Comfort?

This is coolbert:

"Hey GI, got gum??"

Here is a headline from today's Chicago Tribune:

"U.S. let Japanese coerce 'comfort women' for GIs"

This is really bound to raise some hackles!!

The entire issue of "comfort women" being used by the Japanese Army in World War Two [WW2] to satisfy the sexual desires of the Japanese soldier has been highly documented for some time now. A very sensitive issue throughout Japan and indeed the entire Orient. Young women, usually Koreans, but also Chinese were IMPRESSED into what was tantamount to slave labor, "servicing" the Japanese soldier.

This is an issue that never seems to go away. The present Japanese Prime Minister Abe just recently made some comments on the subject that were considered to be "controversial".

And now this.

"TOKYO -- Japan's abhorrent practice of enslaving women to provide sex for its troops in World War II has a little-known sequel: After its surrender -- with tacit approval from U.S. occupation authorities -- Japan set up a similar "comfort women" system for American GIs."

A similar system - - was set up - - in Japan - - after the war - - to satisfy the sexual lust of the occupying American soldiers!!??

The first question I have is, does any of this surprise anyone?? I would think not.

Extracts from the Tribune article with my comments [in bold].

"The strategy was, through the special work of experienced women, to create a breakwater to protect regular women and girls."

I guess the impression of the Japanese was that the American troops would behave as the Japanese troops did all throughout the Pacific theatre, raping and molesting with abandon the local women!!

"there were a great deal of apprehensions at first. But they were paid highly and they gradually came to accept their work peacefully."

They were paid highly!! Those women the Japanese raped in Nanking were not paid highly, they were first raped, and then executed. My understanding is that most of the comfort women serving the Japanese Army, in bondage as they were, RECEIVED NO PAY!!

"On Aug. 28, 1945, an advance wave of occupation troops arrived in Atsugi, just south of Tokyo. By nightfall, the troops found the RAA's first brothel."

These guys [Americans] were "randy" and ready to go, were they not!!!???

"Police officials and Tokyo businessmen established a network of brothels"

When they say "Tokyo businessman", read correctly THE YAKUZA!!! Japanese organized crime [mafia].

"I rushed there [to the brothel] was surprised to see 500 or 600 soldiers standing in line on the street"

Well, who was guarding the hen house at the time!!??

"the charge for a short session with a prostitute was 15 yen, or about a dollar, roughly the cost of half a pack of cigarettes."

At the time, in Japan, if you HAD half a pack of cigarettes, you could probably buy or barter for just about anything you wanted.

"By the end of 1945, about 350,000 U.S. troops were occupying Japan."

This figure of occupation troops seems way too high??!!

"Amid complaints from military chaplains and concerns that the brothels would embarrass the occupation forces when disclosed back in the U.S., on March 25, 1946, MacArthur placed all brothels, comfort stations and other places of prostitution off limits."

I bet those chaplains were NOT TOO WELL LIKED after that!!

Was this sexual slavery on the same level as the Japanese exploitation of the "comfort women"??!!

I say NO!! BUT, it will be portrayed as being so!!

This almost sounds as if it is an effort on the part of some to say to the world, "well, we [the Japanese Army] had sexual slaves, yes, we did, but so did the Americans!!"

coolbert.