway, asking her husband to isolate the immoral US troops.24
Recorded courts-martial for rape during the occupation are few. The Judge Advocate Generals Board of Review for the year 1946, when the R.A.A. closed, shows only 6 courts-martial.25 The Return of General Prisoners from the 8th Army stockade in Tokyo, where all GI prisoners were incarcerated prior to being returned to the U.S., lists 6 soldiers sentenced for rape during spring 1946.26
The Index to the Board of Review Opinions of the Branch Office of the JAG (1942-1949) shows only two courts-martial listed during the same period.27 French researcher Bertrand Roehner has made available the texts of hundreds of directives from the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers to the Japanese government (called SCAPs, SCAPINS or SCAPINs) that reveal much more sexual violence occurred than has ever been acknowledged, a small window onto what went on behind MacArthurs wall of censorship.28
For example, the SCAPIN of August 31, 1949 is illustrative of another tactic MacArthur used to suppress reports of rape and other crimes by occupying forces. It shows that five Japanese were sentenced to hard labor for spreading rumors derogatory to occupation forces when American soldiers were accused of raping Japanese women.29
Another instance of this policy is noted by Takamae Eiji:
When US paratroopers landed in Sapporo, an orgy of looting, sexual violence and drunken brawling ensued. Gang rapes and other sexual atrocities were not infrequent. Victims of such attacks, shunned as outcasts, sometimes turned in desperation to prostitution; others took their life rather than bring shame to their families. Military courts arrested relatively few soldiers for these offenses and convicted even fewer, and restitution for the victims were rare. Japanese attempts at self-defense were punished severely. In the sole instance of self-help that General Eichelberger records in his memoirs, when local residents formed a vigilante group and retaliated against off-duty GIs, Eighth Army ordered armoured vehicles in battle array into the streets and arrested the ringleaders, who received lengthy prison terms.30
My uncle, Don Svoboda, unwittingly introduced me to this subject. He committed suicide in 2004, leaving behind audiotapes that spoke of the building of a gallows in Tokyos 8th Army stockade where he served as an M.P. in 1946. In trying to discover whether an execution he had witnessed decades earlier had anything to do with his suicide, I interviewed many veterans who had served in the stockade. Five of them remembered a colored boy being executed for rape in May; none of them remembered his name; two thought there was more than one execution.31 No records from the 8th Army stockade report any executions, and neither Truman nor MacArthur signed any military execution papers during 1946, the year that the soldiers remember the hanging.32 In addition, no records speak of the use, or even the building of the very large gallows that all the vets remembered, including soldiers who were just passing through on their way to Korea in 1952, just before it was dismantled.33
Relevant thread:
http://www.defence.pk/forums/world-...-who-found-japan-not-guilty-tokyo-trials.html
U.S. Courts-Martial in Occupation Japan: Rape, Race, and Censorship :: JapanFocus
U.S. Courts-Martial in Occupation Japan: Rape, Race, and Censorship
Terese Svoboda
Colliers magazine cover depicting US-GIs in the thrall of Japan
We too are an army of rapists, anonymous soldier, letter to the editor, Time Magazine, November 12, 1945. What explains the lack of records regarding the number of rapes in occupation Japan by American servicemen? I briefly review the situation of rape during World War II in the European theater for which there is reasonable documentationto better understand why the names and numbers are concealed or lost.
I then examine the situation postwar, focusing particularly on conditions in Japan at the beginning of the American occupation. I conclude by analyzing what little documentation I discovered about an execution for rape while writing Black Glasses Like Clark Kent, my memoir about my uncle who committed suicide after leaving me tapes about his experiences as an MP in Tokyos 8th Army stockade. Our civilian justice system aims primarily to safeguard the rights of property, community, and the individual, perhaps in that order.
Immediately after the Japanese surrendered in 1945, the Japanese Ministry of the Interior made plans to protect Japanese women in its middle and upper classes from American troops. Fear of an American army out of control led them to quickly establish the first comfort women stations for use by US troops.7
By the end of 1945, the Japanese Ministry of Home Affairs had organized the Recreation Amusement Association (R.A.A.), a chain of houses of prostitution with 20,000 women who serviced occupation forces throughout Japan.8 (Many more women known as panpan turned to prostitution in the struggle to survive in the midst of the postwar devastation.)
