Saturday, December 30, 2006

It is not Yasukuni, but....

Visitors to the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo walk under the large Torii Gate near the shrine’s entrance. Japanese visit a temple on New Year’s Eve to strike a bell 108 times to wipe away all the bad things that happened of the past year and to purify one’s spirit.



When Christmas is over, the Japanese start counting down to New Year’s, the country’s most celebrated holiday.In a country where Shinto is the native religion, appropriately greeting a new year is of the utmost importance. Government offices close from Dec. 29 to Jan. 3 and most businesses also shut down for the new year’s first three days. But to ring in the new year properly, much preparation must take place.Before New Year’s Eve, homes must be thoroughly cleaned — inside and out. Shinto places great emphasis on purification, and it’s believed cleanliness is essential for peace of mind and good fortune. All family members are responsible for housecleaning. If someone doesn’t participate, he or she is indebted to the rest of the family for the entire coming year.
....
It is believed that each human being has 108 earthly desires, and striking the bell 108 times wipes away all the bad things that happened, wrong deeds, ill desires and bad luck of the past year and purifies one’s spirit.
(I guess this is a custom arising from Buddhism but it is mixed up with a traditional Shinto thought --zero)....
New Year’s is a time for reflecting and cleansing the spirit. Whether or not the practice stems from Shinto, it is a good opportunity for everyone to make a fresh start with a clean slate.Stars and Stripes



See, the emphasis is "cleansing the spirit" "purification", and it’s believed cleanliness is essential for peace of mind."

Your spirit resonate with the surroundings. If you purify your spirit, your surroundings, the good things will happen to you. If your spirit or your surrounding is dirty, the dirty things will happen to you.

The spirit of the dead is your surrounding. The soul of the dead is not somewhere up heaven or down the hell far away from you. Just as the spirit of animals, trees, and river and mountains are here and there for Shinto, it is looking at you from somewhere hidden not far away from you.

The spirit of the dead related to you and your land who died in a abnormal way is something "dirty"(kegare), to be feared, it must be cleansed and purified. To "wipe away the all the bad thing that happened" to them, to make a fresh start to gain the peace of mind for us, for the spirit, it must be purified, cleansed. If the spirit is not purified, cleansed, you will be cursed.

It is not that "go to hell, and suffer for ever in the hell!". It is rather that those who died in an unnatural way must return to natural, purified way of being. To do that, the spirit's anger and sadness due to the unnatural death must be consoled, pacified, wiped away and cleaned. Only then it will return to a natural way of being, which resonates with our spirit.

I think that is the Shinto religion. And (I hope) Yasukuni embodies this spirit.

And since Shinto is a native religion, Shinto believer or not, Japanese people do not react strongly to enshrining the soul of A-criminals.


In contrast, in China people still spit on the statue of 秦檜 and his wife , who killed a patriotic hero in 12 century.*

There is a cultural difference and that causes a lot of misunderstandings and troubles between the two countries.


*

歴史をさかのぼれば、12世紀の南宋初期、北方の遊牧民族王朝・金の侵攻に義勇軍を組織して戦った岳飛ほど英雄視される人物はいない。金との融和策をすすめた宰相秦檜に「邪魔者」と獄死させられたが、杭州の岳飛廟(びょう)には、900年たった今も参拝が絶えない。廟内には中腰で後ろ手に縛られた秦檜夫妻像があり、岳飛を慕う中国人は、つばを吐き掛け棒でたたいてこらしめる。 asahi.com王敏(ワン・ミン)
法政大学国際日本学研究センター教授
前AAN客員研究員2005年 4月18日

Friday, December 29, 2006

Nanjin massacre in perspective

Q: In your two essays ["Convergence or Divergence? Recent Historical Writings on the Rape of Nanjing" and "Challenges of Trans-National History: Historians and the Nanjing Atrocities" (see Works Cited)], you extensively covered the scholarship on both Japanese and Chinese sides and mentioned there has been some convergence among Japanese and Chinese historians. Is there still a long way before the two sides reach a transnational consensus on this particular incident?

Yang: First we should be aware that there is no such simple division as Japanese and Chinese side. Among Japanese themselves there are various positions and they've been debating each other....

This is a very sensitive and emotional issue for Chinese. Especially the number issue [the number of victims (see In the 1990s)] is very sensitive in China. And secondly, Chinese scholars are not fully up-to-date on Japanese research or Japanese sources. In a sense they are handicapped to appreciate the kind of research done in Japan.

On the Japanese side I still see people primarily use the Rape of Nanjing as a political tactic. So not everybody in Japan is treating the Rape of Nanjing as a scholarly subject. In turn that creates a vicious cycle making it very difficult for Chinese scholars to accept or appreciate different views or conclusions in Japan.

Q: Is there any positive prospect?

Yang: I see indications. There has already been some joint work, so to speak, done by some Chinese and Japanese scholars. For example, Professor Kasahara [at Tsuru University] and his colleagues participated in a conference in China even though their specific conclusions are not exactly as Chinese conclusions.

I also think that as more and more sources come out, especially the diaries and new battle records discovered in Japan, then translated into Chinese, these new materials serve as very convincing sources that help establish the parameter of the atrocities in the sense that these are the kind of sources that all sides can agree on.


Q: You mentioned the number of victims is still very sensitive (see In the 1990s). What is the latest scholarship on that particular issue?

Yang: It is not probably a good idea to begin with numbers. I think that's very difficult. I think we should begin with the general understanding that, given the passage of time, given the disappearance of many critical documents, given the fact that to fully understand how many people died, you really have to ask those who got killed, it's impossible, basically.

So we have to understand the limit of what historians, 50 or 60 years later, or even ten years later, could do in order to establish the exact scale of massacred victims....

We also have to be aware that the atrocities are not just about people being killed. Rape, looting, destruction of property, I think it is more important to understand the whole picture of the Atrocity....

I think it's possible and probably a good idea to leave a certain ambiguity within a range. There is sometimes the view that the more precise the figure, the better. I think it's a very naive misconception.


Q: According to what I have read, Chinese soldiers also extensively torched houses and buildings in the name of a "scorched earth" policy and they looted some shops before the city fell (see Fall of Nanking). In my impression, this is something rarely mentioned by Chinese scholars and always mentioned by "deniers" and other very conservative scholars in Japan. What is your standpoint on the Chinese soldiers in Nanking?

Yang: The scorched-earth policy was a politically strategic decision taken by China and it had enormous costs on the Chinese part. But, on the other hand, in some cases, I'm not talking about this case, but in some military situations, a scorched-earth policy may be the only way to stop the enemy. You can talk about when Russians defeated Napoleon.... Of course, throughout the Sino-Japanese War, Chinese were extreme....

There are two aspects to this [Chinese looting]. Discipline of Chinese forces was generally not very good in the Republican period after 1927, especially after Chiang Kai-shek consolidated his power. Some of his best troops, shall we say, behaved better than those locally recruited forces. So there were differences in discipline among the Chinese. Some were pretty bad. Some were pretty good. Whatever the case, it is true that there were Chinese looting. It is undeniable.



However, the question is what we make of this fact.... Of course some people can say, look, the Japanese troops' behavior wasn't that bad because there was looting on the Chinese side. To some extent this is true. We should not expect any troops to be saints. In a way it is important to bring that aspect out so that we can understand the condition of the battle better.

So in general I am in favor of bringing those aspects out. I don't think Chinese historians are going to defend the reputation of those Chinese forces. But they would probably say we have to put it into perspective.* see note

Q: The descriptions of the Rape of Nanjing in Japanese history textbooks are also another issue that often comes up in the polemic. Could I ask your opinion on this?

Yang: Of course there was initial misreporting by Japanese press. Those wordings were not changed in 1982. But I think it is generally true that there was a tendency on the part of Ministry of Education to downplay the aggression the Japanese Imperial Army committed, and the atrocity committed. That has, of course, alarmed the Chinese government. Yes, there was misinformation but it was not entirely groundless. There was something, I think, Japanese historians like Ienaga Saburo pointed their fingers at.

On the other hand, I have to say that Japanese have, since the textbook incident, changed considerably for the better, in general, in terms of inclusion of accounts of wartime atrocities. I am not saying that they should all repeat what Chinese are saying. I think it's not necessary as long as they are facing squarely the dark side of the country's history, which I think every country should do.

I think the textbooks in general have been taking a positive development, and hence you have more backlashes from the conservative forces of Japan.link


I think he is fair. Nothing is wrong with debating historical issue, but history is history and politics is politics, the confusion between the two will bring about the devastating result.

On the one hand, I think so-called denier went extreme. Just because there are exaggeration and the distortion, it does not follow that there was no Nanjin massacre.
Even Justice Pal, who sentenced 14 A criminals not guilty at Tokyo trial admitted that there was a massacre in Nanjin.


I might mention in this connection that even the published accounts of Nanking "rape" could not be accepted by the world without some suspicion of exaggeration. Referring the the same incident, even as far back as November 10, 1938, Colonel Stewart (in the chair) at Chatham House considered that such things as happened as Nanking were regrettable, but that he "could canst his mind back to 1900, and see that whatever was happening now, it was probable that the Japanese learned it from other nations."
Referring to the same incident, Sir Charls Addis on that occasion could say:
"Between two counties at war there was always a danger that one or other of the combatants would seek to turn public opinion in his favour by resort to a propaganda in which incidents, inseparable alas(!) from all hostilities, were magnified and distorted for the express purpose of inflaming prejudice and passion and obscuring the real issues of the conflict."....
,,,,,If we scrutinize the evidence about Nanking rape carefully, similar suspicion would again be unavoidable.
The two main witness of Nanking atrocities are Hsu Chuan-Ying and John Gillespie Magee.......
It seems these witness accepted every story told to them and viewed every case as a rape case. .....
I am not sure if we not here getting accounts of events witnessed by excited of prejudiced observers.
If we proceed to weigh the evidence carefully we shall find that in many cases the opportunity for observing the happening must have been of the most fleeting kind; yet the positiveness of the witnesses is sometimes in the inverse ratio to their opportunity for knowledge. In many cases, their conviction was induced only by excitability which perhaps served to arouse credulity in them and acted as a persuasive interpreter of probabilities and possibilities. All the irrelevance of rumors and canny guess became hidden under a predisposition to believe the worst, created perhaps by the emotion normal to the victims of injury.
Keeping in view everything that can be said against the evidence adduced in this case in this respect and making every possible allowance for propaganda and exaggeration, the evidence is still overwhelming that atrocities were perpetrated by the members of the Japanese armed forces against the civilian population of some of the territories occupied by them as also against the prisoners of war.Dissentient Judgement of Justice Pal/page 606-608


On the other hand, CCP's historians can not deny the denier's point that there were atrocities on Chinese side too.

As the professor above said, there was looting and torching by Chinese troops.
They also tend to forget to mention the Massacres by Chinese troop just before the Nanjin massacre in Shanghai and in Tongzhou
And Chinese soldiers putting off the uniform with the arms smuggling into the safety zone made the massacre of civililian more fierce.

I don't think something is to be gained if Chinese wants to demonize Japanese or they want to use it politically ; though, nobody can deny the atrocities were demonic.

But this is not all. American people tend to regard the incident as something unrelated to them. But when it comes to Atomic bombs, and the mistreatment of German POWs, they tend to fiercely deny it.
I wonder what is the big difference?

Matsui thought it was necessary to take over Nanjin to end the war.
Matsui warned Nanjin to surrender.
Matsui did not intend to massacre civilians.

Truman thought, so it is argued, it was necessary to nuke Japan to end the war.
Truman bombed without warning.
Truman targeted civilian districts.

Now I have no intention to demonize Americans. For that matter, I have no intention to whitewash Nanjin Massacre by bringing the attention to other sides.
And someone might argue the comparison is iandequate. But the point is that the attention should be put in wider perspective. And if that is done, I think we'll know there is nothing to be gained politically by making history the political agenda.

.................................................................................
*.
Photos document brutality in Shanghai
September 23, 1996
Web posted at: 10:15 a.m. EDT (1415 GMT)

From Bangkok Bureau Chief Tom Mintier

BANGKOK, Thailand (CNN) -- Relations between Japan and China, strained in recent months over a disputed chain of uninhabited islands, may fray even further because of 18 small, grainy black and white photos taken 59 years ago.
(113 sec./937K QuickTime movie - Warning: contains violent images.)

The photos, taken by a Swiss photographer near Shanghai in 1937, all depict the brutality of Chinese soldiers toward Japanese prisoners and Shanghai residents accused of helping the Japanese as they began their military conquest of China.

The photos are so disturbing that Tom Simmen, who was in Shanghai on business and asked to witness the executions by the Chinese, kept them hidden away. But he told his son to make them public. Check out
the Vivo movie

Photos document brutality in Shanghai - Warning: contains violent images.


Download a player
Vivo's technical FAQ


"It was his wish that I publish it," said John Simmen. "He said it would finance his stay in the hospital."

John Simmen is now trying to find a publisher for the graphic photos. He said that he has been offered 3,000 German marks per photo, but that his primary concern is to let people know what his father told him happened in Shanghai.

"They enjoyed it," Simmen said. "They (were) waiting for the head to get cut off, then they took the head and played football ... I mean that was a terrible thing." (13sec./134K AIFF or WAV sound)Image of decapitated bodies.

Simmen's father told him that the Chinese soldiers used a variety of torture methods on prisoners, including suspending them in wooden cages by the neck until they died of starvation. Image of man being tortured.

Some were shot, and their bodies stacked for mass burials. Others, mostly Chinese nationals accused of aiding the Japanese, were beheaded with a large sword.Image of bodies in a cart.

"For a Chinese," Simmen said, "somebody collaborating at that time with Japanese was worse than the Japanese because he sold out his own people."

Simmen said that his father destroyed the negatives before leaving China, and that his then-pregnant mother smuggled the prints out under her clothing.

The photos, Simmen said, will most likely reopen the wounds of war for many Japanese and Chinese with connections to Shanghai in 1937. But unlike the atrocities committed by the German Nazis during World War II, he said, too many have forgotten what happened in China

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Why Party With Prostitutes When You Can See a Movie? Korea

South Korea Encourages Prostitute-Free Holidays


What's New Year's Eve without drunken co-workers and hookers? Well, in South Korea, where office parties often devolve into bachelor parties, it would be like Halloween without the candy (almost). Nevertheless, in an effort to stomp out Auld Lang Syne debauchery, Seoul's Ministry of Gender Equality is giving away free movie tickets to workers who pledge not to hire prostitutes this December 31st.Washinton post

Wow, Koreans are creative!
..............................................................................



「買春しない」誓えば現金 韓国政府キャンペーンに批判
2006年12月29日00時22分

 韓国の女性家族省が行った「買春防止キャンペーン」が波紋を広げている。同省は、忘年会の後に「買春しない」と誓った男性たちに現金の支給を約束した。欧米メディアが報じたこともあり、世論は「国際的な恥」と政府の対応を批判している。

 女性家族省は、忘年会を開く団体が「買春せず、飲食だけをする」と約束すれば、人数に応じて総額360万ウォン(約46万円)を支給するキャンペーンを6日から26日までインターネット上で行った。これに約1万3000人が応募した。

 しかし、通信社・聯合ニュースによると、同省のホームページには「国民の税金でこんなことをしていいのか」「男性を潜在的な性犯罪者と見ている」などと批判の声が寄せられた。これを受け、賞品は現金から映画券などに変更されたが、世論の批判は収まっていない。(時事)Asahi

THE DEATHTOLL OF THE NANKING MASSACRE

Some people seem to think just listing the number less than 300,000 as victims of Nanjing Massacre counts as a denier.
Well some Chinese people deny this number as well.
Some Chinese people say it was 350,000; others say it was 400,000(南京大学歴史系編著「日本帝国主義の南京における大虐殺 1979 p33)


Suppose the number of victims are thousands;still, that is horrible number and that does not soften the atrocity. So basically my focus is not the number. But since there are some people who regard citing the less than 300,000 as an attempt to whitewash history, I'll give some reasons for citing 20,000 to 100,000.

I am not a historian nor I am trained to be a historian. I have not checked the primary sources. But there are some third party's accounts before Tokyo tribunal and Tokyo tribunal judged based on these sources.

The burial record of Red Swastika Society(the original text) * (+the 'reports issued from the Safety Zone Committee安全区の検査報告) The original document is lost

40,000


Lewis S.C. Smythe
[a professor of Sociology, Nanking University and the author of "War Damage in the Nanking Area, December, 1937 to March,1938 Urban and Rural surveys, Shanhai, Mercury press 1938... he was asked by Timparly to investigate the case)

33,470「スマイス報告」をめぐる「議論」

p165



Miner Searle Bates
(member of the International Safety Zone Committee for Nanking), information provided to Harold Timperley, as reported to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo Trial)Hata

40,000


H.J Timparly
[the author of what war means(1938 left book topical book/Victor Gollancz ltd.)and an advisor to the Chiang Kai-shek's propaganda organization)

40,000

(p67

John Rabe
(German head of the International Safety Zone Committee for Nanking), letter to Hitler after returning to Germany
June 1938Hata

50,000~‚60,000


Tokyo Tribunal(1)

over 200,000

Estimates made at a later date indicate that the total number of civilians and prisoners of war murdered in Nanking and its vicinity during the first six weeks of the Japanese occupation was over 200,000. That these estimates are not exaggerated is borne out by the fact that burial societies and other organizations counted more than 155,000 bodies which they buried(IMTFE, op. cit., November 11, 1948, vol.2, p.103.in



*Red Swastika Society 43,071

Chongshantang 112,261 the record sbmitted to the trial

Total 155,332



Defense attorneys objection


1 The burial charts were prepared 10 years after the fact. It is not possible to make any definitive statements about corpses after 10 years have elapsed, so we must assume that these figures were invented.

