Reply #12: I lived there in the late 60s and early 70s as a young teen [View All]

[enlightenment]

and it was happening then. The difference, I think, was the level of tolerance - the military wasn't having any of it and the threat of turning an offender over to the Japanese for judicial punishment was often sufficient to make a serviceman think twice. Seems to me that the punishment for rape was life (or at least a long, long time) on a diet of fishheads and rice - at least that was the threat.

I remember one incident that took place on Japanese soil, but involved a US serviceman and US civilians. There was a hotel right off Yokota AFB where the Braniff flight crews stayed - that airline served as the passenger charter for the US military. One night, a serviceman assaulted a flight attendant and then held her hostage in her room. Cops from the base, local cops - seemed like half the law enforcement in the area congregated outside the little hotel. Eventually, he came out, holding her in front of him, with a big kitchen knife at her throat. These days somebody would have just shot him, but they talked him down (he was clearly unbalanced from either stress or drugs or both). He released the woman and they took him into custody. Because the hotel was on Japanese soil, he was turned over to the Japanese - I believe they convicted him and threw him in prison. That was in 71 or 72.

Apocryphal story, I know - and after so many years I'm sure I got the details more wrong than right . . . but the point is that it was happening.