08/07/26 16:45:08
Japanese Didn't Invent Military Sex Industry
To the Editor:
Lest your report on karayuki-san, "comfort women," forced into prostitution by the Japanese army in Korea (news article, Jan. 27)
be used to fuel the fires of Japan-bashing, let us be clear that the military exploitation of women through rape and prostitution has a long history in every military society, including ours.
A former Navy chaplain who served in Japan during the post-World War II occupation told me that when he protested the American base commander's efforts to set up prostitution centers using Japanese women,
he was reassigned stateside.
As a Japanese-American woman growing up on United States military bases,
I faced the assumption that any woman who looked Asian was sexually available to soldiers. I was often called "geisha-girl"
or "Suzy Wong" (soldiers usually couldn't tell Japanese from Chinese). Every base I ever lived on, in the United States,
Okinawa and Germany, had a thriving red-light district near it.
The enormous growth in the Thai sex industry occurred with the escalation of the Vietnam War,
in which Bangkok was a major rest and recuperation spot for United States troops.
When the war ended, the economy was so dependent on the revenues generated by the sex industry that
Thais shifted their sales pitch to tourism.
The largest users of Korean women for prostitution now are United States soldiers. My Sister's Place, an agency that works with Korean women who marry soldiers
or work as prostitutes, estimates that one of every six Korean women 15 to 35 years old works in the sex industry.
The women have few other economic options, especially if they have run away from abusive homes or are divorced.
URLﾘﾝｸ(query.nytimes.com)