2 In view of the sites where the bodies were discovered, they must have been those of soldiers killed in action. It is mistaken to assume that they were victims of a massacre perpetrated by Japanese military personnel.

3 These figures were, most likely, invented. For instance, Chongshantang supposedly buried an average of 130 bodies per day until the end of April. However, there is a sudden rise in the number of interments after April, to an average of 2,600 bodies per day for 10 successive days.

4 Yuhuatai, Shuixi Gate, and Zhongshan Gate were swept by Japanese troops, which would have removed or arranged for the removal of any corpses found. In any case, it is extremely unlikely that so many bodies remained at those locations five months after hostilities had ended.

5 Virtually no women or children are listed in Red Swastika Society records. But in Chongshantang records, figures for men, women, and children have been supplied so as to reflect the portion of the population each group accounts for. They were certainly fabricated.


Probably influenced by this consideration, the judgement for Matsui cites over 100,000
as the number of victims.

Tokyo Tribunal(2)

over 100,000

極東国際軍事裁判判決

Some historians doubt the probative value and admissibility and others contends killing was legal. Still others calculates the number of victims based on the total population, the number of soldiers, the the number of dead bodies, etc.

Examining Chongshantang Burial Records, it surely looks doubtful. And Timberlay has reason to inflate the number but no reason to make it look smaller;for he was an advisor to the Chiang Kai-shek's propaganda organization. Personally I think Hata is right in contending that the claim more than 100,000 were massacred is unreasonable. So I for one cite from 20,000 p33 the number of captive/guerrilla massacred based on Japanese military record) to 100,000.

But if there are more convincing argument, or I study it further, I might change it.

UPDATE
This site tell us a relatively fair account of the debate over the death toll in current estimate.
It is safe to say that today the majority of historians estimate the death toll of the Nanking Atrocities in the range between 200,000 and 300,000 as claimed by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East or the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal.

But this is not true. Even so called the massacre school in Japan based on the record speculates the death toll as less than 200,000. And when 300000 is menioned it is the number including the death toll of soldiers killed in action . I think the reader of the site should be careful about the way the author write. He is not telling a lie, but I think the author is misleading.
Kasahara is a representative of the massacre school. His estimate of the massacre of captives is 80.000. This number itself is controversial .But note that he estimates about 110,000 civillian death. I think this is a way beyond reasonable nubmer; why the hell do you have to kill civillians far more than captives? And he hasn't shown Japanese killed civilians as civilians, besides civilians as mistaken for guerillas=captives. Note also that Kasahara talks as if Rabe was talking about civilian death when Rabe mentioned 50.000 to 60000. But in fact he was talking about all the death toll. I wonder why some Japanese scholars feel the obligation to concede to CCP's interpretation. Guilt conciousness? Influence of coummunism?

If they want to emphasize how cruel the war was,why don't they just cite the following number.

Democide figures - 20th century
20th century democide
The top killers (individuals)
He notes that the number killed by government in the 20th century is far larger than the number killed by war.
He ranks the top killers as:
1 Soviet Union - 62 million.
2 Communist China - 38 million (this includes 3 million before they even got into power).
3 Nazi Germany - 21 million.
4 Nationalist China (Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang) - 10 million.
5 Axis Japan - 6 million.link


I think both the denier school and the massacre school went extreme.


....................................................................................

Note that I quoted some from so-called denier's book or site, but I didn't quote their opinion.
Here is a useful source from other site.
Date.. claims,,....................... Number of
................................................casualties
Sources
1938 The Safety Zone Committee 49 Documents of the Nankgin Safety Zone
1938 L.C. Smythe ,,,,,,,................ 15760 War Damage in the Nanking Area
1938 M.S. Bates ........................ 42000 What War Means
1941 E. Snow............................ 42000 The Battle for Asia
1943 A. Smedley..........................200000 Battle Hymn of China
1946 Nanking district Court..............340000 Summary report on the Investigations of Japanese war crimes committed in Nanking
1948 The IMTFE...........................200000 The Tokyo War Crimes Trial (stenographic records)

................................................................................
Sources published in the Republic of China (Taiwan) and Hong Kong
More than 100,000: An Outline of the Eight-Year Conflict by Chen Cheng, Army chief of staff, 1946
340,000: Nanking District Court Prosecutor's Report on the Investigation of Crimes Committed by the Enemy, 1946
More than 100,000: A Brief History of Chinese Resistance, Ministry of Defense Department of Political History, 1952
More than 100,000: History of the People's Revolution, compiled from a variety of Republic of China sources in commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Sun Yatsen, 1965
More than 100,000: History of the War of Resistance Against Japan, 1966
More than 100,000: A Short History of the Sino-Japanese Conflict, Defense Research Institute, 1968
200,000: Anti-Japanese Resistance, Jiang Jingguo, 1978
Sources published in the People's Republic of China
430,000: Reform Daily, 1945
200,000: People's Daily, 1946
300,000: Worker's Daily, 1946
300,000: History of China at War, Shu Zongfu and Cao Juren.
300,000: People's China (Japanese translation), 1947
300,000: Government-approved textbooks currently in use
Several hundred thousand: The Great Nanking Massacre, Department of History, University of Nanking, 1948
400,000: Testimonies: The Great Nanking Massacre, edited by the Historical Reference Research Committee, City of Nanking, 1 984

All of these publications were written subsequent to the IMTFE
link
...................................................................................

M. Bates writes a memo based on the record and says, "Evidences from burials indicate that close to 40,000 unarmed persons were killed within and near the gates of Nanking, of whom some 30% had never been soldiers."(79Timperley, What War Means: The Japanese Terror in China, p.59)link


{A} low and incomplete figure for civilian deaths..inflicted by the Japanese in the first weeks of their occupation of Nanking, was 12,000; and for deaths of unarmed men in military clothing, 35,000. Of these murder, over 90 per cent occurred in the first ten days, most of all in the first three days.>
(Statement of M.B. Bates, dated February 6, 1947 in: Miner Searle Bates papers, Record Group No, 10, Box 126,Folder1132, Yale Divinity school Library, New Heaven, Conneticut in p 294



Evidence from burials indicate that close to 40,000 unarmed persons were killed within and near the wall of Nanking, of whom some 30% had never been soldiers/埋葬による証拠の示すところでは、四万人近くの非武装の人間が南京城内または城門の附近で殺され、そのうちの約三〇パーセントはかつて兵隊になったことのない人びとである。
『日中戦争史資料 9』P47,,,,,,ベイツは、戦後に数字の根拠を「安全区の検査報告、および紅卍字会の死体埋葬報告」としている。

安全区の検査報告、および紅卍字会の死体埋葬報告では、男女の子どもの死体数はまったく不完全で、実数に比べて少なくなっています。平民の死者はけっして一万二千にとどまらないのです。武器を持っていない軍人で殺された者も三万五千を下ることは決してありません。

『南京事件資料集 2中国関係資料編』P306
南京金陵大学歴史教授ベイツ博士の声明書 一九四七年二月六日


 従って、ベイツの3月15日の「四万」という数字は「紅卍字会の死体埋葬報告」だけに基付くのではなく、その時点の「安全区の検査報告、および紅卍字会の死体埋葬報告」の最新情報であり、上記のスマイス報告と同じ内容の数字を得て3月下旬ないしは4月始めの土壇場で"What War Means"の原稿に挿入したと考えるのが自然である。
link


The Red Swastika Society has for the last month been feverishly burying bodies from all parts of the city outside the zone and from the surrounding countryside.
The conservative estimation of the numbers of people slaughted in cold blood is somewhere about 100,000, including of course thousand of soldiers that had thrown down thir arms.
["Documents On The Rape Of Nanking", Timothy Brook,Ann Arbor Paperbacks, 2002, P254]
link


「The Red Swastika Society has for the last month been 」
が一番最後の行にあります。ついでに原稿の上部を見ていただくと中学生でも理解できると
思いますが、日記の日付けが入っています。




MARCH7 つまり3月7日です。

5月7日ではありません…



 ウィルソン日記の10万という見積もりの記述日時が、スマイス博士の戦争被
害調査よりも前の数字であるということが判明しました。すると、当初は10万
という被害見積もりもあったが、調査した結果約4万の埋葬しか確認できなか
ったということになるでしょう。つまり外国人の認識は軍民4万でそれは東京
裁判まで続いていたと考えられます。(南京陥落から概ね一年後の、1938年
11月のベイツ書簡でも約4万という記述)。東京裁判でベイツが行なった証
言、調査できなかった虐殺があったという意味の認識を、当時の史料から
証明するのは困難なようです。(そういう史料が今のところ無い)link


埋葬記録の原典は存在するか?
東京裁判に提出された紅卍字会の埋葬記録は1937~1938年当時の記録ではなく、戦後に編集 されたものである。
許伝音証言によれば紅卍字会の埋葬記録は、公文書としての保管は 許されず「私文書として保管」していた物らしいが、 その原本は発見されていない(公開されてない?)link


With the assistance of Professor Bates, Smythe hired a large number of Chinese students and, over a period of approximately two months, proceeded to conduct a survey on war damage sustained by the residents of Nanking. For the survey, Smythe used the random sampling method. He did everything he could to ensure that it would be meticulous, accurate, rational, and fair.

For the portion of the survey that focused on households, the students, working in teams of two, visited one out of every 50 occupied homes. They interviewed the residents and multiplied the figures obtained from those interviews by 50. For the portion relating to damage to houses, the teams inspected one house in 10. A certain amount of bias was inevitable, since the interviews were conducted by Chinese students, but the scientific methods used cannot be faulted.

Smythe's survey covered not only the Nanking city limits, but also Xiaguan and other areas located immediately outside the city's gates. The fieldwork was done between March 9 and April 2, and analyzed between April 9 and 23. The survey of buildings was conducted between March 15 and June 15. Smythe also conducted an agricultural survey in six counties adjacent to Nanking, from March 8-23, covering damage to crops, seed, farming equipment, as well as human casualties.link

Note that i didn't adopt Tanaka's number of the death toll.
....................................................................................
Rabe

43 Kasahara, Nankin jiken, 223–24. In his report to Adolf Hitler, John Rabe noted that the Chinese estimate of 100,000 civilian deaths was perhaps too high, and that "we Europeans put it between 50,000 and 60,000." John H. Rabe, Nankin no shinjitsu [The truth about Nanjing], Japanese translation of Der Gute Deutsche von Nanking by Hirano Kyko (Tokyo, 1997), 317; in its English translation, however, the estimate refers to all victims, see The Good Man of Nanking: The Diaries of John Rabe, John E. Woods, trans. (New York, 1998), 212. Smythe, War Damage in the Nanjing Area.Convergence or Divergence?
Recent Historical Writings on the Rape of Nanjing/DAQING YANG
魚拓

The chairman of the International Committee, John Rabe, gave a series of lectures in Germany after he came back to Berlin on April 15, 1938, in which he said, "We Europeans put the number [of civilian casualties] at about 50,000 to 60,000."link



Pros and cons about the record of the Red Swastika Society

Is was estimated lower


["Eyewitnesses to Massacre", p.223"]

Introduction of Magee's Film
Film 10 3.c.
(途中省略)
Between January 23, when they started work, amd March 19, the
Red Swastika Society had buried 32,104 corps in Nanking and
the immediate vicinity(around the city walls). They estimate that
they have done just about one half of this work. In addition many
bodies were buried by relatives and other groups. It is very probable
that many bodies were burned up in the innumerable fires that were
started in the city possibly for that very purpose. There are still large
numbers of unburied bodies in section outside the city walls.

- 試訳 -
 1月23日(紅卍字会が仕事を始めたとき)から3月19日までの間に、紅卍字会は南京とその直近(城壁の周囲)で 32,104の死体を埋葬した。彼らは、およそ半分の作業を終えたところだと推定している。それに加えて、多くの遺体が親戚や他の団体(複数)によって埋葬された。多くの遺体が、おそらく、まさにその目的で市中で始まった無数の火事によって焼却されたことは十分ありえる。城壁の外側の地域には、まだ多数の埋葬されていない遺体がある。
link


>["Eyewitnesses to Massacre", p.223"]
>>
>>Introduction of Magee's Film
>>Film 10 3.c.
>>(途中省略)
>> Between January 23, when they started work, amd March 19, the
>>Red Swastika Society had buried 32,104 corps in Nanking and
>>the immediate vicinity(around the city walls). They estimate that
>>they have done just about one half of this work. In addition many
>>bodies were buried by relatives and other groups. It is very probable
>>that many bodies were burned up in the innumerable fires that were
>>started in the city possibly for that very purpose. There are still large
>>numbers of unburied bodies in section outside the city walls.
>>
>>- 試訳 -
>> 1月23日(紅卍字会が仕事を始めたとき)から3月19日までの間に、紅卍字会は南京とその直近(城壁の周囲)で 32,104の死体を埋葬した。彼らは、およそ半分の作業を終えたところだと推定している。それに加えて、多くの遺体が親戚や他の団体(複数)によって埋葬された。多くの遺体が、おそらく、まさにその目的で市中で始まった無数の火事によって焼却されたことは十分ありえる。城壁の外側の地域には、まだ多数の埋葬されていない遺体がある。
>>---
>
>>城内で 1,793体、城外で30,311体を「片付けた」
>合計すると、32,104体になります。link


It was estimated higher

We received a report saying the Red Swastika Society had buried 31,791 by March 15. But we recognized the report as having empty figures. As of the end of February, 5,000 was reported,and on March 15, the figure mounted to 31,791. It was calculated that they had buried 26,000 in fifteen days. In other words, 1,700 a day had to be disposed. However, as far as I knew, the number of burials in the list was estimated to be not more than from 600 to 800 a day, which was supposed to be the maximum number. So there must be have been considerable amount of padded figures. We accept the list as it was, in order for the future job not to be suspended."(Showa History Institution)
Then, what is the true number of the corpses? 22 X 200 = 4,400.4,400 + (600 to 800 X 10) = 10,400 to 12,400. This number almost coincide with the Chinese soldiers's dead(*4)link


The burial records submitted by the Red Swastika Society in chart form are also suspect. In one section of the chart no burial site is listed, only "December 28: 6,466 bodies." This figure far surpasses any recorded before or after this date. Furthermore, according to the diaries of International Committee member George Fitch and Hamasaki Tomizo (45th Regiment), there was heavy snowfall on December 28.link


..................................................................................
Chongshantang
There existed no record to substantiate that the Advance Benevolence Society worked on burial activities.link


According to Testimonies: The Great Nanking Massacre, each Chongshantang burial crew consisted of 12 persons: a foreman, a regular worker, and 10 temporary laborers.69 But as we mentioned previously, the organization maintained that it buried an average of 2,600 bodies per day. In an era when there were no bulldozers or power shovels, and when most trucks were owned by the military, how could Chongshantang have managed to inter so many bodies? Furthermore, no Japanese ever saw such a burial crew at work.link

According to another source,
However, when they received subsidies from the Service Committee, they gradually resumed their activities." Chongshantang was unable to resume its activities full scale until September 1938, eight months after the occupation. This information is totally inconsistent with Chinese claims that the organization interred more than 110,000 bodies during the four months following the occupation.



その他資料どちらかというと虐殺派どちらかというと否定派


「犠牲者数」をめぐる諸論


A1民間人総数 
B1中国軍総数
B2中国戦死者
B3中国逃亡・脱出

C1捕虜
C2生存捕虜
C3捕虜虐殺

D埋葬数 = 正規戦死者+捕虜虐殺+民間人虐殺(日本人によるー中国人による)

Eスマイス調査=正規戦死者+捕虜虐殺+民間人虐殺

笠原 
兵士虐殺 B1-B2-B3=15-2-1(逃亡)-4(脱出)=8
市民 D×α>E=3~12



兵士虐殺 B1-B2-B3-C2=10-5-1-1=3
市民   E-南京特別区=33470-26870=15760


第9師団7連隊+16師団33連隊+16師団30旅団+114師団66連隊+山田師団≒2
部隊別資料参照のこと

The population of Nanjin
December2~30000

the safty zone2~30000
March/Smyth
25~27000 +α.
And it is said there is little flow from the outside. So there were the massacre of civillians but it is safe to say the number of civilians qua civilians massacred is much fewer than so called the Massacare school claims.


そもそもスマイス調査が、原因が日中いずれであるかを問わぬ「戦争被害調査」であるから、死者には戦闘の巻添え、中国軍によるもの、日本軍によるものが混合しているものと見て


捕虜はせぬの解釈

China softens tone on Japan’s war crimes

By Mure Dickie in Beijing

Published: December 14 2007 00:23 | Last updated: December 14 2007 00:23


魚拓
China shows no sign of easing its insistence that the invaders killed more than 300,000 people in Nanjing city in the weeks after its fall, a figure many historians see as highly inflated.