Burritt Sabin of the Japan Times reported in 2002 that just days before the R.A.A. was to open, hundreds of American soldiers broke into two of their facilities and raped all the women.9 The situation prompted MacArthur and Eichelberger, the two top military men of the U.S. occupation forces, to make rape by Marines their very first topic of discussion.10 Yuki Tanaka notes that 1300 rapes were reported in Kanagawa prefecture alone between August 30 and September 10, 1945, indicative of the pervasiveness of the phenomenon in the early occupation.11
Historian Takemae Eiji reports that . . .
US troops comported themselves like conquerors, especially in the early weeks and months of occupation. Misbehavior ranged from black-marketeering, petty theft, reckless driving and disorderly conduct to vandalism, assault arson, murder and rape. . . . In Yokohama, Chiba and elsewhere, soldiers and sailors broke the law with impunity, and incidents of robbery, rape and occasionally murder were widely reported in the press. 12
GIs photographing women
Two weeks into the occupation, the Japanese press began to report on rapes and looting.13 MacArthur responded by promptly censoring all media. Monica Braw, whose research revealed that even mention of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and particularly the effects of the bomb on civilians, were censored, maintains that pervasive censorship continued throughout the occupation years.
"It [censorship] covered all means of communications and set up rules that were so general as to cover everything. It did not specify subjects prohibited, did not state punishment for violations, although it was clear that there were such punishments, and prohibited all discussion even about the existence of the censorship itself."14
Censorship was not limited to the Japanese press. MacArthur threw prominent American journalists such as Gordon Walker, editor of the Christian Science Monitor, and Frank Hawley of the New York Times out of Japan for disobeying his orders. Even internal military reports were censored.15 Five months after the occupation began, one in four American soldiers had contracted VD.16
The supply of penicillin back in the U.S. was low.17 When MacArthur responded by making both prostitution and fraternization illegal,18 the number of reported rapes soared, showing that prostitution and the easy availability of women had suppressed incidents of rape. John Dower writes in his Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II that while the U.S./Japanese-sponsored brothels were open the number of rapes and assaults on Japanese women were around 40 a day, but after they were closed, the number rose to 330 a day.19
Yuki Tanaka records two major incidents of mass rape around the same time.20 On April 4, fifty GIs broke into a hospital in Omori and raped 77 women, one a woman who had just given birth, killing the two-day-old baby by tossing it onto the floor. On April 11, forty U.S. soldiers cut off the phone lines of one of Nagoyas city blocks and entered a number of houses simultaneously, raping many girls and woman between the ages of 10 and 55 years.
If these incidents are in any sense indicative, how are we to understand the fact that reports in U.S. archives about rape in postwar Japan are sparse: General Eichelberger issued three documents during the first year of the Japanese occupation admonishing the troops about their behavior, citing looting, rape and robbery.21 General Eisenhower ordered a report about troop behavior on Japan and the Philippines in 1946. (The National Archives has the reports cover sheet, but not the report.)22
Albert Hussey, one of the framers of the Japanese constitution, mentions the rise of institutional rape. Under the cover of screening for venereal diseases, young women getting home from work were arrested in the subway or in the streets, pressed to have relations and/or examined by Japanese doctors in the presence of soldiers.23 Rape continued during the occupation as indicated by the plea reported in the NY Times April 21, 1952, from a prominent woman leader, Ms. T. Uyemura, to Mrs. Ridgway, wife of MacArthur's replacement, General Ridgway, asking her husband to isolate the immoral US troops.24
Recorded courts-martial for rape during the occupation are few. The Judge Advocate Generals Board of Review for the year 1946, when the R.A.A. closed, shows only 6 courts-martial.25 The Return of General Prisoners from the 8th Army stockade in Tokyo, where all GI prisoners were incarcerated prior to being returned to the U.S., lists 6 soldiers sentenced for rape during spring 1946.26
