Rape of Japanese Women by American Soldiers in Okinawa
Rape of Japanese Women by American Soldiers in Okinawa
Rapes during the occupation of Japan were war rapes or rapes committed under the Allied military occupation of Japan. Allied troops committed a number of rapes during the Battle of Okinawa during the last months of the Pacific War and the subsequent occupation of Japan.
The Allies occupied Japan until 1952 following the end of World War II and Okinawa Prefecture remained under US governance for two decades after. Estimates of the incidence of sexual violence by Allied occupation personnel differ considerably.
Battle of Okinawa
Main articles: Battle of Okinawa and History of the Ryukyu Islands
According to Calvin Sims of The New York Times: "Much has been written and debated about atrocities that Okinawans suffered at the hands of both the Americans and Japanese in one of the deadliest battles of the war.
More than 200,000 soldiers and civilians, including one-third of the population of Okinawa, were killed".
U.S. military rapes
There is no documentary evidence that mass rape was committed by Allied troops during the Pacific War. There are, however, numerous credible testimony accounts which allege that a large number of rapes were committed by U.S. forces during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945.
Okinawan historian Oshiro Masayasu (former director of the Okinawa Prefectural Historical Archives) writes:
Soon after the U.S. marines landed, all the women of a village on Motobu Peninsula fell into the hands of American soldiers.
At the time, there were only women, children and old people in the village, as all the young men had been mobilized for the war. Soon after landing, the Marines "mopped up" the entire village, but found no signs of Japanese forces.
Taking advantage of the situation, they started "hunting for women" in broad daylight and those who were hiding in the village or nearby air raid shelters were dragged out one after another.
According to Toshiyuki Tanaka, 76 cases of rape or rape-murder were reported during the first five years of the American occupation of Okinawa. However, he asserts this is probably not the true figure, as most cases were unreported.
Peter Schrijvers finds it remarkable that looking Asian was enough to be in danger of rape by American soldiers, as for example happened to some of the Korean comfort women that the Japanese had by force brought to the island. Schrijvers writes that "many women" were brutally violated with "not even the least mercy".
Marching south, men of the 4th Marines passed a group of some 10 American soldiers bunched together in a tight circle next to the road. They were 'quite animated', noted a corporal who assumed they were playing a game of craps.
'Then as we passed them', said the shocked marine, 'I could see they were taking turns raping an oriental woman. I was furious, but our outfit kept marching by as though nothing unusual was going on'.
Although Japanese reports of rape were largely ignored at the time due to lack of records, as many as 10,000 Okinawan women may have been raped according to an estimate from one Okinawan historian.
It has been claimed that the rape was so prevalent that most Okinawans over age 65 around the year 2000 either knew or had heard of a woman who was raped in the aftermath of the war.
Military officials denied the mass rapes, and all surviving veterans refused The New York Times' request for an interview.
Professor of East Asian Studies and expert on Okinawa Steve Rabson said: "I have read many accounts of such rapes in Okinawan newspapers and books, but few people know about them or are willing to talk about them".
Books, diaries, articles and other documents refer to rapes by American soldiers of various races and backgrounds. Masaie Ishihara, a sociology professor, supports this: "There is a lot of historical amnesia out there, many people don't want to acknowledge what really happened".
An explanation given for why the US military has no record of any rapes is that few – if any – Okinawan women reported abuse, mostly out of fear and embarrassment.
Those who did report them are believed by historians to have been ignored by the U.S. military police. A large scale effort to determine the extent of such crimes has also never been called for.
Over five decades after the war has ended the women who were believed to have been raped still refused to give a public statement, with friends, local historians and university professors who had spoken with the women instead saying they preferred not to discuss it publicly.
According to a Nago, Okinawan police spokesman: "Victimized women feel too ashamed to make it public".
In his book Tennozan: The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb, George Feifer noted that by 1946 there had been fewer than 10 reported cases of rape in Okinawa. He explains that it was: "partly because of shame and disgrace, partly because Americans were victors and occupiers".
Feifer claimed: "In all there were probably thousands of incidents, but the victims' silence kept rape another dirty secret of the campaign". Many people wondered why it never came to light after the inevitable American-Okinawan babies the many women must have had.
In interviews, historians and Okinawan elders said that some Okinawan women who were raped did give birth to biracial children, but that many of them were immediately killed or left behind out of shame, disgust or fearful trauma. More often, however, rape victims underwent crude abortions with the help of village midwives.
According to George Feifer the majority of the likely thousands of rapes were committed in the north, where the campaign was easier and the American troops were not as exhausted as in the south.
According to Feifer it was mostly troops landed for occupation duty who committed rapes.
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