The number is carved into signs and walls at the new hall and Mr Zhu said Japanese who questioned a total confirmed by postwar tribunals were acting out of “ulterior motives”.

“Three hundred thousand is a cast-iron fact and distortion of it by anyone will not be tolerated,” he said.

Some rightwing historians and commentators in Japan seek to deny that any significant massacre of civilians or unlawful execution of prisoners took place in Nanjing. Estimates of the number killed by mainstream Japanese historians range from around 13,000 to more than 100,000, with totals depending in part on whether deaths before the city’s fall and in nearby regions are included.

Nanjin Massacre and Mao Zedong

Mao's analysis of Japanese military

Prior to the Taierzhunang campaign [March 1938], the enemy demonstrated the lac of able commanders. During hostilities in Shanghai, Nanjing, Cangzhou,Baoding, Nankou, Xinkou and linfen, the enemy won many battles, but took only a few prisoners and trophies. Five blunders----inadequate reinforcements, the lack of a main direction of attack, poor, strategic coordination, the inability to use opportunities appropriately, and the failure to annihilate more than a few soldiers through having encircled many---demonstrated the incompetence of Japanese military leadership

On Protracted War, delivered over a period of nine days, beginning on May 26, 1938 at an anti-Japanese symposium at Yan'an .

(Mo takuto "jikyuusen ni tuite in Mo Takuktosenshu(Beijin:Gaiko shyuppansham,1968)p 23 in p222
.................................................................................
Trivia
When Sasaki, then the chairperson of Japanese socialist party visited
Mao, apologizing the great damage Japan brought about in China, Mao is said to have responded, "you don't have to be sorry, Japanese militarism brought about the great benefit to China. It had Chinese people able to gain their right. Without Imperial Army, it was impossible for us to gain our own right.
i)昭和39年社会党佐々木更三委員長が毛沢東主席に「中国国民に多大の損害をもたらして申し訳ない」と挨拶したところ、毛沢東曰く、「何も申し訳無く思う事は有りませんよ、日本軍国主義は中国に大きな利益をもたらしました。中国国民に権利を奪取させてくれたではないですか。皆さん皇軍の力なしには我々が権利を奪うことは不可能だったでしょう。」(毛沢東思想万歳(下))

ii)鄧小平曰く、「日本は中国を助けたことになっている。・・・日本が蒋介石を重慶まで押し下げてくれたので、我々は日本軍の占領地域の後方に広がった。・・・・皆さんだけを責めるのは不公平だと思う。」(平成7年6月30日 中国政経懇談会)linklink

collateral damage

To maintain the nation’s self-image as a uniquely humane power that cared about and acted to minimize civilian casualties, yet at the same time developed and deployed the world’s most destructively cruel weapons, U.S. leaders, as Conway-Lanz shows, brought into play two other linguistic devices: “elastic definitions of military targets” in enemy countries, and an emphasis on intention and premeditation that concealed the truth about how the Pentagon actually waged war. When the U.S. military loosed its air power on Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Afghan or Iraqi cities, towns, and villages; when it dropped “conventional” bombs and napalm, fired artillery, or used anti-personnel weapons such as cluster and phosphorous bombs that necessarily harmed civilians, it did not do so with the wicked intention to direct those weapons against them or against non-military objects. It did not knowingly commit war crimes, violate international law, or put civilians at risk. But if civilians not directly participating in fighting died, well, that was unintended “collateral damage,” the outcome of a righteous action, dictated by special conditions on the battlefield, not uncontrollable American firepower in the hands of gung-ho pilots or trigger-happy, war-stressed soldiers.


Image-conscious American political and military leaders quickly stepped in to fine tune the official government line. The generals claimed, disingenuously, that when the planes of the US Army Air Force burned down Tokyo and sixty-five other Japanese cities, they had aimed to achieve the goal of accuracy by “alternate means” so as to protect civilian lives while breaking Japanese morale. [3] As for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Truman initially “attempted to minimize the impression that civilians had been attacked with the atomic bomb.” His first press release had identified Hiroshima as “an important Japanese military base,” ignoring that the bomb had targeted the city’s civilian center in order to maximize civilian casualties. In his radio broadcast a few days later, on August 9, 1945, Truman re-emphasized “that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, in so far as possible, the killing of civilians.” [4] American newspaper journalists and magazine writers dutifully amplified Truman’s blatant lie by passing quickly over the details and writing their stories “in terms that ignored or obscured civilian deaths.” [5] Photographic images reinforced this impression: the mushroom cloud, not ruined cityscapes and corpses, told the official story.

Long before Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s article in Harper’s Magazine (February 1947) attempted to stifle further criticism from scientific leaders and ordinary citizens of Truman’s first use, without warning, of atomic bombs, U.S. officials introduced the counter-argument that the bombs had saved the lives of large numbers of Americans who had been scheduled to invade the Japanese home islands. Precisely by adding the saved-U.S.-combatant-lives-argument to Truman’s claim of having respected the norm of “non-combatant immunity,” American leaders were able to elicit uncritical public support for the atomic bomb project and to avoid public debate over terror bombingHerbert P. Bix/Japan focus


The key element was the intention. The proclaimed intention made the result--the killing of noncombatants—tolerable to the American conscience. What counted was the motive, not the consequences of the act or the nature of the weapons used. This extraordinary emphasis on intent in U.S. public discourse on warfare had its roots in both Christian notions of evil and sin as well as U.S. and international criminal law. [6] Collateral damage is a euphemism of World War II and the nuclear age, coined within the Pentagon, to conceal the deliberate killing of civilians. The military invokes this term as a way of exempting the U.S. from moral and legal culpability for such killing. [7] In short, collateral damage is all about intent, and the avoidance of responsibility for murdering the innocent. It is the military’s way of saying: judge the commander, the pilot, the combat soldier, even the U.S. mercenary and torturer not by what he did but by his subjective state of mind when he did it.


For over sixty-one years American leaders, firm in the belief of their moral superiority to others, have sought to avoid moral judgments on their conduct of warfare and its close link to war atrocities. Their aim has been to preserve the myth of American good intentions by highlighting the primacy of humanitarian sentiments in restraining the use of violence. Whether in times of peace or war, they propagate the myth of good-intentions in order to reinforce the larger myth of American exceptionalism. The latter is the view of the United States as the embodiment of Western virtue, the deliverer of ‘freedom” to oppressed peoples, God’s model of the world’s future—in brief, a chosen nation with an inherent right to lead others and set the world aright by waging war for the global good. [8] But since World War II, modern warfare has been more destructive of civilian than of combatant soldiers’ lives; while determining who is the enemy has grown impossibly difficult.




On the Japanese home islands alone, in the savage last months of the war, U.S. conventional bombs and nuclear bombs incinerated an estimated 600,000 to 900,000 noncombatants. Japanese civilians killed overseas bring that total to well over one million. The initial response of the American people and their leaders was to turn away from war crimes, and to avoid public debate about conventional bombing and the human consequences of the uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima and the plutonium weapon exploded over Nagasaki.

Yomiuri's soul searching

Japan’s top daily forces war reappraisal

By David PillingDecember 27 2006FTcom

I guess this is the part of the book on line.

It is good to make it known how Japan has tackled the issue of war crimes.

I don't necessarily agree that Japan was indifferent to the war responsibility.
Even Harvart Bix says:
During the early years of the Occupation, Japanese intellectuals went much further than their German counterparts in grappling with issues of war responsibility. This has not been sufficiently appreciated.


But the problem as he sees it is

At the same time, however, there is no unified "Japan" that hews to erroneous views of the past. Divisions remain deep. Every generation of Japanese has revisited World War II, and will continue to do so.


I have another perspective.
For most Japanese, they perceieve themselves as the victims first and utmost ; they were victims of their own regime, their superior, and hungers, air-raids, atomic bombs. They concluded the war means disaster, cruel, irrational, demonic, something to be avoided by any means.

In this reasoning process, there are two things they tend to ignore.

1) they could have stopped Japanese invasion and non-Japanese victims could have saved.
2) there might be times when the war is necessary.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Japanese Comfort women for GIs in Japan under the Occupation

See also « Back The Military-Sexual Complex: Prostitution, Disease and the Boundaries of Empire during the Philippine-American War Paul A. Kramer Military Prostitution and the U.S. Military in Asia Katharine H.S. Moon Against our will below Testimony:GHQ ordered to recruit women and set up comfort station
Yuki Tanaka on sexual violence by the occupational force
Since the greater part of Tokyo had been incinerated in the air raids, initially there were not many areas where comfort facilities could be provided. In the latter part of September, Do. Yosano Mitsuru, the head of the municipal government's hygiene department was summoned by GHQ and asked to help apportion the prostitutes into separate districts to be reserved for use by U.S. (the emphasis mine) Officers, white enlisted men and black enlisted men. Inially, women designated for use by black soldiers were said to have been horrified---until they discovered that many black GIs treated them more kindly than the white did. ....
Such "recreation and amusement" center expanded rapidly in Tokyo---there were soon thirty-three by one count----and spread almost as quickly to some twenty other cities. Not surprisingly, they proved popular among U.S. servicemen. They were , among other things,inexpensive. The prices for a short visit with an R.A.A prostitutes was 15yen, or one dollar---about the same as half as a pack of cigarettes on the Japanese market. Two or three times that amount purchased an entire night of personal diplomacy. Although these services did not prevent rape and assault*, the incidence of rape remained relatively low given the huge size of the occupation force....
Despite its popularity and initial support form the victors, the R.A.A (Recreation and Amusement Association) didn't survive the early months of the occupation. In January 1946, occupation authority ordered the abolition of all "public" prositituion, ....Privately they acknowledged that their major motivation was an alarming rise in venereal disease among the troops. ....It was largely to combat such diseases that the first U.S patents for penicillin were sold to Japanese companies in April of that year.(page130)....
Ending formal public prostitution did not, of course, mean the end of prositituion itself. The trade simply carried our more privately---(page131)

*
According to one calculation, the number of rapes and assaults on Japanese women amounted to around 40 daily while R.A.A. was in operation and then rose an average of 330 a day after it was terminated in early 1946.page 579
Embracing Defeat/John W. Dower

During a 12-day period extending from August 30 to September 10, 1949, the Japanese government reported 1,326 rapes , in Kanagawa prefecture alone, the the authorities at GHQ. This topic is discussed in detail in Gifts from the Vanquished by Masayo Duuns(page 170)
(Haisyakarano okurimono Tokyo Koudanshya bunko 1995p78ff) via The Nanking Massacre: Fact versus Fiction page 346


See also A town and prostitutes (in Korea)/kalaniosullivan.com

Otoki's words made an even stronger impression than her appearance.

"Of course it's bad to be a hooker. But without relatives or jobs due to the war disaster, how are we supposed to live? ...There aren't many of us who do this because we like it."(page 124


An eighteen-year-old in Kyoto told of how, while attending a dressmaking school in Nara the previous year, she had lost her virginity to a young GI in a park on a summer night, Several months later, after their romantic liaison broke up, she decided almost casually to become a prostitute and moved to Kyoto to do so. Most of her customers were GIs.page 134


It is quite easy to accuse USA of "the issue of Japanese comfort for GIs" in Japan, for that matter in Korea after the independence on the same ground that Korea blame Japan.
All you need is to collect 20 testimonies from the former Japanese comfort women.
You don't have to check who they really were, whether the story they would tell is truth or not. All you need is to get testimony someone in what looked like US soldier's clothes, according to the testimony made more than 50 year later, forcibly took four women away to the comfort station.
That is how the testimony of Korean comfort women were collected.

Does the US order to stop the official prostitutes matter? Japanese troop ordered to regulate illegal pimps ,Korean or Japanese and punished them. What is the big difference?
Every other official evidence point to the direction that they are recruited on a voluntary basis---Does that matter? The fact there are voluntary prostitutes does not mean there were no forced prostitutes---even if the rest of evidence show there were no force used, Look at the rate of rape by GIs. and we have testimony. Don't you want to believe the testimony ?because that was made more than 50 years later assisted by our researcher? because they were inconsistent with facts?;That is because they scarecely remember the detail ---you know---they repressed the memory out of the agony. Hey, Don't try to whitewash history! Face it . It should be taught at your school. Historical accuracy? Don't make me laugh. International relation is more important , isn't it. Look , though they remember the detail so faintly that they could not confess without the help of our knowledge about it, it is insulting to say they were telling lies; they testified after all with our encouragement that they suffered terribly You are the denier of the Asian Holocaust!! You are an expansionist. You are an Imperialist, You have been exploiting Asian women! Just put your word into action!

It might be a good idea Japan and Korea unite this time to protest against USA. We have finally found something in common!

But does Japanese government want to do that? --- I hope not,--- even if many Japanese reacted keenly to anti-Japan campaigns in China and South Korea and as a result they have become sulky and angry , even if Kono's statement was the result of putting priority to international relation before historical accuracy and it was result of a tacit agreement with Korea that Korea would not raise historical issues again .

Yet, I am not so sure. Pro-American sentiment is not invincible even in Japan.
...................................................................
Update

Note
。「外国軍駐屯地における慰安施設について」である。その内容は「一定地域に限定し」「従来の取り締まり基準に関わらず警察署長がこれを許可する」「日本人の利用を禁ずる」「性的慰安施設」「飲食施設」「娯楽場」などを種類とした。
 この通達に基き、8月23日「特殊慰安施設協会」(R.A.A)が結成された。資本金は当時の金額で一億円(現在の500億円)という。その資金の半分は政府の融資である。
占領軍の東京進駐は8月28日であった。RAAの一号店(小町園)の開店も同日である。

 占領軍の性奴隷
 8月28日、進駐してきた占領軍に対して、RAAの小町園が開店した。最初の犠牲者は開店の日に京浜急行の電車に飛びこみ自殺をした。「事務員募集」のうたい文句と高収入に応募した十九歳の女性が非人間的な売春の事実に耐えきれなかったのだ。
 「始めにきた30人の人は2~3ヶ月の内に気が違ったり病気になったりして半分になってしまった」(「占領軍慰安所」井上節子著)link

つまり、官が音頭をとったが、市民が募集・経営などを執行した、ということか?
八月二八日。慰安所第一号「小町園」が東京の大森にオープンした。ポツダム宣言受諾からわずか二週間という早業
である。この「小町園」は小野小町からとった名前で、オーナーは中條新治という男だった。「小町園」の立地は京浜
急行「大森海岸駅」の真ん前、ちょうど駅と第一京浜を挟んで建ちならぶマンションの一角に当たる。この通りには
「悟空林」「見晴らし」「やなぎ」「波満川」「乙女」「楽々」などが軒を構えていた(*注2
.....
特殊慰安施設閉鎖令の結果、旧遊郭の紅い灯も吹き消されるはずであった。しかし日本警察と業者は相談し「この区
域は違法な遊里ではなく特殊喫茶地区である」と地図に赤い線を引いた。そして「店で働いているのは娼婦ではなく女
給である。彼女らが個人的な自由恋愛の結果として、客と肉体関係を持つこともある。人身売買に当たる身売りや給与
の前借りは行わない」という取り決めをした。この赤い線で囲まれた場所が赤線地帯で、少なからぬ女たちが吸い込ま
れていった。赤線地帯は米兵オフリミットだったので、結果的に日本人相手の遊郭として再生を果たした。また米兵相
手のキャバレーやダンスホールのなかにも日本人相手に商売する店が増えていく。
......
昭和二一年の特殊慰安施設解散後もRAA自体はなくならなかった。米兵が立ち入らなくなったことで経営難に陥っ
たものの、二四年五月、「日本観光企業株式会社」に組織変更して生き延びた
.....
<ここで極め興味深い事実を指摘しておきたい。それは、連合軍「進駐」に先立ち「進駐」等の手順を決めるために行
われたマニラ会談(八月二〇日)において、「慰安施設」の要求が連合国側よりあった可能性である。マニラ会談の直Page 6

- 6 -
後、八月二二日付けで内務省警保局は地方総監、各庁府県長官宛に「連合軍進駐経緯ニ関スル件」という文書を発令し
ている。これはマニラ会談の雰囲気や今後の「進駐」日程等を、伝えたものであったが、その最後の項目につぎのよう
に記されていた。「聯合軍進駐ニ伴ヒ宿舎輸送設備(自動車、トラック等)慰安所等斡旋ヲ要求シ居リ」(『敗戦時全
国治安情報 第一巻』より)。これは、会談当時の模様を伝えるいわば間接情報であり、そのことの真偽、つまり、こ
れが会談における公式な要求としてでたのか、或いは、聯合軍側の代表の私的な会話を伝えたものなのかを判断するこ
とはできない。又、仮にこれが公式な要求であったとしても「慰安」の意味の日米間での理解の相違の可能性もある。
そもそも、日本政府による慰安施設の準備は、河辺虎四郎ら日本代表が出発する以前に命令されており、この資料を以
て特殊慰安施設がアメリカから強制されたものであると証明することはできない。しかし、アメリカ側がこのような施
設の要求をしたことを完全に否定することもできないのである>
また平岡敬一は「これは占領軍総司令部(GHQ)の意向でもあった。九月二十八日、GHQの軍医総監が東京都に対し、
占領軍兵士に提供する女性の調達を命令」した(『戦後性風俗体系』より)と記述している。
*注4 新聞各社は検閲をくぐるため「色の黒い男」「一三文の靴を履いた大男」などの表現を多用して、無法米兵の
事実を伝えようとしたlink

