Every Rose

A Culture Clash

 In 1782, a scandal began to bubble under the surface of the Revolutionary War.  Unbeknownst to military officials there was not only a woman among them, but a woman serving as a male soldier in combat.  Deborah Samson, or “Robert Shurtliff” as society knew her, was born on the outskirts of Plymouth, Massachusetts to Jonathan Samson, Jr. and Deborah Bradford.  On Monday, May 20, 1782, when Deborah was 18, she signed up to serve the United States in their fight against the Red Coats.  Dressed as a man to disguise herself, she fought along side other patriots and played the role so well that it wasn’t until a doctor examined her that he discovered she was a woman. [1] A woman joining the army was frowned upon in those days, but since then, the United States Army has come a long way.  Sadly, in most countries, the opinions of women are not as high.  Specifically in countries like Japan and Korea, prejudice against women has always been a problem.  In times as far back as the Edo period, in the seventeenth century, it was said under Confucian law that men were at the head of the family, and women had no rights to divorce, to their children, or to their belongings.[2]  This kept women in their place in the home to assure that they were under the close watch of their husbands.  Later in Meiji Imperial Japan it was understood that “women could be used in any way to serve the purpose of the Japanese state and the emperor.”[3] This is one of the main reasons for the human trafficking in Japan and Korea that is still prevalent in the 21^st century and the treatment the women received in World War II.  The contrast between the feelings towards American women and the Japanese and Korean women became very apparent during World War II.  While women in the United States had the ability to fight along side their men and aide the war effort, the Japanese and Korean women were kept as a comfort to the Japanese Imperial army and used until the officers were satisfied.              Prior to American entrance into World War II, Japan invaded Korea and imposed their laws and culture on the Korean people.  This not only introduced the Japanese belief of feminine inferiority, it also began the belief that the only thing lower than a Japanese woman was a Korean woman.  The Japanese believed that it was the job of the women of their country to complete “the national mission of motherhood”[4] by birthing strong, Japanese sons that would eventually join the Imperial forces and save Japan. They believed that they could use the Korean women for work and/or sex slaves.  In both cultures it was understood that women belonged in the home doing chores and obeying whatever their male superiors said.   Very rarely were any of these women formally educated, and even rarer to find a woman with an income.  The men were the sole source of revenue in the family until the children grew to the age at which they could work.  For this reason the men thought it acceptable that they would receive any and all profits collected during their marriage, if they ever desired a divorce.  In the event that a divorce took place, the woman was shunned by her family and society because she was an embarrassment.  The life was even worse for a girl who lost her virginity out of wedlock, be it by rape or consensual.  According to Chunghee Sarah Soh, “Unmarried women had to maintain their virginity until marriage and widows were expected to be chaste.” [5]  This gave women no room for error, and also gave the men a stronger hold on them and more power to treat them as poorly as they felt necessary.  This would become more obvious at the out break of the war when the Japanese and Korean women would be forced to do the unthinkable.                All over the United States, World War II drafts caused a great lack of able-bodied men in the factories.  With nowhere else to turn, factory owners opened doors to women for the first time.  During this time, recruitment officers from factories country wide released propaganda picturing a motivational character named Rosie.  “Rosie the Riveter” was an icon that symbolized over six million women who worked to make ammunition and supplies for the men overseas.  What many people don’t know is that Rosie was modeled after a real woman.  Ms. Rose Will Monroe lived in Ypsilanti, Michigan during World War II working in the Willow Run Aircraft Factory building bombers.[6]  Recruiting officers also went door to door and often visited colleges to find young girls that could help.  That was the case for young Catherine Ott.  She was studying at Rhode Island State College when an agent from Curtis Wright, an airplane factory, recruited ten girls; “I was one of the ten”[7], she says.              On the home front, out of factories, women were more respected in society because of their ability to survive on their own without their husbands.  For the first time, many women were putting meals on the table using their own income and not relying on their husbands.  The government had started this “girl power” on the eighteenth of august, 1920 when they passed the 19^th Amendment.   This amendment stated that the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. [8] This showed women that the government had finally acknowledged that their opinions and intelligence were very important.  Having their right to vote gave women a strength and a respect in the culture that they had never experienced before.  Unlike many Japanese and Koreans who were still left in the homes without educations.              Along with the ability to vote, women began to fill jobs that were usually held by males, specifically in the army corps.  