Sanitized Sex. Robert Kramm
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30, 1945. In a report, the Kanagawa Prefectural Police stated that at around 11 a.m. in the morning, two U.S. servicemen entered a Japanese house in Yokosuka. “Two American soldiers who were searching the neighborhood invaded the house, left it shortly for five minutes, and upon return one [soldier] forced [a] 36 years old wife . . . into the small room next to the kitchen’s entrance on the ground floor, the other [soldier] forced [her] 17-year-old daughter . . . to go upstairs, both above-mentioned [women] were threatened with drawn pistols and raped.”147 Another, even more violent incident is reported for the following day. On the early evening of September 1, two American soldiers drove around Yokohama City in a stolen truck and coerced two Japanese civilians to show them around the city. Later on, they picked up twenty-four-year-old Miss Y. at Eirakuchō, Naka Ward, and brought her to a U.S. servicemen’s dormitory in Nogeyama Park. At the dormitory, Miss Y. was gang raped by twenty-seven men, who violated her in turn until she lost consciousness. On the morning of the next day, some servicemen took care of her and sent her home.148
Similar incidents took place over the next days and weeks. Tanaka Yuki has gathered 119 officially reported rape cases between September and October, but Masayo Duus has counted up to 1,326, including incidents of rape for the period between August 30 and September 10, 1945 that were not officially reported.149 Duus’s numbers are exceedingly high and there is no evidence documented in the official records supporting her calculations. However, Tanaka’s and Duus’s statistics both indicate a certain decrease of sexual violence after the first few days of the occupiers’ presence in Japan. Nonetheless, a constant ratio of rape and attempted rape of Japanese women by servicemen can be established on the basis of the occupiers’ and Japanese police’s statistical records throughout the occupation period. In Tokyo, for example, the Metropolitan Police Department documented fifteen to thirty cases a month in 1946, and the Eighth Army’s Provost Marshal listed one to ten investigations a month for 1948 in the Tokyo-Yokohama area.150 Of course, these numbers indicate only the officially reported incidents, and most reports on sexual assault and rape described only cases of attempted rape. The official records thus do not reflect the whole extent of sexual violence that actually occurred, and may silence many incidents. One reason might be that rape victims do not typically press charges due to shame or social stigmatization within their community; another one may be the indifferent responses by occupation authorities, who did not pursue reports wholeheartedly.151 Nevertheless, the existing official numbers still suggest that sexual assaults did occur despite the erection of the “female floodwall,” and that both Japanese and American officials were keeping records on the problem. At the very least, this indicates that the occupation period’s authorities were aware of sexual violence and regarded it as a serious issue. Moreover, it is notable that the occupiers’ and occupieds’ statistical data differed, and that Japan’s authorities reported more cases than those actually investigated by the occupiers’ law enforcement and investigative agencies; even fewer cases made it to trial.152
Incidents of sexual violence obviously prompted Japan’s authorities to develop various measures to prevent and monitor assaults on Japanese citizens. Since under occupation law, Japan’s law enforcement agencies had lost all jurisdiction to bring crimes conducted by the occupiers to trial, the Japanese authorities’ ability to intervene was largely limited to collecting information on criminal cases and filing reports with occupation authorities for further investigation. In this regard, the Peace Preservation Section of the still active Home Ministry released a directive on September 4, 1945, to the police departments in Tokyo, Osaka, and all other prefectures. The directive was headed “Concerning the documentation of and counter-measures against illegal acts by American soldiers” and ordered all police departments to report the occupiers’ crimes and sexual assaults in particular.153 Apparently, the members of the Peace Preservation Section were well aware that American civil and military law outlawed sexual assault and considered the reporting of servicemen’s illegal acts to be the most effective way to limit crimes. Incidents could be reported at every police station or kōban, small police stations in Japanese neighborhoods that had been popular since the mid-Meiji period and through which the police managed to maintain a high level of surveillance while simultaneously interacting with residents on a more personal and casual basis.154 The police were ordered to forward the reports to the Central Liaison Office (CLO), which was attached to Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and had been newly established to handle all communication between the Japanese government and SCAP’s General Headquarters. Reports were required to be compiled with the greatest possible detail, and, to aid in identification of the perpetrators, the Peace Preservation Section advised noting the place and date of the crime as well as characteristics of the suspects. These included name, age, appearance, “social status” (mibun), and military rank.155 In order to enable Japanese civilians to identify American military ranks, the Asahi Shinbun printed a short explanatory article with images of American military insignia on the very same day the Home Ministry released its directive.156
Upon reviewing a number of the reports, however, it seems reasonable to conclude that of the criteria which the Home Ministry’s Peace Preservation Section proposed using to identify suspects, it was bodily features that constituted their primary concern, and that fuzzy classifications such as “social status” should in fact be read as racial categorizations. In a memorandum submitted by the CLO on October 12, 1945, for instance, it is reported:
About 11 p.m. September 19, three United States negro soldiers stationed in the area of Iwaimachi, Hodogaya-ku, forced their way into the home of . . . a conscripted Japanese soldier who has not yet been demobilized. One of the negro soldiers was posted outside as a lookout. The other two going inside while holding a jack knife demanded sexual intercourse with [the] wife of the Japanese soldier. [She] ran outside but was caught by the other negro soldier who was stationed outside. She was then dragged to the bushes and raped by the three negro soldiers. Three other negro soldiers passing there also assaulted her.157
Besides place and time, the term “negro soldier” is the only explicit description of the suspects given in the report. Of course, the reporting rape victim cannot be expected to memorize the specifics of such a traumatizing experience, but no other features such as military insignia or personal appearance were reported by the CLO. Compared to other, quite similar reports, it is conspicuous that “negro,” and occasionally “coloured,” were generally used as umbrella terms to categorize nonwhite American soldiers. Although it is hard to prove any racist sentiments on the part of the CLO or the reporting Japanese police, racial categorizations and even racial profiling appear as a recurrent trope in the reports. This is particularly apparent in the reverse case, when skin color is totally absent in a report, for example in reports on crimes apparently committed by white servicemen. This sustains the notion that Japan’s authorities deliberately used the marker of race to report the crimes of nonwhite servicemen.158
Beginning in mid-September 1945, the CLO submitted almost daily reports to SCAP’s General Headquarters concerning crimes presumably committed by members of the occupation forces. In one of the first reports, a twenty-one-page memorandum dated September 19, the CLO listed all incidents between August 31 and September 5, covering six cases of burglary in Tokyo; thirty-three cases of extortion and one attempted rape in Yokohama; one extortion in Kawasaki; two extortions, one burglary, and one manslaughter resulting from a traffic accident in Fujisawa; four cases of burglary, one attempted rape, and four extortions in Yokosuka; two extortions in Kamakura; one extortion in Odawara; three extortions in Isuki; and one kidnapping with rape in Miura, Kanagawa Prefecture.159 The stolen and extorted goods were mostly cars or trucks, watches, money, Japanese swords, clothes (kimono), food, and/or alcohol. Stolen vehicles were often used for further crimes such as kidnapping young women, stealing large amounts of alcohol, or committing serial burglaries. On September 10, for example, the CLO reported that three American soldiers had been driving around in “a car belonging to the Meguro Second Office of the Yamato Motor Car Company situated in Shimizu-machi, Meguro-ku.” According to the report, the soldiers went on a “spree” with the car and forced its chauffeur, Unichiro Shishido, to accompany them. Unichiro later reported to the police that the three soldiers committed “about thirty counts of burglary and intimidation” and later spent the evening with “Geisha girls and passed their time pleasantly