日本政府は敗戦直後アメリカの進駐を控え、「良家の子女を守るため」にということで、米軍の性的「慰安」施設の設置を計画しました。

 内務省は、終戦の3日後の1945年8月18日、「外国軍駐屯地における慰安施設の設置に関する内務省警保局長通牒(無電)」を各都道府県に発し、各県警はこれに基づいて急きょ、米兵の性的「慰安」施設を各地に設けました。

 「埼玉県史通史編7 米軍基地と『買春問題』」ではこの通牒の全文を載せています。(「外国駐屯軍慰安施設等整備要綱」。要綱は4項からなり、その3項で「性的慰安施設、飲食施設、娯楽場」をあげ、4項で「営業に必要な婦女子は、芸妓、公私娼妓、女給、酌婦、常習密売淫犯者を優先的に充足するものとする」としています)。

 警察が積極的に「慰安」施設を設置したことは、各県警の「警察100年史」等にもリアルに記述されています。

 広島県警の歴史 全警察官が慰安婦募集に、慰安所は押すな押すなの盛況 「まことに残念なことではあるが、占領軍人にたいする性的慰安施設を設営するという幇間(ほうかん)まがいの仕事を警察がせねばならなかったのである」

 北海道警察史2昭和編 「昭和12年には1052名を数えていた本道の娼妓も終戦時においてはわずか450余名にすぎなかった。この人員では2万名に及ぶ進駐軍将兵に接するには不十分であり従って、経験ある婦女子の確保が警察部の大きな課題であった。警察官自身も農村漁村を訪ね、毛布、足袋、砂糖を贈って説得し、協力を求めた。…本道の特殊慰安婦は総勢770名に増強された」

 兵庫県警察史 警部・警部補が遊女屋の設営作戦「保安課の任務は何か? 外でもないそれは8月18日に内務省が発した『占領軍の進駐時に合うように進駐軍将兵用慰安施設の設営を急げ』という緊急指令を実行する事であった。内務省の指令は、いわば性の防波堤を築こうというわけである」共産党

The Japanese government initially organised a Recreation and Amusement Association (RAA) to fill the brothels, a venture encouraged by the occupiers. The Australian military was no stranger to such arrangements, having run supervised brothels in the Middle East. (Tanaka 2002: 93)

But the RAA didn’t survive very long. In January, 1946 occupation officials ordered the abolition of all ‘public’ prostitution, amidst genuflections to democracy and human rights. ‘Privately they acknowledge their major motivation was an alarming rise in venereal disease among the troops.’ Prostitution continued as part of the black market, often organised by Yakuza gangsters or fascist groups. Returned Services League blowhard Bruce Ruxton was stating hard facts when he said that in the eyes of occupation troops, Japan became ‘one big brothel’. (Dower 1999: 130 (quote); Tanaka 2002: 138-140; ‘RSL Denies Mass Rape in Occupied Japan, The Australian, 24 September 1993 CHECK)

Ruxton was trying to dismiss rape claims, but in fact rapists flourished in the ‘one big brothel’. According to historian Oshiro Masayasu, when US marines landed on Okinawa, ‘all the women of a village on Motobu Peninsula fell into the hands of these American soldiers [who] started "hunting for women" in broad daylight … It was no different from the "brutal acts of conquerors" committed by the Japanese forces in China’. The same happened all over Okinawa, and things didn’t turn out any better in the home islands: immediately after the surrender ceremony MacArthur had to summon General Eichelberger to discuss rape by GIs. (Tanaka 2002: 111-112 (quote), 123.) Neither was this a temporary outbreak:

According to one calculation, the number of rapes and assaults on Japanese women amounted to around 40 daily while the RRA was in operation, and then rose to an average of 330 a day after it was terminated in early 1946.’ (Dower 1999: 579, fn 16)

When it comes to the Australians’ part in this, Allan Clifton’s eye-witness testimony is heart-rending:

I stood beside a bed in a hospital. On it lay a girl, unconscious … A doctor and two nurses were working to revive her. An hour before she had been raped by twenty soldiers … The hospital was in Hiroshima. The girl was Japanese. The soldiers were Australians. [She had awoken] to find a huge Australian soldier kneeling beside her, and another swaying in the doorway, his drunken leer telling more clearly than any speech or gesture what was to follow …

Rape victims couldn’t expect justice from the Australian legal system:

At the Court Martial that followed the accused was found guilty and sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude. In accordance with army law the court’s decision was forwarded to Australia for confirmation. Some time later the documents were returned marked ‘Conviction quashed because of insufficient evidence.’

We are usually told these were isolated cases. At first Clifton thought so too. He endured the looks of hospital staff, which said, ‘So, we are barbarians, and you are civilized … How is it then that all through the Far East your tribunals are now trying Japanese soldiers for these very crimes?’. He wrote:

It was easy to answer them at first: ‘This is not the act of a typical Australian. Such brutes as these are found among all peoples, in all armies. It is a question of proportions. There were so many more of them in your army.’

That was the first time it happened. But since then I had become a monotonously regular visitor to the hospital, always bringing with me a victim of the Yabanjin – the barbarians – as they had begun to call the Australians. Last time it had been a young lad, who had been knocked down and kicked unconscious, and left lying in the gutter. [But] it was the unhappy Japanese women who were the chief sufferers. (Clifton 1950: 141-143)

Barbarians occupy Japan魚拓

MacArthur’s troops began the occupation by terrorizing the Japanese population. Japanese historian Takemae Eiji writes, "U.S. troops initially comported themselves like conquerors, especially in the early weeks and months of the occupation. Misbehavior ranged from blackmarketeering, petty theft, reckless driving and disorderly conduct to vandalism, assault, arson, murder and rape. Much of the violence was directed against women, the first attacks beginning within hours after the landing of advance units."13 In the Yokohama district alone, U.S. troops during the first week committed 487 armed robberies, 411 thefts, 9 rapes, 5 break-ins, 3 crimes of assault and battery and 16 other acts of lawlessness.14 In the Kanagawa prefecture, U.S. soldiers committed 1,336 rapes in the first ten weeks of the occupation.15 MacArthur and the Japanese authorities not only failed to punish the soldiers; they censored the stories about the crime wave in the Japanese press.
The American leadership quickly established itself in royal splendor. Officials took over the major buildings that were still left standing in Tokyo (an area which became known as "little America") and other cities. In 1948, SCAP built 17,000 new homes for U.S. bureaucrats and military brass while millions of Japanese were still homeless and suffering starvation.16 Outrageously, SCAP forced Japan to foot the bill for this construction project as well as the occupation as a whole. While Japanese were starving, American occupiers lived lavishly, shopping in special stores and employing Japanese servants. The Japanese government spent 30 percent of its annual budget paying the costs of their own occupation.17 The State Department’s George F. Kennan, who was never a friend of the poor, denounced SCAP as a parasite that displayed "monumental imperviousness to the suffering and difficulties of the" Japanese. The occupation "monopolized"…"everything that smacks of comfort or elegance or luxury" and he contrasted its "idleness and boredom" with the "struggles and problems of a defeated and ruined country."18

Adding insult to injury, SCAP instituted racial segregation in Japan. Takemae writes, "Facilities reserved for occupation troops carried large signs reading ‘Japanese Keep Out’ or ‘For allied Personnel Only,’ and in downtown Tokyo important buildings requisitioned for occupation use had separate entrances for Americans and Japanese. The effect of such policies was to create a subtle but distinct color bar between predominantly white conquerors and the conquered ‘Asiatic’ Japanese."19

Not only did the U.S. impose Jim Crow segregation, it also collaborated with the Japanese regime in oppressing the women of Japan. The Japanese regime set up the Recreation and Amusement Association (RAA) which hired 70,000 poor women to work as prostitutes to serve the U.S. troops. The RAA ran government brothels around the U.S. military bases for the first two years of the occupation. In 1947, SCAP ordered the RAA privatized, but the brothels still operated in government approved red light districts surrounding the U.S. bases through 1949.20
The occupation of Japan

by Ashley Smith

魚拓
GI frequented Japanese comfort women
占領下のレイプ


。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。。
*SAPIO (サピオ) 2007年4月11日号
記事の示す事実 (以下、長文引用)

 日本人は「言挙げ(言葉に出して、言いたてること)」するのが苦手な民族であるといわれる。米国で湧き起こった「従軍慰安婦非難決議」にたいして安倍首相や外務省の駐米大使が、正面切って反論しないのはその典型なのかも知れない。しかし、ここに提示される資料をもってしてもなおも立ち上がらずにいられるだろうか。怒りの発掘レポート、言挙げせよ、日本人!

 4月26、27日に予定の安倍首相初訪米の直後に米国下院議会で採決されようとしている「従軍慰安婦非難決議案」は、「日本帝国軍隊が第2次大戦期に若い女性たちを慰安婦として強制的に性奴隷化(セックス・スレイブ)したことに(略)謝罪する」ことを日本に求めるものだ。前文では「20世紀最大の人身売買」であり「集団暴行、強制中絶、殺害、手足切断など」の蛮行を犯したと断じている。 「従軍慰安婦」については、史料検証でその事実がなかったことが証明されているが、詳述は別稿に譲ろう。

 ここでは、「戦争と性」の問題を考える上でひとつの史料を提供したい。それは、GHQ占頷下の日本人女性にたいする米兵の「強姦事件」についてである。
----------

マッカーサーが厚木に降り立った直後に9件の強姦事件

 占領初期のGHQ 1945年9月「月例報告」では、「日本人は米兵に協力的であり、占領は秩序正しく、流血なしで行なわれた」などと記載されている。また、GHQ外交局長W・J・シーボルドは「(米軍)戦闘部隊兵士の行動は、特に感銘すべきものであった」、「米兵たちはジャップの女なんかには、手を出す気もしない」と記している(『マッカーサーの日本」1970年刊、新潮社より)。

 しかし、これら米国側の記録は、事実ではない。 この米軍の「嘘」を暴く鍵は、占頷下の1945年10月4日に解散させられた「特高(特別高等)警察」(約6000人)の記録の中にある。米軍進駐後、「特高」は「治安維持法」に基づく監視の必要もなくなり、もっぱら進駐軍の素行調査をしていた。前掲の『マッカーサーの日本』にこの記録のことが一部記されており、原本をこの目で確かめてみたいと思った筆者は、国立公文書館でこの資料を発見した。手書きの原本が白日の下に晒されるのは今回が初めてだろう。

 そのファイルが377ページに及ぶ「進駐軍ノ不法行為」(内務省警保局外事課)である。マッカーサーが厚木に降り立った8月30日から10月4日の解散命令までの米軍の不法行為を特高警察が取り調べたファイルを内務省警保局がまとめたものだ。

 ファイルによれば1945年8月30日~9月10ロの12日間分だけでも強姦事件9、ワイセツ事件6、警官にたいする事件77一般人に対する強盗・略奪など424件(この中には、後述するような理由で強姦事件も含まれていると考えられる)。特別事件として「葉山御用邸侵入」「二重橋ニ侵入皇居撮影事件」「宮様御用列車ニ同乗未遂事件」などが発生している。


「8月30日の記録と8月30日~9月10日の統計」(SAPIOより)
-----

 「特高」は解散命令が出た10月4日の記録も残している。その日の記録には「公僕学校、倉庫等ニ侵入シ保管品等ヲ不法徴発 被害発生場所屋内10件 屋外10件」「両国ノ浴場ニテ女性暴行未遂事件」などとある。掠れたページもあり、正確な数字ではないが、全ファイル約1か月間で少なくとも強姦37件(未遂を含む)、その他の不法行為945件を数える。

 実際、「特高廃止」指令が出ると、全国の「特高」は、書類を焼却してしまった。しかしス特高」の元締「内務省警保局」の秘密報告書は焼却されず、この米軍の不名誉な記録は、没収され、米国に持ち去られたのだ。その後、実は1973年12月日本に返却され、翌年1月から、国立公文書館に所蔵されていた。
----------

妻36歳、長女17歳に対し拳銃で脅して……

 米軍の不法行為を明らかにする前に、敗戦後、日本政府が日本女性を米軍の「性の暴力」からいかに守るか、苦心惨憺した様子を少し述べてみたい。日本政府が「慰安所」設置に直接関与したのは、戦時中でなく占領下の米軍(進駐軍)のためにだったのだ。

 1945年8月21日の閣議で近衛文麿国務相が、米軍兵士用の慰安所の設置を主張し、池田勇人主税局長の裁断で5000万円の貸し付けが決定し、1945年8月28日「特殊慰安施設協会」(後に、国際親善協会RAAと改称)が設立された。

 その目的は、「関東地区駐屯軍将校並びに一般兵士の慰安施設」となっていた。GHQは、1945年9月28日、都内の占領軍人用売春街を指令している。

 しかしこれでも日本人婦女子の貞操が守れなかったのである。実際は主権回後後まで膨大な数の女性が「強姦」されていた。ファイルに記された調書をつぶさに見ていこう(公開された文書は被害者の氏名などが黒塗りにされており、その部分は省略して記す)。強姦事件は、米軍の進駐とほぼ同時に始まっている。8月30日は横須賀に海兵隊が上陸した日だが、いきなり事件が発生している。
----------

強姦事件

(一)八月三十日午後六時頃横須賀市OO方女中、34右一人ニテ留守居中、突然米兵二名侵入シ来リ、一名見張リ、一名ハ二階四畳半ニテ○○ヲ強姦セリ。手ロハ予メ検索ト称シ、家内ニ侵人シ、一度外ニ出テ再ビ入リ、女一人ト確認シテ前記犯行セリ

(二)八月三十日午後一時三十分頃横須賀市○○方。米兵二名裏ロヨリ侵入シ、留守居中ノ右同人妻当○○三十六年、長女○○当十七年二対シ、拳銃ヲ擬シ威嚇ノ上、○○ハ二階ニテ、○○ハ勝手口小室ニ於テ、夫々強姦セリ(以下略)》

 同9月1日、房総牛島に米軍上陸。ここでも事件発生。 《○○方ニ侵入セル米兵三人ニ留守番中ノ妻(ニハ)(中略)奥座敷ニ連行、脅迫ノ上ご三人ニテ輪姦セリ》

 《九月一日午後六時頃トラックニ乗リタル米兵二名(中略)市内○○ニ来り女中一名(24)連レ去リ(中略)野毛山公園内米兵宿舎内二於テ米兵二十七名(ニ)輪姦サレ仮死状態ニ陥リタルモ(中略)三日米兵ニヨリ自宅迄送り届ケラレタリ》

 このような記載が「特高」解散の10月4日まで続く。

 《九月十九日夜十一時頃、(横浜市)保土谷区、出征中○○妻(27)、(中略)ニ侵入シ「ジャックナイフ」デ情交ヲ迫リ、被害者之ヲ拒否シテ戸外二逃避セルヲ(中略)畠(畑)ニ連行、三名ニテ輪姦シタル。更二連中ノ三名ノ黒人兵ガ同所二於テ輪姦逃走セリ》

 調書を総覧すると、米兵の蛮行が眼前に浮かんでくる。

 警察官はいたるところで暴力を振るわれ、拳銃を取り上げられている。一般人は、「乗用車」「ラジオ」「現金」「腕時計」「背広」や「ゲタ」まで、手当たり次第に強奪されていた。

《九月二日午前十一時三十分頃武装米兵六名ハトラックニテ横浜市中区山手町二ー二番地共立女学校内、校長神保勝也二侵入各室ヲ物色シタル後現金二千七百十圓及ウオルサム腕時計一個ヲ強奪逃走セリ》とこのような「強奪逃走せり」が続くのだ。

 その中に、首を傾げたくなる記述がある。それは、「民家に米兵が押し入り、若い女性から腕時計だけ強奪して逃走せり」との記述が散見することである。

 貞操は取り返すことができずとも、せめて当時、貴重だった「腕時計」だけでも、取り返したいとの思いから被害届を出していたのではと思われる。先述した945件の強盗・略奪に強姦(あるいは強姦未遂)も入っているのではないかと考えるのはこのためである。

 このような状況は、神奈川県民を震撼せしめたであろう。当時の朝日新聞(1945年9月5日付)は三股見出しで「神奈川県の女生徒は休校 教職員が家族を巡回指導」と記している。

 しかし、9月19日、GHQ「プレスコード」が発令されて以後は米兵を批判する記事は、新聞紙面からすべて消えている。これで米国は、「強姦」など人道上の米軍の犯罪を封印できたと考えたであろう。しかし記述のように「特高」の調書は、言論統制されてからも継続して綴られていたのだ。
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青少年性犯罪者が
「米兵の真似して何か悪い」と開き直る

 当時の憤りを取材して『黒い春《米軍・パンパン・女たちの戦後》』を1953年に五島勉氏が出版している。その内容は、調書よりも残酷さがひしひしと伝わってくる。五島勉氏は1948年から調査を開始し、本人やその家族・友人・事件の目撃者など1000人にも及ぶ面接にもとづいて占頷下の空白時期をまとめた。