The Index to the Board of Review Opinions of the Branch Office of the JAG (1942-1949) shows only two courts-martial listed during the same period.27 French researcher Bertrand Roehner has made available the texts of hundreds of directives from the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers to the Japanese government (called SCAPs, SCAPINS or SCAPINs) that reveal much more sexual violence occurred than has ever been acknowledged, a small window onto what went on behind MacArthurs wall of censorship.28
For example, the SCAPIN of August 31, 1949 is illustrative of another tactic MacArthur used to suppress reports of rape and other crimes by occupying forces. It shows that five Japanese were sentenced to hard labor for spreading rumors derogatory to occupation forces when American soldiers were accused of raping Japanese women.29
Another instance of this policy is noted by Takamae Eiji:
When US paratroopers landed in Sapporo, an orgy of looting, sexual violence and drunken brawling ensued. Gang rapes and other sexual atrocities were not infrequent. Victims of such attacks, shunned as outcasts, sometimes turned in desperation to prostitution; others took their life rather than bring shame to their families. Military courts arrested relatively few soldiers for these offenses and convicted even fewer, and restitution for the victims were rare. Japanese attempts at self-defense were punished severely. In the sole instance of self-help that General Eichelberger records in his memoirs, when local residents formed a vigilante group and retaliated against off-duty GIs, Eighth Army ordered armoured vehicles in battle array into the streets and arrested the ringleaders, who received lengthy prison terms.30
My uncle, Don Svoboda, unwittingly introduced me to this subject. He committed suicide in 2004, leaving behind audiotapes that spoke of the building of a gallows in Tokyos 8th Army stockade where he served as an M.P. in 1946. In trying to discover whether an execution he had witnessed decades earlier had anything to do with his suicide, I interviewed many veterans who had served in the stockade. Five of them remembered a colored boy being executed for rape in May; none of them remembered his name; two thought there was more than one execution.31 No records from the 8th Army stockade report any executions, and neither Truman nor MacArthur signed any military execution papers during 1946, the year that the soldiers remember the hanging.32 In addition, no records speak of the use, or even the building of the very large gallows that all the vets remembered, including soldiers who were just passing through on their way to Korea in 1952, just before it was dismantled.33
Terese Svoboda
Terese Svoboda is the author of ten books of prose and poetry, most recently the memoir Black Glasses Like Clark Kent: A GIs Secret from Postwar Japan, winner of the 2007 Graywolf Nonfiction Prize. Its website is ãæ¯æ¥ãã¹ãã·ã£ã«ãã¼âãã¼ãã®ä¸»å©¦ã®ãã*ã°ã. Her second novel, A Drink Called Paradise, concerns the effects of US atomic tests in the Pacific islands.
A native of Ogallala, Nebraska, writer Terese Svoboda studied at Manhattan College, Stanford University, Oxford University, the University of Colorado, the University of Nebraska Lincoln, and Montreal University of Fine Arts. She graduated from the University of British Columbia and Columbia University, where she received her MA. She lived for a year in the Sudan, making documentary films and translating the songs of the Nuer people. Her novel, Cannibal, won the Bobst Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writer's Award and was chosen as one of the top ten books of the year by Spin magazine and hailed as a "women's 'Heart of Darkness'" by Vogue. Her story "Party Girl" was a finalist in the 1995 Mississippi Review Prize competition. A book of nonfiction, Black Glasses Like Clark Kent won the 2007 Graywolf Nonfiction Prize and will be published by Graywolf. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Antioch Review, APR, Columbia, Conjunctions, Georgetown Review, Harper's, Paris Review, The New Yorker, Noon, Ohio Review, Vogue, and The Wall Street Journal. Her novel Other books include Treason (Zoo Press, 2002), A Drink Called Paradise (Counterpoint Press), and Trailer Girl and Other Stories. Her memoir, Black Glasses Like Clark Kent, won the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize for 2007. Her poetry videos have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and on PBS. She has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, The New School, the University of Hawaii, Williams College, San Francisco State University, and the College of William and Mary. She lives with her husband and children in New York City's Chinatown.
Relevant thread:
http://www.defence.pk/forums/world-...-who-found-japan-not-guilty-tokyo-trials.html
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