Raped by GIs
Aug 28th, 2008 at 10:43 am by Susie
One of the things we do with war to make it somehow palatable is make everyone who took part in the bloody cruelty into heroes. And while there are moments of genuine heroics, the truth is all too often stories like this, written in response to Ken Burns’ newest documentary, “The War”:
THE WAR,’ MR BURNS, is the Yokosuka rape queues in August 1945, with GI’s lined up for blocks, two abreast, to get at the Japanese girls enslaved in ‘comfort stations’ for them — with the full cooperation of the American and Japanese authorities. Destitute, vulnerable girls were raped into unconsciousness as the men joked and laughed and jostled in line, waiting their turn. Some girls bled to death. Some committed suicide — that is, the lucky ones who could escape. Not one ‘comfort girl’ has told her story — due to shame. Why did you not tell this particular ‘intimate history’ of ‘The War,’ Mr. Burns? Especially since ‘usage’ of the girls was almost 100%. Why has the small detail that almost every GI in Japan, 1945, was a rapist escaped you? Why his this big ‘dirty secret’ of war never been covered?
‘The War,’ Mr. Burns, is the men who lined up to use the prostitutes on Hotel Street in Honolulu: women were raped 100 times a day — a different man entered the girl every three minutes. Why should I mourn these rapists when they were killed in the attack at Pearl Harbor? They slaughtered the bodies of these women in a fashion far more brutal than any bombing could ever be.
‘The War,’ Mr. Burns, is the widespread rape of French girls by GI’s after they ‘liberated’ Paris. Rape by American soldiers was so common that Eisenhower actually had to acknowledge it was happening, although he did nothing to stop it.
‘The War’ is the public parks in Palermo, where pimps considerately laid out mattresses so the GI’s could fuck starving Italian girls comfortably, for a dollar or two a turn.
‘The War’ is homeless, prostituted girls in Berlin doing it in the rubble for a few cents and agreeing to ’share’ a GI bed so they would simply have a place to sleep that night. This, after they had already had the insides raped out of them by the invading Russian army and then were labeled ‘whores’ since it was a convenient way for the authorities to deal with these ‘ruined’ women.
‘The War’ is the village in Okinawa where GI’s raped every woman, girl, and child — the victims were too sick and starving to even try to run from their attackers.
‘The War,’ Mr. Burns, is the starvation prostitution forced upon tens of thousands of European and Japanese girls (some barely into their teens) by the ridiculous conflicts men create to display their phallic brutality. It is also the brothel attached to a military base in Arizona stocked with ‘worn-out whores’ and reserved exclusively for black solders, so that the white GI’s would not have to ‘contaminate’ their penises by raping the same prostitutes. Thousands of black GI’s passed through this brothel daily, and who knows what insane, pathetic creatures they left dead of rape and misery.
‘The War,’ Mr. Burns, is not your blind, masculine-centric vision of it, full of all these lies about valor and sacrifice and courage and nobility. There is little that is noble about the raping, war-making brute we call a soldier.
I was raped and prostituted by the U.S. Military. Why don’t you tell my story, Mr. Burns? It is far more ‘colorful’ than that of these soldiers who raped their way through Europe and Asia. Don’t you want to know what it’s like to be mounted by a line of soldiers? It is a hell beyond any possible imagining. It has happened to me.
My PTSD, as it is so fashionably called, is far more intense than that of the men who raped the life and dignity and beauty out of me. The emotional damage to the soldier does not compare to the suffering he inflicts on the women he ravages.
War is never good for women. War sexually enslaves women. Men gain by war. They have the pleasure of rape: they mount starving women, ‘cheap whores,’ and take their pleasure, and the woman is silenced forever by her shame.
What a male abomination is not just your grandiose seven-part, tidy version of ‘The War,’ but PBS as well. You pretend to be enlightened but you are as blind and callous and cruel as the soldier rapists who destroyed the lives and bodies of so many women.
I looked at your so-called ‘companion volume’ to the series. The index carries not one reference to rape, prostitution, military brothels, or the sexual suffering of millions of woman. How can you overlook, ignore, dismiss a ‘fact’ so enormous? As if these women simply never existed.
What a betrayal of our raped bodies is your grand, masculine-centric version of ‘The War.’ Even your title indicates that you own this territory, this war, your war. It is, indeed, your war — since all wars are the product of your male phallic cruelty.