「進駐軍向けの慰安施設の一環として
利用された銀座のキャバレー(1945年)」
(SAPIOより)
-----

 その中の二九外務省外局・終戦連絡委員会横浜事務局の北林余志子氏の作成した米軍の横浜市内と県下の一部を含む、不法行動リストによると、10月末日までで強姦29件となっている。しかも、届け出ない件数は数十倍になると証言しているのだ。

 五島氏は「印刷ミスではない」と断わってこう記す。 「T子(十一歳・武蔵野市小学五年生)R子(同)A子(同)の三人は、十月(中略)武蔵野の林のなかを仲よく手をつないで歩いていた」 《キャンプ・トコロザワの近くで夢中でスケッチをしていると、まずR子がおそわれ、次々に米軍の餌食になってしまったのだ。彼女達のスカートは切られ、何か起こったのか全然わからなかった。子とA子は気絶し、T子はまた泣き叫ぶと、アメリカ兵は彼女の顔を蹴り、ジープで去った》(要旨、以下同)

 このような事件が全国で続発している中で、1946年4月東京・大森で恐ろしい事件が勃発した。 《N病院(=中村病院。その後廃業し、跡はビルと道路になった)は三白のトラックに分乗した米兵によって、およそ一時間ちかくも病院じゅうを荒らされた。彼等の総数は二百人とか三百人とかという説もある。婦人患者のうち重症者をのぞく四十故人と看護婦十七人、ほかに十五ないし二十人の付添婦・雑役婦などが凌辱された》

 「彼等は大病室に乱入し、妊婦・産婦・病気の婦人たちのふとんを剥ぎとり、その上にのりかかった」「二日前に生まれたばかりの赤ちゃんフミ子ちゃんは、一人の兵隊にユカに蹴落とされて死んだ」「M子などは続けさまに七人の兵隊に犯され、気絶した」

 そして、「裸でころがっているあいだを通って、侵入してきたときと同様、彼等は表玄関と裏口から引き揚げていった」--慄然とする内容である。

 安倍首相や駐米大使がひたすら日本は既に「謝罪している」として、逆に「従軍慰安婦」を既成事実化するかのような姿勢であるのにたいして、自民党の戸井田とおる議員は2月21日の衆院内閣委員会でこう質した。

 「(決議案を提出した)マイク・ホンダ議員に翻訳して差し上げてもらいたい資料がでてきました。(中略)これは、官報号外、昭和28年2月27日に載った第15回国会の社会党の藤原道子議員の質問の議事録です。(中略)そこにはこのように書かれてあります。『米軍の暴行事件は、昨年十二月まで独立後」独立後ですよ、「八ケ月間におきまして千八百七十八件を数え、なお泣き寝入りになっておりまする件数は膨大な数であろうと想像されております」」

 戸井田議員は、この資料で米国に攻めに転じよと言っているわけだ。同官報にはこう続けられている。 「各地における青少年の特に性犯罪、学童の桃色遊戯等の取調の際、彼らは係官に対して、アメリカ兵の真似をしたことがなぜ悪いかと反問し、大人の世界に精一杯の抗議をいたしておるのであります」

 いまだ数々の戦争犯罪に対して、一度も謝罪したことのない米国に、なぜ毅然とした態度で挑まぬのか。米国は、日本を非難する前に、ワシントン国立公文書館や米軍公文書館で調査してみよ。

 慰安婦非難決議の第4頂にこうある。

 「現在と未来の世代にわたり、このようなおぞましい犯罪があったことを教育せよ」 この言葉、そっくりそのまま米国にお返しする。

*加藤良三・駐米大使は決議案か提出されている米国下院議会に、日本政府は慰
安婦問題の責任を認めて謝罪を済ませている、元慰安婦への補償としてアジア女
性基金に4000万ドルを拠出している、などの書簡を送った。

(以上、長文引用)博士の独り言

小倉・黒人米兵集団脱走・暴行事件
the diary of Japanese comfort women/Japan times 魚拓
Japan times 魚拓




The Girls Next Door
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By PETER LANDESMAN
Published: January 25, 2004
Correction and Editors' Note Appended

The house at 12121/ 2 West Front Street in Plainfield, N.J., is a conventional midcentury home with slate-gray siding, white trim and Victorian lines. When I stood in front of it on a breezy day in October, I could hear the cries of children from the playground of an elementary school around the corner. American flags fluttered from porches and windows. The neighborhood is a leafy, middle-class Anytown. The house is set back off the street, near two convenience stores and a gift shop. On the door of Superior Supermarket was pasted a sign issued by the Plainfield police: ''Safe neighborhoods save lives.'' The store's manager, who refused to tell me his name, said he never noticed anything unusual about the house, and never heard anything. But David Miranda, the young man behind the counter of Westside Convenience, told me he saw girls from the house roughly once a week. ''They came in to buy candy and soda, then went back to the house,'' he said. The same girls rarely came twice, and they were all very young, Miranda said. They never asked for anything beyond what they were purchasing; they certainly never asked for help. Cars drove up to the house all day; nice cars, all kinds of cars. Dozens of men came and went. ''But no one here knew what was really going on,'' Miranda said. And no one ever asked.

On a tip, the Plainfield police raided the house in February 2002, expecting to find illegal aliens working an underground brothel. What the police found were four girls between the ages of 14 and 17. They were all Mexican nationals without documentation. But they weren't prostitutes; they were sex slaves. The distinction is important: these girls weren't working for profit or a paycheck. They were captives to the traffickers and keepers who controlled their every move. ''I consider myself hardened,'' Mark J. Kelly, now a special agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security), told me recently. ''I spent time in the Marine Corps. But seeing some of the stuff I saw, then heard about, from those girls was a difficult, eye-opening experience.''

The police found a squalid, land-based equivalent of a 19th-century slave ship, with rancid, doorless bathrooms; bare, putrid mattresses; and a stash of penicillin, ''morning after'' pills and misoprostol, an antiulcer medication that can induce abortion. The girls were pale, exhausted and malnourished.

It turned out that 1212 1/2 West Front Street was one of what law-enforcement officials say are dozens of active stash houses and apartments in the New York metropolitan area -- mirroring hundreds more in other major cities like Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago -- where under-age girls and young women from dozens of countries are trafficked and held captive. Most of them -- whether they started out in Eastern Europe or Latin America -- are taken to the United States through Mexico. Some of them have been baited by promises of legitimate jobs and a better life in America; many have been abducted; others have been bought from or abandoned by their impoverished families.

Because of the porousness of the U.S.-Mexico border and the criminal networks that traverse it, the towns and cities along that border have become the main staging area in an illicit and barbaric industry, whose ''products'' are women and girls. On both sides of the border, they are rented out for sex for as little as 15 minutes at a time, dozens of times a day. Sometimes they are sold outright to other traffickers and sex rings, victims and experts say. These sex slaves earn no money, there is nothing voluntary about what they do and if they try to escape they are often beaten and sometimes killed.

Last September, in a speech before the United Nations General Assembly, President Bush named sex trafficking as ''a special evil,'' a multibillion-dollar ''underground of brutality and lonely fear,'' a global scourge alongside the AIDS epidemic. Influenced by a coalition of religious organizations, the Bush administration has pushed international action on the global sex trade. The president declared at the U.N. that ''those who create these victims and profit from their suffering must be severely punished'' and that ''those who patronize this industry debase themselves and deepen the misery of others. And governments that tolerate this trade are tolerating a form of slavery.''
Under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 -- the first U.S. law to recognize that people trafficked against their will are victims of a crime, not illegal aliens -- the U.S. government rates other countries' records on human trafficking and can apply economic sanctions on those that aren't making efforts to improve them. Another piece of legislation, the Protect Act, which Bush signed into law last year, makes it a crime for any person to enter the U.S., or for any citizen to travel abroad, for the purpose of sex tourism involving children. The sentences are severe: up to 30 years' imprisonment for each offense.

The thrust of the president's U.N. speech and the scope of the laws passed here to address the sex-trafficking epidemic might suggest that this is a global problem but not particularly an American one. In reality, little has been done to document sex trafficking in this country. In dozens of interviews I conducted with former sex slaves, madams, government and law-enforcement officials and anti-sex-trade activists for more than four months in Eastern Europe, Mexico and the United States, the details and breadth of this sordid trade in the U.S. came to light.

In fact, the United States has become a major importer of sex slaves. Last year, the C.I.A. estimated that between 18,000 and 20,000 people are trafficked annually into the United States. The government has not studied how many of these are victims of sex traffickers, but Kevin Bales, president of Free the Slaves, America's largest anti-slavery organization, says that the number is at least 10,000 a year. John Miller, the State Department's director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, conceded: ''That figure could be low. What we know is that the number is huge.'' Bales estimates that there are 30,000 to 50,000 sex slaves in captivity in the United States at any given time. Laura Lederer, a senior State Department adviser on trafficking, told me, ''We're not finding victims in the United States because we're not looking for them.''

ABDUCTION
In Eastern European capitals like Kiev and Moscow, dozens of sex-trafficking rings advertise nanny positions in the United States in local newspapers; others claim to be scouting for models and actresses. In Chisinau, the capital of the former Soviet republic of Moldova -- the poorest country in Europe and the one experts say is most heavily culled by traffickers for young women -- I saw a billboard with a fresh-faced, smiling young woman beckoning girls to waitress positions in Paris. But of course there are no waitress positions and no ''Paris.'' Some of these young women are actually tricked into paying their own travel expenses -- typically around $3,000 -- as a down payment on what they expect to be bright, prosperous futures, only to find themselves kept prisoner in Mexico before being moved to the United States and sold into sexual bondage there.

The Eastern European trafficking operations, from entrapment to transport, tend to be well-oiled monoethnic machines. One notorious Ukrainian ring, which has since been broken up, was run by Tetyana Komisaruk and Serge Mezheritsky. One of their last transactions, according to Daniel Saunders, an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, took place in late June 2000 at the Hard Rock Cafe in Tijuana. Around dinnertime, a buyer named Gordey Vinitsky walked in. He was followed shortly after by Komisaruk's husband, Valery, who led Vinitsky out to the parking lot and to a waiting van. Inside the van were six Ukrainian women in their late teens and early 20's. They had been promised jobs as models and baby sitters in the glamorous United States, and they probably had no idea why they were sitting in a van in a backwater like Tijuana in the early evening. Vinitsky pointed into the van at two of the women and said he'd take them for $10,000 each. Valery drove the young women to a gated villa 20 minutes away in Rosarito, a Mexican honky-tonk tourist trap in Baja California. They were kept there until July 4, when they were delivered to San Diego by boat and distributed to their buyers, including Vinitsky, who claimed his two ''purchases.'' The Komisaruks, Mezheritsky and Vinitsky were caught in May 2001 and are serving long sentences in U.S. federal prison.

In October, I met Nicole, a young Russian woman who had been trafficked into Mexico by a different network. ''I wanted to get out of Moscow, and they told me the Mexican border was like a freeway,'' said Nicole, who is now 25. We were sitting at a cafe on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, and she was telling me the story of her narrow escape from sex slavery -- she was taken by immigration officers when her traffickers were trying to smuggle her over the border from Tijuana. She still seemed fearful of being discovered by the trafficking ring and didn't want even her initials to appear in print. (Nicole is a name she adopted after coming to the U.S.)
Two years ago, afraid for her life after her boyfriend was gunned down in Moscow in an organized-crime-related shootout, she found herself across a cafe table in Moscow from a man named Alex, who explained how he could save her by smuggling her into the U.S. Once she agreed, Nicole said, Alex told her that if she didn't show up at the airport, '''I'll find you and cut your head off.' Russians do not play around. In Moscow you can get a bullet in your head just for fun.''

Donna M. Hughes, a professor of women's studies at the University of Rhode Island and an expert on sex trafficking, says that prostitution barely existed 12 years ago in the Soviet Union. ''It was suppressed by political structures. All the women had jobs.'' But in the first years after the collapse of Soviet Communism, poverty in the former Soviet states soared. Young women -- many of them college-educated and married -- became easy believers in Hollywood-generated images of swaying palm trees in L.A. ''A few of them have an idea that prostitution might be involved,'' Hughes says. ''But their idea of prostitution is 'Pretty Woman,' which is one of the most popular films in Ukraine and Russia. They're thinking, This may not be so bad.''

The girls' first contacts are usually with what appear to be legitimate travel agencies. According to prosecutors, the Komisaruk/Mezheritsky ring in Ukraine worked with two such agencies in Kiev, Art Life International and Svit Tours. The helpful agents at Svit and Art Life explained to the girls that the best way to get into the U.S. was through Mexico, which they portrayed as a short walk or boat ride from the American dream. Oblivious and full of hope, the girls get on planes to Europe and then on to Mexico.

Every day, flights from Paris, London and Amsterdam arrive at Mexico City's international airport carrying groups of these girls, sometimes as many as seven at a time, according to two Mexico City immigration officers I spoke with (and who asked to remain anonymous). One of them told me that officials at the airport -- who cooperate with Mexico's federal preventive police (P.F.P.) -- work with the traffickers and ''direct airlines to park at certain gates. Officials go to the aircraft. They know the seat numbers. While passengers come off, they take the girls to an office, where officials will 'process' them.''

Magdalena Carral, Mexico's commissioner of the National Institute of Migration, the government agency that controls migration issues at all airports, seaports and land entries into Mexico, told me: ''Everything happens at the airport. We are giving a big fight to have better control of the airport. Corruption does not leave tracks, and sometimes we cannot track it. Six months ago we changed the three main officials at the airport. But it's a daily fight. These networks are very powerful and dangerous.''

But Mexico is not merely a way station en route to the U.S. for third-country traffickers, like the Eastern European rings. It is also a vast source of even younger and more cheaply acquired girls for sexual servitude in the United States. While European traffickers tend to dupe their victims into boarding one-way flights to Mexico to their own captivity, Mexican traffickers rely on the charm and brute force of ''Los Lenones,'' tightly organized associations of pimps, according to Roberto Caballero, an officer with the P.F.P. Although hundreds of ''popcorn traffickers'' -- individuals who take control of one or two girls -- work the margins, Caballero said, at least 15 major trafficking organizations and 120 associated factions tracked by the P.F.P. operate as wholesalers: collecting human merchandise and taking orders from safe houses and brothels in the major sex-trafficking hubs in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago.

Like the Sicilian Mafia, Los Lenones are based on family hierarchies, Caballero explained. The father controls the organization and the money, while the sons and their male cousins hunt, kidnap and entrap victims. The boys leave school at 12 and are given one or two girls their age to rape and pimp out to begin their training, which emphasizes the arts of kidnapping and seduction. Throughout the rural and suburban towns from southern Mexico to the U.S. border, along what traffickers call the Via Lactea, or Milky Way, the agents of Los Lenones troll the bus stations and factories and school dances where under-age girls gather, work and socialize. They first ply the girls like prospective lovers, buying them meals and desserts, promising affection and then marriage. Then the men describe rumors they've heard about America, about the promise of jobs and schools. Sometimes the girls are easy prey. Most of them already dream of El Norte. But the theater often ends as soon as the agent has the girl alone, when he beats her, drugs her or simply forces her into a waiting car.
The majority of Los Lenones -- 80 percent of them, Caballero says -- are based in Tenancingo, a charmless suburb an hour's drive south of Mexico City. Before I left Mexico City for Tenancingo in October, I was warned by Mexican and U.S. officials that the traffickers there are protected by the local police, and that the town is designed to discourage outsiders, with mazelike streets and only two closely watched entrances. The last time the federal police went there to investigate the disappearance of a local girl, their vehicle was surrounded, and the officers were intimidated into leaving. I traveled in a bulletproof Suburban with well-armed federales and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.

On the way, we stopped at a gas station, where I met the parents of a girl from Tenancingo who was reportedly abducted in August 2000. The girl, Suri, is now 20. Her mother told me that there were witnesses who saw her being forced into a car on the way home from work at a local factory. No one called the police. Suri's mother recited the names of daughters of a number of her friends who have also been taken: ''Minerva, Sylvia, Carmen,'' she said in a monotone, as if the list went on and on.

Just two days earlier, her parents heard from Suri (they call her by her nickname) for the first time since she disappeared. ''She's in Queens, New York,'' the mother told me breathlessly. ''She said she was being kept in a house watched by Colombians. She said they take her by car every day to work in a brothel. I was crying on the phone, 'When are you coming back, when are you coming back?' '' The mother looked at me helplessly; the father stared blankly into the distance. Then the mother sobered. ''My daughter said: 'I'm too far away. I don't know when I'm coming back.''' Before she hung up, Suri told her mother: ''Don't cry. I'll escape soon. And don't talk to anyone.''

Sex-trafficking victims widely believe that if they talk, they or someone they love will be killed. And their fear is not unfounded, since the tentacles of the trafficking rings reach back into the girls' hometowns, and local law enforcement is often complicit in the sex trade.

One officer in the P.F.P.'s anti-trafficking division told me that 10 high-level officials in the state of Sonora share a $200,000 weekly payoff from traffickers, a gargantuan sum of money for Mexico. The officer told me with a frozen smile that he was powerless to do anything about it.

