Saturday, May 19, 2007

Yuki Tanaka on sexual violence by military(2)

[T]he Japanese man asked the soldier to write a letter guaranteeing that he would return the car. The following is what he wrote:

One car(Buick)
Model "1930". To be used by the U.S. Gov. for purpose of transporting high ranking officers on official business. After all who won the war, you or me? This certifies that this car is to be used to pick up any girls who fuck, and further ore who cares what the hell is it to you.
G.I. Johpha(signed)
17-fort[sic} soldiers of the winning army, U.S.A.
on this date 19. Sept. 1945.

Indeed, some of these vehicle were used for kidnapping and raping young women....

Page118
About 6 o'clock, in the afternno of Septemer 1st, two American soldiers, in a truck forced two Japanese to guide them around the Yokohama city. When they came to Shojikiro, at Eirakucho, nakaku, they forced Miss K.Y., aged 24, a maidservant, to boad the truck against her will and absconded to the US Barracks in nogeyama Park. There altogether 27 of the American soldiers violated he in turn and rendered her unconcious page 121

Clifton was a young Australian junior officers of the BCOF(British Commonwealth Occupation Forces) who acted as an interpreter and criminal investigation. The following passages are some extracts from his memoirs.:

I stood besides a bed in a hospital. On it lay a girl, unconscious, her long black hair in wild tumult on the pillow. A doctor and two nurses were working to revive her. An hour before she had been raped by twenty soldiers. ..The girl was Japanese. The soldiers were Australians.
.....
Staying indoors was not sufficient to give women protection. One evening a young married woman was reading a book in bed in a hotel. Her husband was absent for the night on business......She awoke a little later 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....The police , having no power , could do no more than inform us, when it was too late.
.......In accordance with army law the court's decision was forwarded to Australian for confirmation. Some time later the documents were returned marked "Conviction quashed because of insufficient evidence."

page 126


Well, Tanaka's documentation goes on.



Competing to have sex with Japanese female employee
....Mieoko decided to go home. An officer named Major Wilson offered to take her home, She accepted this offer and got into his car, Wilson took her to a barely field far from town and raped her in the car. Eventually he left her at a nearby railway station.
Mieko did not go to the office for the following four days, However, she eventually decided to return to work, blaming herself over her carelessness that invited Wilson's misbehaviour. Just a few days after returning to work, GI raped her in the office. It took place when she was working overtime and everyone had gone home. While she was being raped a member of the military police watched through an office window. . Far from trying to stop the rape, he said, "Hey, hey, nice. and disappeared. page 130

....lists of names of officers and junior officer's name appeared lip marks signifying now how many Japanese women that officers had "conquered."page 130

One may question why a woman would return to the office......it must be remembered that economic conditions in immediate postwar Japan was appalling and most Japanese civilians were desperately struggling to survive from day to day. page 131


Japanese police was powerless against GI's crime

Many of the extortion cases involve attempts y GIs to steal sabres and pistols from Japanese policemen. In some cases a small group of GIs surrounded a few police men on patrol in the street or on duty in a police box and forced them to hand over their weapons. It seems that many GIs wanted to take these arms back home as "spoils of war". Some of these extorted pistols were also used later in burglaries of Japanese homes and shops. page 118

... In another abduction case , at about 3, 30 pm on September 2, a policeman and some civilians walking down a street in Isogo ward, Yokohama city , saw a woman in her thirties who was madly crying for help in a car driven by a GI. Another GI was in the car too. Neither the policeman nor the civilians could do anything to rescue her. page 121

There are many other similar cases in Yokosuka and Yokohama, Cases arose in Tokyo, too, as the US troop moved into the metropolitan area from September 8.....
It was not just healthy young woman who fell victim to GIs sexual violence. ....at around 4;00 pm on the same day, these soldiers, then heavily intoxicated , returned and gang-raped K.T.'s sister, a 47-year-old woman, who was in bed suffering from spinal caries. page 121

....according to the testimony of Sugiura Tomoe... one night two drunken GI's barged into her house on the outskirts of Tokyo at around 10;00 pm. They threaten her father with a knife and demanded money. Once they got the money , they bound her father to a pillar and raped her mother. While mother was being attacked. , Tomoe and her 15-year-old sister , Naoko, were too terrified to move or call for help. After soldiers had raped the mother they bound her the same pillar and proceeded to rape Tomoe and Naoko in front of their parents. Naoko died from blood loss. Her father reported Naoko's death to the police station....Two police men and a doctor came to the house and took evidence. but that was the only time that police contacted them about the matter. page 122.



If Japanese police had been powerless, then there would have been no other way but to ask and plead GHQ to stop the crimes.

Almost every day from early September, the Japanese government officially complained to GHQ, thought CLO. about the numerous crimes that the US occupation troops were committing against Japanese civilians and public servants, in particular policemen....GHQ asked the Japanese authorities to provide more detailed information on offenders.....On September 27, GHQ asked the Japanese government to ensure that any report of criminals offences committed by soldiers be accompanied by some clue to identify the criminal. However, it was quite difficult fro ordinary Japanese people to describe the particular features of the US soldiers(who wore the same uniforms), let alone to quickly identify and memorize a should mark while being subjected to physical threat. ....
One GHQ report on crimes committed by US troops in Tokyo....says "of 100 reported cases of rape of Japanese women by US servicemen, only six have been substantiated . As evidence could be provided for only six cases , the author of this report proudly claimed that these figures reflected "the absence of serious crime waves" in Tokyo for this period .page 124


If neither MP nor GHQ had been of no help, the Japanese journalism must have been at work for justice.

yet there is no doubt that the newspaper reports on the increasing number of crimes committed by the occupation forces upset GHQ staff considerably.....On September 19, SCAP issued an memorandum on the "press code for Japan....

(article).4 There shall be no destructive criticism of the Allied Forces of Occupation and nothing which might invite mistrust or resentment of the troop.

....This censorship was introduced not only to suppress any information on crimes committed by the occupation troops, but also for many other purposes , such as information about the effects of the A-bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.