I read an article about this in Yahoo News yesterday, and was appalled. For some reason, the article isn't coming up in my search - the below article explains it pretty well, but left out a major part, as do most of the other articles on this I've found. According to the original article, comfort stations were not set up primarily for Japanese troops, like the majority of articles would have you believe. Japanese police said that they were forced to set up "comfort stations" (i.e. brothels) when U.S. troops came into Japan. The article I read had a photograph showing tons of obviously white sailors lined up outside a police dormitory that was turned into a makeshift brothel. It wasn't just an isolated thing, either. Hundreds of Japanese, Chinese, and Korean women were tricked into this by believeing they were applying for a "job." It started out being just prostitutes who were enlisted for this, but the demand grew, and other women were persuaded into prostitution because jobs were so few and high wages were being offered. From what I understood in the first article, it was voluntary, but the search I did brought up World War II sex slavery articles. I don't know why I'm so shocked at this, but being a woman and into feminism, this just appalls me. What appalls me more is the obvious pussyfooting around the U.S. involvement in this. The U.S. and North Korea are trying to get the Japanese government to apologize, yet weren't the sex stations set up for use by the U.S. troops? It may have not originally started out that way, but the high popularity among the U.S. troops is what led this to be as widespread as it was. What also burns me is how we're supposed to regard soldiers as heroes - I wonder what the loyal American military wives at home would think about this? We know that rape of Iraqi women happens, probably more than we hear out from the media. Interestingly enough, one of the reasons for having sex stations was to cut down on the number of civilian rapes. It really bothers me to think of the smiling soldiers coming home to their adoring wives, being treated like heroes. I wonder how the wife would've felt about knowing there was some Japanese woman pregnant with her husband's baby. I'm sure not all were involved, but it sounds likely that most U.S. troops in Japan were. This really has me down on men right now. Were they so desperate for sex that they would actually pay for 15 minutes with a prostitute, and likely not a real prostitute either, but a poor, scared woman? Imagine the disease and the pregnancies. It was said that condoms were given out, but I'm sure they weren't all the time. I know from the heinous acts against Iraqis at the prisons that many soldiers are not the heroes that they appear to be, but to know that this happened, and not just as some isolated thing, either, has me even more against war/military action, especially needless wars like the one we're in now. I'm surprised there hasn't been more coverage on this, but likely it received criticism from those who are ashamed and want to keep it under wraps - probably why the article was posted in the Yahoo headlines for like 10 minutes and magically disappeared. I just had to share this article, and see what others think. http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2007/03/02/sex_slave_debate_revives_in_japan/
The Japanese government are very slack in their responsibility during the war. They don't give a rat's behind and those court cases there proves it.
I think they need to stand up and face what they did, no denying that. But the U.S. government has to be crazy getting their noses in it. They must have had knowledge of these going-ons, and I just can't see that it will be good for the current U.S. military to have the pictures and the information out there to show the hypocrisy (though I think we all have a right to know). This would've not been nearly such a widespread thing if the demand from the U.S. troops hadn't been there. North Korea on the other hand should be asking for an apology as Japan set up the stations in their country using their women for the stations, and also brought in women from NK for the Japanese stations.