''Some officials are not only on the organization's payroll, they are key players in the organization,'' an official at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City told me. ''Corruption is the most important reason these networks are so successful.''

Nicolas Suarez, the P.F.P.'s coordinator of intelligence, sounded fatalistic about corruption when I spoke to him in Mexico City in September. ''We have that cancer, corruption,'' he told me with a shrug. ''But it exists in every country. In every house there is a devil.''

The U.S. Embassy official told me: ''Mexican officials see sex trafficking as a U.S. problem. If there wasn't such a large demand, then people -- trafficking victims and migrants alike -- wouldn't be going up there.''

When I asked Magdalena Carral, the Mexican commissioner of migration, about these accusations, she said that she didn't know anything about Los Lenones or sex trafficking in Tenancingo. But she conceded: ''There is an investigation against some officials accused of cooperating with these trafficking networks nationwide. Sonora is one of those places.'' She added, ''We are determined not to allow any kind of corruption in this administration, not the smallest kind.''

Gary Haugen, president of the International Justice Mission, an organization based in Arlington, Va., that fights sexual exploitation in South Asia and Southeast Asia, says: ''Sex trafficking isn't a poverty issue but a law-enforcement issue. You can only carry out this trade at significant levels with the cooperation of local law enforcement. In the developing world the police are not seen as a solution for anything. You don't run to the police; you run from the police.''

BREAKING THE GIRLS IN
Once the Mexican traffickers abduct or seduce the women and young girls, it's not other men who first indoctrinate them into sexual slavery but other women. The victims and officials I spoke to all emphasized this fact as crucial to the trafficking rings' success. ''Women are the principals,'' Caballero, the Mexican federal preventive police officer, told me. ''The victims are put under the influence of the mothers, who handle them and beat them. Then they give the girls to the men to beat and rape into submission.'' Traffickers understand that because women can more easily gain the trust of young girls, they can more easily crush them. ''Men are the customers and controllers, but within most trafficking organizations themselves, women are the operators,'' Haugen says. ''Women are the ones who exert violent force and psychological torture.''
This mirrors the tactics of the Eastern European rings. ''Mexican pimps have learned a lot from European traffickers,'' said Claudia, a former prostitute and madam in her late 40's, whom I met in Tepito, Mexico City's vast and lethal ghetto. ''The Europeans not only gather girls but put older women in the same houses,'' she told me. ''They get younger and older women emotionally attached. They're transported together, survive together.''

The traffickers' harvest is innocence. Before young women and girls are taken to the United States, their captors want to obliterate their sexual inexperience while preserving its appearance. For the Eastern European girls, this ''preparation'' generally happens in Ensenada, a seaside tourist town in Baja California, a region in Mexico settled by Russian immigrants, or Tijuana, where Nicole, the Russian woman I met in Los Angeles, was taken along with four other girls when she arrived in Mexico. The young women are typically kept in locked-down, gated villas in groups of 16 to 20. The girls are provided with all-American clothing -- Levi's and baseball caps. They learn to say, ''U.S. citizen.'' They are also sexually brutalized. Nicole told me that the day she arrived in Tijuana, three of her traveling companions were ''tried out'' locally. The education lasts for days and sometimes weeks.

For the Mexican girls abducted by Los Lenones, the process of breaking them in often begins on Calle Santo Tomas, a filthy narrow street in La Merced, a dangerous and raucous ghetto in Mexico City. Santo Tomas has been a place for low-end prostitution since before Spain's conquest of Mexico in the 16th century. But beginning in the early 90's, it became an important training ground for under-age girls and young women on their way into sexual bondage in the United States. When I first visited Santo Tomas, in late September, I found 150 young women walking a slow-motion parabola among 300 or 400 men. It was a balmy night, and the air was heavy with the smell of barbecue and gasoline. Two dead dogs were splayed over the curb just beyond where the girls struck casual poses in stilettos and spray-on-tight neon vinyl and satin or skimpy leopard-patterned outfits. Some of the girls looked as young as 12. Their faces betrayed no emotion. Many wore pendants of the grim reaper around their necks and made hissing sounds; this, I was told, was part of a ritual to ward off bad energy. The men, who were there to rent or just gaze, didn't speak. From the tables of a shabby cafe midblock, other men -- also Mexicans, but more neatly dressed -- sat scrutinizing the girls as at an auction. These were buyers and renters with an interest in the youngest and best looking. They nodded to the girls they wanted and then followed them past a guard in a Yankees baseball cap through a tin doorway.

Inside, the girls braced the men before a statue of St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, and patted them down for weapons. Then the girls genuflected to the stone-faced saint and led the men to the back, grabbing a condom and roll of toilet paper on the way. They pointed to a block of ice in a tub in lieu of a urinal. Beyond a blue hallway the air went sour, like old onions; there were 30 stalls curtained off by blue fabric, every one in use. Fifteen minutes of straightforward intercourse with the girl's clothes left on cost 50 pesos, or about $4.50. For $4.50 more, the dress was lifted. For another $4.50, the bra would be taken off. Oral sex was $4.50; ''acrobatic positions'' were $1.80 each. Despite the dozens of people and the various exertions in this room, there were only the sounds of zippers and shoes. There was no human noise at all.

Most of the girls on Santo Tomas would have sex with 20 to 30 men a day; they would do this seven days a week usually for weeks but sometimes for months before they were ''ready'' for the United States. If they refused, they would be beaten and sometimes killed. They would be told that if they tried to escape, one of their family members, who usually had no idea where they were, would be beaten or killed. Working at the brutalizing pace of 20 men per day, a girl could earn her captors as much as $2,000 a week. In the U.S., that same girl could bring in perhaps $30,000 per week.

In Europe, girls and women trafficked for the sex trade gain in value the closer they get to their destinations. According to Iana Matei, who operates Reaching Out, a Romanian rescue organization, a Romanian or Moldovan girl can be sold to her first transporter -- who she may or may not know has taken her captive -- for as little as $60, then for $500 to the next. Eventually she can be sold for $2,500 to the organization that will ultimately control and rent her for sex for tens of thousands of dollars a week. (Though the Moldovan and Romanian organizations typically smuggle girls to Western Europe and not the United States, they are, Matei says, closely allied with Russian and Ukrainian networks that do.)

Jonathan M. Winer, deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement in the Clinton administration, says, ''The girls are worth a penny or a ruble in their home village, and suddenly they're worth hundreds and thousands somewhere else.''

CROSSING THE BORDER
In November, I followed by helicopter the 12-foot-high sheet-metal fence that represents the U.S.-Mexico boundary from Imperial Beach, Calif., south of San Diego, 14 miles across the gritty warrens and havoc of Tijuana into the barren hills of Tecate. The fence drops off abruptly at Colonia Nido de las Aguilas, a dry riverbed that straddles the border. Four hundred square miles of bone-dry, barren hills stretch out on the U.S. side. I hovered over the end of the fence with Lester McDaniel, a special agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. On the U.S. side, ''J-e-s-u-s'' was spelled out in rocks 10 feet high across a steep hillside. A 15-foot white wooden cross rose from the peak. It is here that thousands of girls and young women -- most of them Mexican and many of them straight from Calle Santo Tomas -- are taken every year, mostly between January and August, the dry season. Coyotes -- or smugglers -- subcontracted exclusively by sex traffickers sometimes trudge the girls up to the cross and let them pray, then herd them into the hills northward.

A few miles east, we picked up a deeply grooved trail at the fence and followed it for miles into the hills until it plunged into a deep isolated ravine called Cottonwood Canyon. A Ukrainian sex-trafficking ring force-marches young women through here, McDaniel told me. In high heels and seductive clothing, the young women trek 12 miles to Highway 94, where panel trucks sit waiting. McDaniel listed the perils: rattlesnakes, dehydration and hypothermia. He failed to mention the traffickers' bullets should the women try to escape.

''If a girl tries to run, she's killed and becomes just one more woman in the desert,'' says Marisa B. Ugarte, director of the Bilateral Safety Corridor Coalition, a San Diego organization that coordinates rescue efforts for trafficking victims on both sides of the border. ''But if she keeps going north, she reaches the Gates of Hell.''

One girl who was trafficked back and forth across that border repeatedly was Andrea. ''Andrea'' is just one name she was given by her traffickers and clients; she doesn't know her real name. She was born in the United States and sold or abandoned here -- at about 4 years old, she says -- by a woman who may have been her mother. (She is now in her early to mid-20's; she doesn't know for sure.) She says that she spent approximately the next 12 years as the captive of a sex-trafficking ring that operated on both sides of the Mexican border. Because of the threat of retribution from her former captors, who are believed to be still at large, an organization that rescues and counsels trafficking victims and former prostitutes arranged for me to meet Andrea in October at a secret location in the United States.

In a series of excruciating conversations, Andrea explained to me how the trafficking ring that kept her worked, moving young girls (and boys too) back and forth over the border, selling nights and weekends with them mostly to American men. She said that the ring imported -- both through abduction and outright purchase -- toddlers, children and teenagers into the U.S. from many countries.

''The border is very busy, lots of stuff moving back and forth,'' she said. ''Say you needed to get some kids. This guy would offer a woman a lot of money, and she'd take birth certificates from the U.S. -- from Puerto Rican children or darker-skinned children -- and then she would go into Mexico through Tijuana. Then she'd drive to Juárez'' -- across the Mexican border from El Paso, Tex. -- ''and then they'd go shopping. I was taken with them once. We went to this house that had a goat in the front yard and came out with a 4-year-old boy.'' She remembers the boy costing around $500 (she said that many poor parents were told that their children would go to adoption agencies and on to better lives in America). ''When we crossed the border at Juárez, all the border guards wanted to see was a birth certificate for the dark-skinned kids.''
Andrea continued: ''There would be a truck waiting for us at the Mexico border, and those trucks you don't want to ride in. Those trucks are closed. They had spots where there would be transfers, the rest stops and truck stops on the freeways in the U.S. One person would walk you into the bathroom, and then another person would take you out of the bathroom and take you to a different vehicle.''

Andrea told me she was transported to Juárez dozens of times. During one visit, when she was about 7 years old, the trafficker took her to the Radisson Casa Grande Hotel, where there was a john waiting in a room. The john was an older American man, and he read Bible passages to her before and after having sex with her. Andrea described other rooms she remembered in other hotels in Mexico: the Howard Johnson in León, the Crowne Plaza in Guadalajara. She remembers most of all the ceiling patterns. ''When I was taken to Mexico, I knew things were going to be different,'' she said. The ''customers'' were American businessmen. ''The men who went there had higher positions, had more to lose if they were caught doing these things on the other side of the border. I was told my purpose was to keep these men from abusing their own kids.'' Later she told me: ''The white kids you could beat but you couldn't mark. But with Mexican kids you could do whatever you wanted. They're untraceable. You lose nothing by killing them.''

Then she and the other children and teenagers in this cell were walked back across the border to El Paso by the traffickers. ''The border guards talked to you like, 'Did you have fun in Mexico?' And you answered exactly what you were told, 'Yeah, I had fun.' 'Runners' moved the harder-to-place kids, the darker or not-quite-as-well-behaved kids, kids that hadn't been broken yet.''

Another trafficking victim I met, a young woman named Montserrat, was taken to the United States from Veracruz, Mexico, six years ago, at age 13. (Montserrat is her nickname.) ''I was going to work in America,'' she told me. ''I wanted to go to school there, have an apartment and a red Mercedes Benz.'' Montserrat's trafficker, who called himself Alejandro, took her to Sonora, across the Mexican border from Douglas, Ariz., where she joined a group of a dozen other teenage girls, all with the same dream of a better life. They were from Chiapas, Guatemala, Oaxaca -- everywhere, she said.

The group was marched 12 hours through the desert, just a few of the thousands of Mexicans who bolted for America that night along the 2,000 miles of border. Cars were waiting at a fixed spot on the other side. Alejandro directed her to a Nissan and drove her and a few others to a house she said she thought was in Phoenix, the home of a white American family. ''It looked like America,'' she told me. ''I ate chicken. The family ignored me, watched TV. I thought the worst part was behind me.''

IN THE UNITED STATES: HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
A week after Montserrat was taken across the border, she said, she and half a dozen other girls were loaded into a windowless van. ''Alejandro dropped off girls at gas stations as we drove, wherever there were minimarkets,'' Montserrat told me. At each drop-off there was somebody waiting. Sometimes a girl would be escorted to the bathroom, never to return to the van. They drove 24 hours a day. ''As the girls were leaving, being let out the back, all of them 14 or 15 years old, I felt confident,'' Montserrat said. We were talking in Mexico City, where she has been since she escaped from her trafficker four years ago. She's now 19, and shy with her body but direct with her gaze, which is flat and unemotional. ''I didn't know the real reason they were disappearing,'' she said. ''They were going to a better life.''

Eventually, only Montserrat and one other girl remained. Outside, the air had turned frigid, and there was snow on the ground. It was night when the van stopped at a gas station. A man was waiting. Montserrat's friend hopped out the back, gleeful. ''She said goodbye, I'll see you tomorrow,'' Montserrat recalled. ''I never saw her again.''

After leaving the gas station, Alejandro drove Montserrat to an apartment. A couple of weeks later he took her to a Dollarstore. ''He bought me makeup,'' Montserrat told me. ''He chose a short dress and a halter top, both black. I asked him why the clothes. He said it was for a party the owner of the apartment was having. He bought me underwear. Then I started to worry.'' When they arrived at the apartment, Alejandro left, saying he was coming back. But another man appeared at the door. ''The man said he'd already paid and I had to do whatever he said,'' Montserrat said. ''When he said he already paid, I knew why I was there. I was crushed.''
Montserrat said that she didn't leave that apartment for the next three months, then for nine months after that, Alejandro regularly took her in and out of the apartment for appointments with various johns.

Sex trafficking is one of the few human rights violations that rely on exposure: victims have to be available, displayed, delivered and returned. Girls were shuttled in open cars between the Plainfield, N.J., stash house and other locations in northern New Jersey like Elizabeth and Union City. Suri told her mother that she was being driven in a black town car -- just one of hundreds of black town cars traversing New York City at any time -- from her stash house in Queens to places where she was forced to have sex. A Russian ring drove women between various Brooklyn apartments and strip clubs in New Jersey. Andrea named trading hubs at highway rest stops in Deming, N.M.; Kingman, Ariz.; Boulder City, Nev.; and Glendale, Calif. Glendale, Andrea said, was a fork in the road; from there, vehicles went either north to San Jose or south toward San Diego. The traffickers drugged them for travel, she said. ''When they fed you, you started falling asleep.''

In the past several months, I have visited a number of addresses where trafficked girls and young women have reportedly ended up: besides the house in Plainfield, N.J., there is a row house on 51st Avenue in the Corona section of Queens, which has been identified to Mexican federal preventive police by escaped trafficking victims. There is the apartment at Barrington Plaza in the tony Westwood section of Los Angeles, one place that some of the Komisaruk/Mezheritsky ring's trafficking victims ended up, according to Daniel Saunders, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the ring. And there's a house on Massachusetts Avenue in Vista, Calif., a San Diego suburb, which was pointed out to me by a San Diego sheriff. These places all have at least one thing in common: they are camouflaged by their normal, middle-class surroundings.

''This is not narco-traffic secrecy,'' says Sharon B. Cohn, director of anti-trafficking operations for the International Justice Mission. ''These are not people kidnapped and held for ransom, but women and children sold every single day. If they're hidden, their keepers don't make money.''

I.J.M.'s president, Gary Haugen, says: ''It's the easiest kind of crime in the world to spot. Men look for it all day, every day.''

But border agents and local policemen usually don't know trafficking when they see it. The operating assumption among American police departments is that women who sell their bodies do so by choice, and undocumented foreign women who sell their bodies are not only prostitutes (that is, voluntary sex workers) but also trespassers on U.S. soil. No Department of Justice attorney or police vice squad officer I spoke with in Los Angeles -- one of the country's busiest thoroughfares for forced sex traffic -- considers sex trafficking in the U.S. a serious problem, or a priority. A teenage girl arrested on Sunset Strip for solicitation, or a group of Russian sex workers arrested in a brothel raid in the San Fernando Valley, are automatically heaped onto a pile of workaday vice arrests.

The U.S. now offers 5,000 visas a year to trafficking victims to allow them to apply for residency. And there's faint hope among sex-trafficking experts that the Bush administration's recent proposal on Mexican immigration, if enacted, could have some positive effect on sex traffic into the U.S., by sheltering potential witnesses. ''If illegal immigrants who have information about victims have a chance at legal status in this country, they might feel secure enough to come forward,'' says John Miller of the State Department. But ambiguities still dominate on the front lines -- the borders and the streets of urban America -- where sex trafficking will always look a lot like prostitution.

''It's not a particularly complicated thing,'' says Sharon Cohn of International Justice Mission. ''Sex trafficking gets thrown into issues of intimacy and vice, but it's a major crime. It's purely profit and pleasure, and greed and lust, and it's right under homicide.''

