Recreation and Amusement Association
In fact at that time, the Home Ministry had already sent a directive to prefectural governors and police chiefs on August 18 ordering them to make preparations for "comfort facilities" in areas that the Allied occupation troops would be stationed.
[3]: 133–34 [6][7]: 256–57 Japanese authorities set up the brothels with the intent of reducing the amount of sexual violence committed by the incoming Allied occupation troops.
[18][19][20][21] Although arrangements in most of the country were left to local officials and police departments, in the case of the Tokyo area, which was to host the largest number of foreign troops, a different approach was taken.
Nobuya Saka, Superintendent-General of the Metropolitan Police Headquarters, met with Hamajirō Miyazawa and Genjirō Nomoto, the heads of the Tokyo Restaurant Association (東京料理飲食業組合, Tōkyō Ryōri Inshokugyō Kumiai), and asked them to help make arrangements for the soon to arrive troops.
At the inauguration of the RAA (which was attended by bureaucrats and police officials), an "oath" was read: And so we unite and go forward to where our beliefs lead us, and through the sacrifice of several thousands of "Okichis of our era" build a breakwater to hold back the raging waves and defend and nurture the purity of our race, becoming as well an invisible underground pillar at the root of the postwar social order... we are but offering ourselves for the defense of the national polity.
[24]: 126 The organization was funded through unsecured loans from the Japan Industrial Development Bank (日本勧業銀行, Nippon Kangyō Ginkō) arranged by Hayato Ikeda, director of the Ministry of Finance's Tax Bureau.
[2][3]: 142–45 [24]: 126 As noted above, the women staffing comfort facilities were initially intended to be those already involved in the "water trade" (a euphemism for the Japanese night-time entertainment business).
The government had cracked down on prostitution late in the war, and many women had fled or been evacuated to the countryside following heavy Allied bombing of strategic centers and residential areas.
Given the widespread poverty and food shortages at the time, and the large number of orphaned and widowed young women, the job offers appeared quite attractive.
Some comfort stations used "company store" tactics and loan advances (前借, maegari) to keep women in debt and unable to leave, something a contemporary GHQ official compared to "enslavement".
Contracts forcing women to work at brothels in repayment of debts were eventually abolished by a SCAP order (SCAPIN 642) in January 1946, although some Japanese officials were skeptical of how well such a prohibition could be enforced.
On October 14, the Japanese police lifted their restrictions on brothels and night clubs, a de facto endorsement of the non-RAA sex industry catering to Occupation troops.
According to the governors of Chiba and Kanagawa prefectures, American commanders contacted them in September 1945 and requested the establishment of brothels for their troops, offering US military police help if necessary.
American medical officers established prophylactic stations in red-light districts and inside the larger brothels that distributed tens of thousands of condoms per week.
[26] Most importantly, the 8th Army authorized the free dispersal of penicillin to infected prostitutes, despite a serious shortage of the drug in the US, and orders from Washington that it only be given to Japanese "as a life saving measure.
By early 1946 military chaplains were condemning SCAP's cooperation, citing violations of War Department policies and the moral degradation of US troops it caused.
[3]: 159–60 [22]: 27 The complaints embarrassed Gen. MacArthur, head of the occupation forces, and SCAP issued an order (SCAPIN 642) on January 21 ending licensed brothels for being "in contravention of the ideals of democracy".