War never ‘liberates’ women. War sexually destroys us. It has never been otherwise. Briseis had no say in her fate as a ‘captive’ woman. No one asked her what she thought of the arrangement. No one has asked the Filipina women trafficked onto the fifty U.S. bases in Iraq what they think of their lot as the GI’s line up for their five-minute shot inside them.
Men make war because they love war. Don’t ask me to feel sorry for the way they ’suffer.’
“No one has asked the Filipina women trafficked onto the fifty U.S. bases in Iraq what they think of their lot as the GI’s line up for their five-minute shot inside them.”
This needs to be brought to the public’s attention in a big way.
ummm,
I think falkenberg is misrepresenting the work of beth bailey re: prostitution in hawaii during wwii in this post. That story isn’t quite how she uses it and as is always the case with sex work, there are different levels of exploitation and abuse. Bailey shows pretty well that for some women being a prostitute in hawaii led to empowerment and it allowed for some reconfiguration of the local power structure.
–last I heard, Bailey was at Temple by the way, and she has a lot of good books on sex and war, dating, etc. very accessible.
to compare hawaiian brothels to japanese comfort stations is a pretty big jump.
Also, not every GI participates in the system, plenty of men reject the abuse of local women and spend their time in other pursuits.
to call every military man a “rapist” is bullshit.
furthermore, many of those men end up marrying local women and bringing them home. their married life with those women often demonstrates different power relationships than one would expect if the man was formerly a rapist and the woman a dominated 3rd world “other.”
also, this statement: “No one has asked the Filipina women trafficked onto the fifty U.S. bases in Iraq what they think of their lot as the GI’s line up for their five-minute shot inside them.”
is pretty hard to believe. While I suspect there has been prostitution in iraq, I would like to see evidence that it occurs in the same sort of official manner as it happened in the PI or the camp towns of the ROK.
And, you don’t need a war to have organized systems of prostitution around military bases, it occurred all during the cold war.
What a bunch of nonsense. I’m in the military and I’m currently deployed. There aren’t any “Filipina women trafficked onto the fifty U.S. bases in Iraq”. This sad angry lady’s experience has obviously biased her against military men, but ultimately, she just doesn’t have her facts straight.
My guess is, if there’s institutionalized prostitution in Iraq, it’s for the benefit of the contractors. But many people can’t tell the difference between them and the military.
I will say, though, that rape is always a problem in the military - and it’s worse now, with so many women on active duty in Iraq. But there’s also male on male rape (usually the targets are perceived to be gay or effeminate) in the military, which is to be expected in an aggressive, testosterone-ridden environment (just as campus rapes so often involve fraternities and jocks).
And let’s not forget the use of rape as a weapon of war. I’m sure there are soldiers who don’t take part in atrocities like this, but let’s not pretend it doesn’t happen, either. Even the soldiers who don’t rape tend to look the other way.
as a single dad of a 12 yr old daughter, thinking of this makes me see black.
but it is unfair, Susie, to continue to paint all soldiers as rapists or if not then willingly turn a blind-eye. I work with AF Airmen everyday and can vouch for many who work very hard at bringing sexual offenders to justice and training all Airmen in sexual assualt awareness and prevention.
I clicked the link earlier today, came back and read the comments to the story.
I do not understand what most of the comments have to do with the story told.
The woman has a story of being brutally gang raped, and tells that she is just one of many.
The comments perhaps can be summed up as: “I didn’t do it, don’t know anyone who did. So it must be nonsense.”
The woman said: “Don’t ask me to feel sorry for the way they ’suffer.’”
And if sex work equals empowerment, would you consider it? If not, why not?
but the comments immediately ask for sympathy for the perpetrators.
Probably all soldiers are not/have not been rapists. But, as they say, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
Oh, you noticed that, too?
Yeah, and I bet a lot of other people noticed too (perhaps they didn’t have the time or energy to respond), but didn’t say anything, — I originally read the post during the day while at work, and after I got home I kept thinking about it, it bothered me so much — so I came back here, and thought I should add my 2 cents. You don’t get a lot of comments here, and I don’t usually have a lot to say, nothing new to add to discussions. But you expose a lot of good stories that I don’t find elsewhere.
I don’t know what attracted the above commenters to the site, or to comment. I wonder about that.