IMPRISONMENT AND SUBMISSION
The basement, Andrea said, held as many as 16 children and teenagers of different ethnicities. She remembers that it was underneath a house in an upper-middle-class neighborhood on the West Coast. Throughout much of her captivity, this basement was where she was kept when she wasn't working. ''There was lots of scrawling on the walls,'' she said. ''The other kids drew stick figures, daisies, teddy bears. This Mexican boy would draw a house with sunshine. We each had a mat.''
Andrea paused. ''But nothing happens to you in the basement,'' she continued. ''You just had to worry about when the door opened.''

She explained: ''They would call you out of the basement, and you'd get a bath and you'd get a dress, and if your dress was yellow you were probably going to Disneyland.'' She said they used color coding to make transactions safer for the traffickers and the clients. ''At Disneyland there would be people doing drop-offs and pickups for kids. It's a big open area full of kids, and nobody pays attention to nobody. They would kind of quietly say, 'Go over to that person,' and you would just slip your hand into theirs and say, 'I was looking for you, Daddy.' Then that person would move off with one or two or three of us.''

Her account reminded me -- painfully -- of the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. In the story, a piper shows up and asks for 1,000 guilders for ridding the town of a plague of rats. Playing his pipe, he lures all the rats into the River Weser, where they drown. But Hamelin's mayor refuses to pay him. The piper goes back into the streets and again starts to play his music. This time ''all the little boys and girls, with rosy cheeks and flaxen curls, and sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls'' follow him out of town and into the hills. The piper leads the children to a mountainside, where a portal opens. The children follow him in, the cave closes and Hamelin's children -- all but one, too lame to keep up -- are never seen again.

Montserrat said that she was moved around a lot and often didn't know where she was. She recalled that she was in Detroit for two months before she realized that she was in ''the city where cars are made,'' because the door to the apartment Alejandro kept her in was locked from the outside. She says she was forced to service at least two men a night, and sometimes more. She watched through the windows as neighborhood children played outside. Emotionally, she slowly dissolved. Later, Alejandro moved her to Portland, Ore., where once a week he worked her out of a strip club. In all that time she had exactly one night off; Alejandro took her to see ''Scary Movie 2.''

All the girls I spoke to said that their captors were both psychologically and physically abusive. Andrea told me that she and the other children she was held with were frequently beaten to keep them off-balance and obedient. Sometimes they were videotaped while being forced to have sex with adults or one another. Often, she said, she was asked to play roles: the therapist's patient or the obedient daughter. Her cell of sex traffickers offered three age ranges of sex partners -- toddler to age 4, 5 to 12 and teens -- as well as what she called a ''damage group.'' ''In the damage group they can hit you or do anything they wanted,'' she explained. ''Though sex always hurts when you are little, so it's always violent, everything was much more painful once you were placed in the damage group.

''They'd get you hungry then to train you'' to have oral sex, she said. ''They'd put honey on a man. For the littlest kids, you had to learn not to gag. And they would push things in you so you would open up better. We learned responses. Like if they wanted us to be sultry or sexy or scared. Most of them wanted you scared. When I got older I'd teach the younger kids how to float away so things didn't hurt.''

Kevin Bales of Free the Slaves says: ''The physical path of a person being trafficked includes stages of degradation of a person's mental state. A victim gets deprived of food, gets hungry, a little dizzy and sleep-deprived. She begins to break down; she can't think for herself. Then take away her travel documents, and you've made her stateless. Then layer on physical violence, and she begins to follow orders. Then add a foreign culture and language, and she's trapped.''

Then add one more layer: a sex-trafficking victim's belief that her family is being tracked as collateral for her body. All sex-trafficking operations, whether Mexican, Ukrainian or Thai, are vast criminal underworlds with roots and branches that reach back to the countries, towns and neighborhoods of their victims.
''There's a vast misunderstanding of what coercion is, of how little it takes to make someone a slave,'' Gary Haugen of International Justice Mission said. ''The destruction of dignity and sense of self, these girls' sense of resignation. . . . '' He didn't finish the sentence.

In Tijuana in November, I met with Mamacita, a Mexican trafficking-victim-turned-madam, who used to oversee a stash house for sex slaves in San Diego. Mamacita (who goes by a nickname) was full of regret and worry. She left San Diego three years ago, but she says that the trafficking ring, run by three violent Mexican brothers, is still in operation. ''The girls can't leave,'' Mamacita said. ''They're always being watched. They lock them into apartments. The fear is unbelievable. They can't talk to anyone. They are always hungry, pale, always shaking and cold. But they never complain. If they do, they'll be beaten or killed.''

In Vista, Calif., I followed a pickup truck driven by a San Diego sheriff's deputy named Rick Castro. We wound past a tidy suburban downtown, a supermall and the usual hometown franchises. We stopped alongside the San Luis Rey River, across the street from a Baptist church, a strawberry farm and a municipal ballfield.

A neat subdivision and cycling path ran along the opposite bank. The San Luis Rey was mostly dry, filled now with an impenetrable jungle of 15-foot-high bamboolike reeds. As Castro and I started down a well-worn path into the thicket, he told me about the time he first heard about this place, in October 2001. A local health care worker had heard rumors about Mexican immigrants using the reeds for sex and came down to offer condoms and advice. She found more than 400 men and 50 young women between 12 and 15 dressed in tight clothing and high heels. There was a separate group of a dozen girls no more than 11 or 12 wearing white communion dresses. ''The girls huddled in a circle for protection,'' Castro told me, ''and had big eyes like terrified deer.''

I followed Castro into the riverbed, and only 50 yards from the road we found a confounding warren of more than 30 roomlike caves carved into the reeds. It was a sunny morning, but the light in there was refracted, dreary and basementlike. The ground in each was a squalid nest of mud, tamped leaves, condom wrappers, clumps of toilet paper and magazines. Soiled underwear was strewn here and there, plastic garbage bags jury-rigged through the reeds in lieu of walls. One of the caves' inhabitants had hung old CD's on the tips of branches, like Christmas ornaments. It looked vaguely like a recent massacre site. It was 8 in the morning, but the girls could begin arriving any minute. Castro told me how it works: the girls are dropped off at the ballfield, then herded through a drainage sluice under the road into the riverbed. Vans shuttle the men from a 7-Eleven a mile away. The girls are forced to turn 15 tricks in five hours in the mud. The johns pay $15 and get 10 minutes. It is in nearly every respect a perfect extension of Calle Santo Tomas in Mexico City. Except that this is what some of those girls are training for.

If anything, the women I talked to said that the sex in the U.S. is even rougher than what the girls face on Calle Santo Tomas. Rosario, a woman I met in Mexico City, who had been trafficked to New York and held captive for a number of years, said: ''In America we had 'special jobs.' Oral sex, anal sex, often with many men. Sex is now more adventurous, harder.'' She said that she believed younger foreign girls were in demand in the U.S. because of an increased appetite for more aggressive, dangerous sex. Traffickers need younger and younger girls, she suggested, simply because they are more pliable. In Eastern Europe, too, the typical age of sex-trafficking victims is plummeting; according to Matei of Reaching Out, while most girls used to be in their late teens and 20's, 13-year-olds are now far from unusual.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at the Cyber Crimes Center in Fairfax, Va., are finding that when it comes to sex, what was once considered abnormal is now the norm. They are tracking a clear spike in the demand for harder-core pornography on the Internet. ''We've become desensitized by the soft stuff; now we need a harder and harder hit,'' says I.C.E. Special Agent Perry Woo. Cybernetworks like KaZaA and Morpheus / through which you can download and trade images and videos -- have become the Mexican border of virtual sexual exploitation. I had heard of one Web site that supposedly offered sex slaves for purchase to individuals. The I.C.E. agents hadn't heard of it. Special Agent Don Daufenbach, I.C.E.'s manager for undercover operations, brought it up on a screen. A hush came over the room as the agents leaned forward, clearly disturbed. ''That sure looks like the real thing,'' Daufenbach said. There were streams of Web pages of thumbnail images of young women of every ethnicity in obvious distress, bound, gagged, contorted. The agents in the room pointed out probable injuries from torture. Cyberauctions for some of the women were in progress; one had exceeded $300,000. ''With new Internet technology,'' Woo said, ''pornography is becoming more pervasive. With Web cams we're seeing more live molestation of children.'' One of I.C.E.'s recent successes, Operation Hamlet, broke up a ring of adults who traded images and videos of themselves forcing sex on their own young children.
But the supply of cheap girls and young women to feed the global appetite appears to be limitless. And it's possible that the crimes committed against them in the U.S. cut deeper than elsewhere, precisely because so many of them are snared by the glittery promise of an America that turns out to be not their salvation but their place of destruction.

ENDGAME
Typically, a young trafficking victim in the U.S. lasts in the system for two to four years. After that, Bales says: ''She may be killed in the brothel. She may be dumped and deported. Probably least likely is that she will take part in the prosecution of the people that enslaved her.''

Who can expect a young woman trafficked into the U.S., trapped in a foreign culture, perhaps unable to speak English, physically and emotionally abused and perhaps drug-addicted, to ask for help from a police officer, who more likely than not will look at her as a criminal and an illegal alien? Even Andrea, who was born in the United States and spoke English, says she never thought of escaping, ''because what's out there? What's out there was scarier. We had customers who were police, so you were not going to go talk to a cop. We had this customer from Nevada who was a child psychologist, so you're not going to go talk to a social worker. So who are you going to talk to?''

And if the girls are lucky enough to escape, there's often nowhere for them to go. ''The families don't want them back,'' Sister Veronica, a nun who helps run a rescue mission for trafficked prostitutes in an old church in Mexico City, told me. ''They're shunned.''

When I first met her, Andrea told me: ''We're way too damaged to give back. A lot of these children never wanted to see their parents again after a while, because what do you tell your parents? What are you going to say? You're no good.''
Correction: February 8, 2004, Sunday An article on Jan. 25 about sexual slavery referred erroneously to the film ''Scary Movie 2.'' A Mexican woman who was being held as a sex slave in the United States could not have been taken to see it by her captor; by the time the movie came out in 2001, she had already escaped and returned to Mexico.

Editors' Note: February 15, 2004, Sunday ''The Girls Next Door,'' an article about the importing of women and girls to the United States for sexual slavery, has generated much discussion since it appeared in The Times Magazine on Jan. 25. In response to questions from readers and other publications about sources and accuracy, the magazine has carried out a thorough review of the article.

On the issue of sources, the writer, Peter Landesman, conducted more than 45 interviews, including many with high-ranking federal officials, law enforcement officers and representatives of human rights organizations. Four sources insisted on anonymity to protect their professional positions. A magazine fact checker also interviewed all relevant sources, many of them both before and after publication. Some readers have questioned the figure of 10,000 enforced prostitutes brought into this country each year. The source of that number is Kevin Bales, recommended to the magazine by Human Rights Watch as the best authority on the extent of enforced prostitution in the United States, who based his estimates on State Department documents, arrest and prosecution records and information from nearly 50 social service agencies.

In the course of this review, several errors were discovered in specific details. One, an erroneous reference to the release date of ''Scary Movie 2,'' was corrected in the magazine last Sunday.

On the question whether women imported through Cottonwood Canyon, Calif., could have been wearing high heels, the original source, when pressed, acknowledged that his information was hearsay. The article should not have specified what the women were wearing, and the anecdote should have been related in the past tense, since the trafficking ring was broken up in 2001.

The woman in her 20's known to her traffickers as Andrea recalled an incorrect name for the hotel to which she was taken in Juárez, Mexico. The Radisson Casa Grande had not yet opened when she escaped from her captors.

After the article was published, the writer made an impromptu comment in a radio interview, noting that Andrea has multiple-personality disorder. The magazine editors did not learn of her illness before publication. Andrea's account of her years in slavery remained consistent over two and a half years of psychotherapy. Her therapist says that her illness has no effect on the accuracy of her memory. Her hours-long interview with the author, recorded on tape, is lucid and consistent.
An independent expert consulted by the magazine, Dr. Leonard Shengold, who has written books and papers about child abuse and the reliability and unreliability of memory, affirms that a diagnosis of multiple-personality disorder is not inconsistent with accurate memories of childhood abuse. Because multiple-personality disorder has been associated with false memory, however, the diagnosis should have been cited in the article.

