The Rape of Japan After World War II Revisited
In Yokosuka, US Marines on an “inspection tour” entered one home and at gun point spent their time raping a 36-year-old mother and her teenage daughter. In another home in the same town, two marines chased a terrified housemaid upstairs and cornering the woman in a small room both raped her in turn.In another community, small gangs of marines spread out. One group of three offered a young housewife a ten yen bank note for sex and when she flatly refused they dragged her into another room and raped her anyway.
What happened in Germany also happened in Japan after World War II.
…by Jonas E. Alexis and Thomas Goodrich
Thomas Goodrich is a historian living in Florida. He has written ten historical studies over the past few years. Some of those works include Bloody Dawn: The Story of the Lawrence Massacre (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1991), Black Flag: Guerrilla Warfare on the Western Border, 1861-1865 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), Scalp Dance: Indian Warfare on the High Plains, 1865-1879 (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1997), War to the Knife: Bleeding Kansas, 1854-1861 (Mechanicsburg, Stackpole Books, 1998), Bloody Bill Anderson: The Short, Savage Life of a Civil War Guerrilla (Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books, 1998), The Darkest Dawn: Lincoln, Booth, and the Great American Tragedy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), and Hellstorm: The Death of Nazi Germany, 1944-1947 (Sheridan, CO: Aberdeen Books, 2010). Hellstorm, which we have previously reviewed, has been translated into numerous languages, including French, Portuguese, and German. Goodrich is currently writing a book tentatively titled, Summer, 1945—Germany, Japan and the Harvest of Hate.
Jonas E. Alexis: The West has been playing double standards when it comes to history for years, and representatives of the Allied Forces (mainly historians) think that they have a monopoly on what happened in the past. Here we are specifically talking about what happened to the Japanese after World War II was over. Even the Daily Mail, of all places, is beginning to tear apart the Allied narrative by stating:
“While some other World War II armies had military brothels, Japan is the only country accused of such widespread, organized sexual slavery…. [Osaka Mayor Toru] Hashimoto also claims singling out Japan is wrong, alleging the issue also existed in the armed forces of the United States, Britain, France, Germany and the former Soviet Union during World War II.”[1]
Hashimoto said: “It is a hard truth that even these nations used local women for sexual reasons. This is a historical fact and there is hard evidence that proves it was true.”[2] He is right. But why is it that much of the world is forcing Japan to pay reparation while German civilians haven’t received a dime for what happened to them after World War II? Didn’t the women and children get raped as well?[3]
Japan has certainly been put on a different moral plane, and the United States generals in particular have never apologized for calling Japanese officials and soldiers “those little yellow sons-of-bitches.”[4] They have never said a bleep about murdering Japanese prisoners of war.[5]
Richard Aldrich of Nottingham University has convincingly shown that, according to the Telegraph, “the soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army were far from the cruel, mindless troops of popular legend…”[6] Aldrich, who read the diaries of U.S. soldiers and generals before he published his ground-breaking study, declared:
“We have this stereotypical idea that the Japanese were all cruel and robotic while the Allied forces were tough but fair in their treatment of the enemy. But I was very surprised by much of what I found and had to rethink all those stereotypes.”[7]
According to the Telegraph, “Prof Aldrich found several examples confirming what became an American policy in some parts of the Pacific theatre not to take prisoners of war.”[8] One U.S. general declared: “Oh, we could take more [prisoners] if we wanted to. But our boys don’t like to take prisoners. It doesn’t encourage the rest to surrender when they hear of their buddies being marched out on the flying field and machine-guns turned loose on them.”[9]
“Prof Aldrich quotes the 1943 diary of Eddie Stanton, an Australian posted to Goodenough Island off Papua New Guinea. ‘Japanese are still being shot all over the place,’ he wrote. ‘The necessity for capturing them has ceased to worry anyone. Nippo soldiers are just so much machine-gun practice. Too many of our soldiers are tied up guarding them.’”[10]
Are the masters of the universe willing to talk about how the United States raped and tortured Japanese men and women? If not, why are they still placing a draconian law on Japan? Since South Korea is essentially a creation of the United States, no Korean government official has ever gotten the moral courage to address these issues at all. What’s your take on these things, Goodrich? Lay out some historical background for us.
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