TOKYO: Social stigma is preventing thousands of Japanese women who served occupying U.S. troops in official brothels from coming forward to seek compensation, a women's rights activist said Saturday.
An Associated Press review of historical documents indicates that U.S. authorities permitted Japan to operate an official brothel system for American troops in the early days after World War II — despite reports that many of the women were being forced to work in the brothels against their will.
"It is difficult for these women to come forward because of the social stigma attached to serving U.S. soldiers," said Mitsuko Nobukawa, an activist with the Tokyo-based Violence against Women in War Network.
"There were thousands of women who served in Japanese brothels around Asia during the war, too, but they suffered in silence and few have talked about their experiences," Nobukawa said.
Records show tens of thousands of Japanese women were employed to provide sex to U.S. troops until the spring of 1946, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur shut the brothels down.
About 350,000 U.S. troops were occupying Japan by the end of 1945, and a Japanese government-funded association employed 70,000 prostitutes to serve them, according to a memoir by Seiichi Kaburagi, the chief of public relations for association.
The records indicate that by then the Americans had full knowledge of Japan's reported of women in countries it invaded across Asia during the war, the records show.
Historians say that up to 200,000 women, mainly from China and Korea, provided sex for Japanese troops in military brothels across Asia during the war, and that many of them were coerced into sexual slavery.
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