The magazine's cover showed a 19-year-old nicknamed Montserrat, who escaped from a trafficker four years ago. An insignia on her school uniform had been retouched out of the picture to shield her whereabouts. The change violated The Times's policy against altering photographs. Against our will mochi thinking Monday, April 9, 2012 Danan comfort women for US army http://www010.upp.so-net.ne.jp/japancia/kiji/beigun.html 米軍がベトナムで設けていた慰安所のレポート。 米国議会はマイクホンダの議案を通して日本を責める立場には無い! the report that the comfort stations had been provided the U.S. military in Vietnam. U.S. Congress has no rigt to blame against Japan through Mike Honda's proposal. 原文は http://www.amazon.com/Against-Our-Will-Women-Rape/dp/0449908208 Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape [Paperback] Susan Brownmiller (Author) の92-97ページ、 訳文は レイプ・踏みにじられた意思 の119-126ページです (南ベトナム兵やベトコンによるレイプの話から続く) さて、次にアメリカ軍であるが、まずは制度としての売春に目を向けてみよう。ヴェトナムでのアメリカ軍のプレゼンスが大きくなるに従い、暗黙の軍隊の論理――女の身体は戦争の報償であるばかりか、兵士たちの健康と幸福を守るためのソーダ水やアイスクリームのような必需品であるという――が、日常的に実施されるにいたった。女性の身体を金で買うことのできたヴェトナムの状況は、イデオロギーとしてのレイプを増幅させなかったと同時に、それを抑えることもなかったのである。 レイプの発生に関してきわめて現実的な予測を立てていたジョージ・S・パットン将軍は、第二次世界大戦の司令官時代、軍慰安所を実験的に建設したいとの意向をもっていたとされる。だがその後、アメリカ本国での妻や母親たちの反対運動が戦争遂行に支障を与えるとの懸念から、この計画は実行にいたらなかった。第二次世界大戦で実現できなかった彼の着想は、ヴェトナムで実を結んだといえる。 軍慰安所の伝統は、アメリカ軍の駐留よりはるか以前からヴェトナムに根づいていた。ヴェトナム戦争初期のルポを生き生きとした筆致で描いた故バーナード・フォールは、インドシナ戦争中のフランス陸軍が戦争における女性の利用に対して行った際だった貢献――移動野戦慰安所を設置し、アルジェリア女性を働かせた――について、熱っぽく語っている。フォールによれば、「移動慰安所は部隊とともに戦闘地域を移動した。インドシナに駐留していたフランス軍は、その存在をアメリカの記者や役人の目にはふれないようにしていた。ある大佐は『どかかのおしゃべりが、アメリカの資金がフランス軍の慰安所維持に使われているなどということを言いふらしたら、とんでもない騒ぎになる』ともらした」。有名なディエンビエンフー要塞の中にも移動野戦慰安所があったと、フォールは書いている。 アメリカ軍がフランス軍にとって代わるころには南ヴェトナム社会は混乱の度を増し、もはや軍慰安所のために外国女性を連れてくる必要もなくなっていた。もっとも、この長期にわたる戦争以前のヴェトナム社会に売春が存在しなかったというわけではない。ピーター・アーネットの言葉を借りれば、「売春は古くから存在していた。金が必要になると家長が娘を売るという例も少なくなかった」のである。だが戦争が長引くにつれて、多くの南ヴェトナム女性にとって売春が生計を立てるための唯一の手段となったのは事実だ。一九六一年には、この問題を憂慮した教育者や作家、ソーシャルワーカーら数百人の女性によってヴェトナム女性の尊厳および人権擁護委員会なる組織がサイゴンで結成されたとAP電は伝えている。同電によれば、その第一回会合では「激しい言葉」が飛び交い、ある女性教育者は、「戦争で悲惨な状況に陥った国民は、アメリカドルを得るために妻や子ども、親戚、友人まで売ることを余儀なるされている」と発言した。しかし戦争という圧倒的な現実の前に、この委員会の消息はその後二度と聞かれることはなかった。 アメリカ軍は徐々に売春ビジネスに手を染めていった。戦争の拡大に並行して売春もまた拡大していったが、その背後にあったのは、戦場に出た男には性的対象としての女性の身体が必要だという前提である。アーネットによれば、アメリカ軍が管理・統制する慰安所が徐々に受け入れられていったのは、彼が「マクナマラ理論」と呼ぶ考え方の当然の帰結だという。いわく、「一九六五年の時点での最重要課題は、軍隊を満ち足りた状態にしておくことだった。アイスクリーム、映画、プール、ピッツァ、ホットドッグ、クリーニングサービス、”フーチメイド”などを完備することである。”フーチメイド”はメイドとして雇われるのであり、売春婦ではない。メイドとのセックスはあくまで個人的な取り決めによるもので、その関係は便宜的なものとされた。実際には多くのメイドが売春婦となったが、初期のころには、そうであることが見つかればメイドは解雇された」。 ”フーチメイド”は売春施設への第一歩だった。やがてバーの女性、そしてマッサージ・パーラーがこれに続く。アーネットによれば、一番「問題」を起こしたのは後方部隊の兵士たちだった。「そこには不満と退屈が充満していた。戦闘要員ではなく、したがって勲章にはありつけないことを知っている彼らは、退屈しのぎに車を駆って町に行っては違法の売春宿にしけこんだ。だが性病の防止と安全上の理由から、売春宿への出入りは禁止されていた」(マッサージ・パーラー――サイゴンからニューヨークにいたるあらゆる場所に存在するあやしげな性の”グレーゾーン”――は常に合法的と見なされた) 一九六五年、ダナンの海兵隊基地では月に一回、実験的に兵士たちを大隊ごと町まで行かせてみることにした。ところがアーネットによると、これはさんざんな結果に終わった。「兵士たちはまるで獣の群と化し、手がつけられなかった。まさに混乱の一語に尽きる状態だった」。この苦い経験を経て、海兵隊司令部は兵士たちを基地から外には出さないことに決めた。その結果、動かしがたい需要と供給の法則がはたらき、基地の周りにはたちまち売春宿、マッサージ・パーラー、麻薬売人などが占めるバラック――”ドッグパッチ”――が建ち並んだのだった。「海兵隊員は夜になると鉄線を押し分けて基地の外に出ていき、司令部もこれを見逃した」とアーネットは話した。 アーネットのみるところ(私は同意していないが)、性的便宜施設という点ではアメリカ陸軍のほうが海兵隊より「進歩」していた。一九六六年には、中央高原地帯のアン・ケに駐留する第一騎兵師団、サイゴン北方四○キロのライ・ケに駐留する第一歩兵師団、さらにはプレイク省に駐留する第四歩兵師団のそれぞれの基地周辺には、すでに正規の軍慰安所が設置されていたという。 第一歩兵師団第三旅団の基地に付属するライ・ケの「レクリエーションエリア」は面積約四○○○平方メートル、周囲には有刺鉄線をはりめぐらされ、ゲートには憲兵が立っていた。保安上、出入りが許されるのは日中の明るい間だけで、構内にはホットドッグ、ハンバーガー、みやげ物などの売店もあったが、兵士たちの目当ては長さ三○メートルほどの細長い二棟のコンクリート・バラック――旅団を構成する四○○○人の兵士にサービスを提供する軍慰安所――にあった。どちらの棟にもバーが二ヵ所と楽団の演奏用ステージが一ヵ所、そしてカーテンで仕切られた小部屋が六○室あり、ここにヴェトナム女性が住み込みで働いていた。 小部屋には薄いマットレスを敷いただけの粗末なベッドが置かれ、壁の一方には着替えの服をかけておくための釘が一本。反対側の壁には『プレイボーイ』の見開きのページのヌード写真が、兵士の気をそそるように飾られていた。このライ・ケのレクリエーションセンターの女性たちは、派手なメーキャップに大きく膨らませた髪をスプレーで固め、アメリカ兵の好みに合わせてシリコンでバストを豊かにしている者も大勢いた。アーネットによれば、彼女たちのサービスは「手早くストレートで、いつも同じだった」。米兵は一回ごとに五○○ピアストル(米ドルで二ドルに相当)支払う。代金は必ずピアストルで支払われ、女性の手元に残るのは一回につき二○○ピアストルで、残りはさまざまな段階での支払いにあてられた。一日に八-一○回仕事をすれば、女性たちは客である兵士よりも多くの収入を手にすることができたとアーネットは言う(自由企業とは言いがたいのに、おもしろい説明をしてくれるものだ)。 ここで働いているのは、戦争で家や家族を失った難民や、もともとサイゴンで水商売をしていた女性たちだった。彼女たちは省知事の指示で集められ、ライ・ケ市長の指示によって町へ送り込まれた(二人は相応の分け前を受け取っていた)。こうした人員の調達や料金の取り決めなどの仕事をヴェトナム民間人に委ねた上で、アメリカ軍部は衛生面と安全保障面の管理統制を受けもった。「女性たちは毎週、衛生兵によって性病検査と消毒を受けていた」とアーネットは肯定的な口ぶりで話した。 陸軍基地内の慰安所(「罪の都」「ディズニーランド」「ブーム・ブーム・パーラー」などと呼ばれた)は師団長である陸軍少将の裁量で設置され、大佐クラスの旅団長の直接監督下におかれた。ヴェトナムにおける米軍慰安所が、陸軍参謀総長ウィリアム・C・ウェストモーランド、サイゴンの米大使館および米国防総省の三者の了承のもとに成り立っていたことは明白である。 性病(とくに淋病)はヴェトナムにおけるアメリカ軍の重大な関心事だった。サイゴン市郊外に設けられたある公設の慰安所では、バーの壁に「札をつけた女性は清潔です」との掲示が出ていた。向かい側の壁にはご丁寧にも「札をつけていない女性は病気をもっています」という掲示が出ている。どの部隊も性病が発生した際には上層部に報告することを義務づけられていた。性病は兵士の健康ばかりか、軍紀も損なうものだったからだ。患者数の大小は大隊の評定に影響し、アーネットによれば「ほとんどの部隊が患者数を偽っていた」という。また性病の発生率は他の戦争や一般社会の数字と比較して「はじめから高かった」ともいう。(ある統計によれば、一九六九年にヴェトナムで性病にかかっていた米兵の割合は一○○○人当たり二○○人だったのに対し、同時期のアメリカでの割合は一○○○人当たり三二人だった)。中隊長たちは性病の罹患数を減らすため、時に巧妙な策を講じた。アーネットによれば、自分の隊には性病はまったくないと自慢していたある中隊長は、部下を性病から守るためにきわめて独創的な方法をとっていた。「彼は公設の慰安所を信用しておらず、自分の部下の兵士たちには利用させなかった。その代わりに自分の部隊専用の女性六人を用意し、毎日ペニシリンをたっぷり注射させていた」というのである。 こうして外国軍が駐留したおかげで「職業売春婦」という身の上になったヴェトナム女性たちの生活については、残念ながら本書のテーマから外れるのでここでは言及しない。それはそれで別個に詳細にわたって語られるべき物語――売春が、包囲された彼女たちの国にもたらした莫大な収入から、わずか一○歳の少女たちで一杯だったサイゴンの慰安所の様子、そして結核や性病といった職業病で死んでいった女性たちや苦境を生き延びた女性たちの物語――である。これまで長々と米軍の売春制度やそれに付随する性病の管理について述べてきたのは、米兵による強姦の実態についての考察を進めるに先立ち、軍人のメンタリティについて理解しておく必要があったからだ。 さて、比較的厳格な倫理規定を貫こうとした海兵隊を除けば、米軍の基地において女性の身体を利用することは「兵士たちを機嫌よくさせておく」ための手段と見なされた。基地の慰安所は「グラント」と呼ばれる歩兵、すなわちヴェトナムに駐留しても何も得るところのない者のための施設であり、将校は利用しないこととされた。そもそも自分にとって理解できない戦争を戦い、しかも日々死と直面していた歩兵こそ、慰めをもっとも必要としている存在だった。アーネットが強調したように、「連中の頭には常に『今晩女とやるんだ――これが最後になるかもしれない』という考えがあった」のだ。 アメリカ陸軍が売春ビジネスに手を出すことになったのは、こうした兵士たちを慰撫するという目的のためであり、彼らが男性の本能的衝動から女性の身体を必要としているとの考えからではなかった。ヴェトナムでの従軍期間は通常一年で、女性なしで過ごすのに法外に長いわけではなく、また性的緊張を解消するにはマスタベーションという手段が日常的に使われたと思われる。一九七三年二月、あるアメリカ兵捕虜は本国への送還に際してこう話している。「セックス抜きではやっていけないなんて、まったくの嘘っぱちだ。自分が夢にまで見たのは食い物と薬だった」。だが軍が性病の予防のために教育映画を使ったり、部隊の評定に細心の注意を払ったりした一方、レイプを犯させないための教育となると、ほとんど何も行われなかったに等しい。 (アメリカ兵によるレイプの話に続く) (南ベトナム兵やベトコンによるレイプの話から続く) And so we come to the Americans - where first we must look at institutionalized prostitution, for as the American presence in Vietnam multiplied, the unspoken military theory of women's bodies as not only a reward of war but as a necessary provision like soda pop and ice cream, to keep our boys healthy and happy, turned into routine practice. And if monetary access to women's bodies did not promote an ideology of rape in Vietnam, neither did it thwart it. General George S. Patton, who had been so pragmatic about expectations of rape, is credited with the desire to experiment with military brothels during his World War II command, an idea he abandoned when he became convinced that the uproar they would create among wives and mothers back in the States might hurt the war effort. Patton did not have his way in World War II but his ghost must have approved of Vietnam. The tradition of military brothels had been established in Vietnam long before the American presence. The late Bernard Fall, who wrote so vividly of the war in its early years, detailed with enthusiasm the French Army's particular contribution to the use of women in war - the mobile field brothel, or Bordel Mobile de Campagne, stocked with girls imported from Algeria. "The B.M.C.'s would travel with units in the combat zones," Fall wrote, "and in general, the French Army in Indochina kept them pretty much out of sight of American newsmen and officials. 'You can just imagine the howl if some blabbermouth comes out with a statement to the effect that American funds are used to maintain bordellos for the French Army,' said one colonel." A mobile field brothel, Fall reported, was inside the famous fortress of Dienbienphu when the French surrendered. By the time the Americans had fully replaced the French in Indochina the war had sufficiently disrupted South Vietnamese society to a point where it was no longer necessary to import foreign women for the purpose of military prostitution. I do not mean to imply that prostitution was unknown in Vietnam before the long war. As Peter Arnett told me, "Prostitution was a time-honored tradition. Certain heads of families would not think twice before routinely selling their daughters if they needed the money." But as the long war progressed, prostitution increasingly became the only viable economic solution for thousands of South Vietnamese women. By 1966 the problem had reached such proportions that a Committee for the Defense of the Vietnamese Woman's Human Dignity and Rights was organized in Saigon by several hundred women educators, writers and social workers, according to an AP dispatch. The wire service reported that bitter words" were expressed at the first meeting. "Themiserable conditions of war have forced our people to sell everything - theirwives, children, relatives and friends - for the American dollar," a womaneducator was quoted. The Committee for the Defense of the Vietnamese Woman,overwhelmed by the reality of the Vietnam war, was never heard from again. The American military got into the prostitution business by degrees,an escalation process linked to the escalation of the war. Underlying theescalation was the assumption that men at war required the sexual use of women's bodies. Reporter Arnett saw the gradual acceptance of U.S. military-controlledand -regulated brothels as a natural outgrowth of what he called "the McNamaratheory": "In 1965 the main idea was to keep the troops contented and satisfied.Ice cream, movies, swimming pools, pizza, hot dogs, laundry service and hootchmaids. The hootch maid were brought in as maids, not as prostitutes. Sex witha hootch maid was a private arrangement, a relationship of convenience. A lotof hootch maids did become prostitutes, however, but in the early days if theywere discovered at it, they were fired." The hootch maids were the first step toward accommodation; bar girlsand massage parlors soon followed. According to Arnett, the rear-area troopscaused the most "problems": "There was a lot of discontent and boredom. Themen were aware that they were soldiers who weren't fighting, who weren'tgetting any medals. They might drive into town to the illegal brothels, butfor reasons of VD and security the brothels were off limits." (Massageparlors, that vague gray area of sexual action from Saigon to New York City,were always considered legal.) In 1965 the Marine Corps base at Danang began experimenting withorganized battalion trips to town on a once-a-month basis, but according toArnett it was a disaster: "The men would hit town like animals, they couldn'tcope, it was pure chaos." After this early experience the Marine commanddecided to confine their men to the base camp, but the inviolate law of supplyand demand went into operation. A shantytown of brothels, massage parlors anddope dealers, known as Dogpatch, soon ringed the base. "The marines would bustthrough the wire at night - the Marine command could live with that," thereporter told me. It was Arnett's opinion (not shared by me) that the U.S. Army was"more enlightened" than the Marine Corps when it came to sexual accommodation.By 1966 the 1st Cavalry Division at An Khe, in the Central Highlands, the 1stInfantry Division at Lai Khe, twenty-five miles north of Saigon, and the 4thInfantry Division at Pleiku had established official military brothels withinthe perimeter of their base camps. The Lai Khe "recreation area" belonging to the base camp of the 3rdBrigade, 1st Infantry Division was a one-acre compound surrounded by barbedwire with American MP's standing guard at the gate. It was opened only duringdaylight hours for security reasons. Inside the compound there were shops thatsold hot dogs, hamburgers and souvenirs, but the main attraction was twoconcrete barracks, each about one hundred feet long - the military whorehousesthat serviced the four-thousand-man brigade. Each building was outfitted withtwo bars, a bandstand, and sixty curtained cubicles in which the Vietnamesewomen lived and worked. An individual cubicle contained little more than a table with a thinmattress on it and a peg on one wall for the girl's change of clothing. On theopposite wall a Playboy nude centerfold provided decoration and stimulationfor the visiting soldier. The women who lived in the Lai Khe recreation-centercubicles were garishly made up with elaborate, sprayed bouffant hairdos andmany had enlarged their breasts with silicone injections as a concession toWestern fetish. The sexual service, as Arnett described it, was "quick,straight and routine," and the women were paid five hundred piasters (theequivalent of two dollars in American money) for each turn by their GI clients.Americans always paid in piasters. For each trick she turned, a girl would getto keep two hundred piasters (seventy-five cents), the rest going to variouslevels of payoffs. By turning eight to ten tricks a day a typical prostitutein the Lai Khe compound earned more per month than her GI clients, Arnettadvised me - a curious sidelight to a not-so-free enterprise system. Refugees who had lost their homes and families during the war andveterans of the earlier Saigon bar trade formed the stock of the brothel. Theywere recruited by the province chief, who took his payoff, and were channeledinto town by the mayor of Lai Khe, who also got his cut. The American military,which kept its hands partially clean by leaving the procurement and pricearrangement to Vietnamese civilians, controlled and regulated the health andsecurity features of the trade. "The girls were checked and swabbed every weekfor VD by Army medics," my informed source told me approvingly. Military brothels on Army base camps ("Sin Cities", "Disney-lands" or"boom-boom parlors") were built by decision of a division commander, atwo-star general, and were under the direct operational control of a brigadecommander with the rank of colonel. Clearly, Army brothels in Vietnam existedby the grace of Army Chief of Staff William C. Westmoreland, the United StatesEmbassy in Saigon, and the Pentagon. Venereal disease, mostly gonorrhea, was a major preoccupation of themilitary in Vietnam. One official brothel outside Saigon had a sign on thewall of the bar that read "GIRLS WITH TAGS ARE CLEAN." Lest the declarationfailed to make its points, a sign on the opposite wall spelled out "GIRLSWITHOUT TAGS ARE DISEASED." It was mandatory for all units to report theirincidence of VD to the higher-ups, since it reflected on military disciplineas well as on the health of the soldiery, and a high VD count was chargedagainst the merit rating of a battalion. "Most units lied about their VDcount," Arnett believed. It was also his understanding that the reported VDrate "was high from the beginning" in relation to other wars and to a normalcivilian population. (in 1969 GI's contracted venereal disease in Vietnam at areported rate of 200 cases per 1,000 persons; the United States rate at thetime was 32 per 1,000.) Company commanders often went to ingenious lengths tolower their counts. One commander, Arnett told me, boasted that there was noVD at all in his company. His method of protecting his men was highlyenterprising: "He didn't allow them to use the official brothel, he didn'ttrust it. It turned out he kept six girls sequestered on his part of the baseand had them shot full of penicillin every day." I am sorry that it is not within the scope of this book to explore thelives of Vietnamese women who became "Occupation: prostitute" as a directresult of the foreign military presence in their country. It is a story thatshould be told in detail, from the tremendous source of revenue thatprostitution provided their beleaguered country, to account of Saigon brothelsfilled with ten-year-old girls, to the incidence of work-related deaths fromtuberculosis and venereal disease, and with a special nod of recognition tothose who survived. I have dwelt on official U.S. military prostitution, andthe concomitant concern for control of venereal disease, because it isnecessary to understand the military mind before proceeding to an examinationof GI rape. Except for the Marine Corps, which attempted to enforce a relativelystrict moral code, the use of women's bodies on the base camps was seen as away to "keep the boys happy." Officers were not expected to engage in whoring;the institution was made available for the foot soldier, or "grunt," the fellowwith the least to gain from being in Vietnam, the one who needed to bemollified and pacified - perhaps because he was fighting a war he did notunderstand and because he daily faced the possibility that he might be killed.As Arnett cautioned me to remember, "These guys were always thinking,'I'm gonna get screwed tonight - this may be my last.'" It was this mollification aspect, and not a belief that soldiersrequired the use of a woman's body out of some intrinsic male urge, thatmotivated the U.S. Army to get into the prostitution business. A regular tourof duty in Vietnam consisted of a one-year stretch, not an unconscionably longperiod of time to be without a woman, and relief from sexual tension could be,and I presume routinely was, accomplished by masturbation. As one GI prisonerof war remarked upon his repatriation in February, 1973, "This stuff about notbeing able to live without sex is nonsense. What I dreamed about was food andmedicine." And while the military's emphasis on avoidance of venereal diseaseis certainly commendable, for all the anti-VD training films and for all theconcern about merit ratings, there was no comparable cautionary trainingagainst committing rape. (アメリカ兵によるレイプの話に続く) 投稿者 sakuramochi 時刻: 9.4.12 Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook ラベル: comfort women