December 3rd, 2025

This is the last lecture that I attended for my women’s history class, why? Because December 8th is just review so I found no need to be there. I know review days are good but the way I was moving this semester meant that I was really trying to finish my last assignments.

This lecture is about how women were treated by US servicemen in Japan. A good chunk was covered in my last post so I will write what was not.

First is how the Japanese police handled the rampant sexual abuses occurring at the hands of US troops against Japanese women. There was an under-reporting of sexual assaults, this was due to multiple factors like social stigma and fear. The police had no jurisdiction over crimes committed by the occupational forces but testimonies were collected anyway and reports were written. The SCAP was dismissive over these cases saying there wasn’t any evidence. Sexual assaults committed by US soldiers was censored and called “anti-occupation” content, which was illegal.

The home ministry had guidelines for women to follow to prevent assaults: do not go out alone; do not wear “licentious clothes,” one should wear monpe; call for help loudly; do not be passive, fight violently to protect “female chastity;” have the courage to tell the police.

We then went over what the reading for this week is about: Militarized masculinity and male complicity. Some interesting bits here: hyper-masculine soldiers were trained to follow orders, carry out physical violence, and sacrifice yourself to protect your country. US soldiers viewed Japanese women as the “sexually available Oriental other.” Japanese men became powerless viewers and blamed individual women for their assaults.