Just three weeks after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, a bill was signed creating the first ever Women’s Army Corps (WAC).  Like men, women were trained for wartime living, survival tactics for dangerous circumstances, military tactics, parade drill, and the discipline of barracks life.  These women became very important for communication during the war in their roles as operators and translators.  General Dwight D. Eisenhower is said to have seen them as the key to the war because of their knowledge of greatly diverse languages.[9]  At about the same time that the WAC was formed, the Women’s Air Service Pilots (WASP) was created to increase the number of pilots available on the war front.  Unlike male pilots, the WASP were only required to have 200 hours of experience before performing very dangerous tasks.  Along with carrying cargo, moving targets for target practice, and training the inexperienced male pilots, these women also broke in the aircraft and test flew aircrafts to see if they were air worthy. [10]             Not all women wanted to be sitting or flying directly on the battle’s front lines, so upwards of fifty-nine thousand women served in the Army Nurse Corps (ANC) at this time.  The mission of the ANC is “to provide nursing leadership and high quality nursing care during war, peacetime, or humanitarian operations, in support of the mission of the Army Medical Department and professional military medical health system.”[11]  The surgeon general developed a training program that made it possible for a large amount of women to become certified nurses in a short amount of time.  In six months, women were taught how to give anesthesia, blood and blood derivatives, and also how to treat shock. It is said that less than four percent of the men that were cared for by these nurses lost their lives.  One such nurse at Hickam field, Lt. Annie G. Fox, was the first of many nurses to receive a purple heart for her help during the war.   Though she was never wounded in a battle, she got the heart for “her fine example of calmness, courage, and leadership, which was of great benefit to the morale of all she came in contact with.” [12] Along with ground nurses who worked in stations just behind the lines, there were many women who took jobs as “flight nurses”.  Captain Lillian Kinkella Keil was one of these nurses and became one of the most decorated women in military history because of her various flights in the war.  As a young woman, she was a stewardess as well as a licensed nurse.  She became a flight nurse, and in 1943 traveled to Europe to help the cause making at least 250 evacuation flights and saving many lives.[13]               About the same time as Hitler’s Kristallnacht and Germany’s Anchluss with Austria, the Japanese Imperial Army was taking steps to reduce the number of rapes their soldiers committed and to boost the general morale.   Each time a troop was sent into China or Korea, it was a widely known fact that the soldiers would rape the locals as a stress release, and to confirm their power over them.  The large-scale rapes were beginning to spread STD’s through the troops like wildfire.  To retard the expansion of the STD problem the Army created ianfu, or “comfort women”.  Comfort Stations, also known as “p houses” (for prostitute or p’i, the word for vagina), “WC’s”, or “pompon houses”, were often very large, unclean, buildings or tents that were divided into cubicles to house large numbers of young women.  In a personal account from a comfort woman, who wished to remain anonymous, said, “Each girl received two blankets, one towel, and a military-type uniform… They put one girl into each of the small cubicles… They told us to obey them.”[14]   Formed under the false title of Jungshindae, women were taken from their homes thinking they were going into a labor corps for the army.              Many families traded their daughters and some even went willingly in order to get out of poor circumstances at home, not realizing many of them would not be welcomed back. Still in an interview with Kim Hak Soon, she explains how she was unknowingly traded into “comfort” when she tells the interviewer, “We thought we would become a gisaeng when [our stepfather] traded us. But we were sold as Comfort Women to a Japanese platoon located in Northern China. I never knew that I would become a plaything for Japanese soldiers.”[15]               Each day these women were forced to “obey” officers that raped them repeatedly.  In another account, Pak Kumjoo, another Korean woman taken by the Japanese Army, shares a story of what happened once when she tried to rebel.  In an attempt to stand up to an officer she said, "Do you think we are your maids and your prostitutes? How can you be a human being after making us do such things?”[16]  In Her story she also gives us the officer’s response to her rebellion, “‘it is the command of the army. The country's order is the Emperor's order. If you have something to say, you can say it to the Emperor.’  Then he beat me. I was in a coma for three days. Even when I regained consciousness, I couldn't move. Even now I feel pain from that time, and scars remain.”[17]  Hwang Keun Joo reported that she “was raped by doctors and high ranking officers 4-15 times everyday.”[18]  This number doesn’t even include the number of lower ranked officers she was forced to pleasure after them.  It is said that these women were raped on average 20-30 times daily with minimal time to shower, and even showering was a public activity. The women were undressed and lined up for their shower time while the officers stood and watched them.  Many women were so embarrassed by their situation that they took their lives at any free moment they had which was normally, in the bathroom, or in between customers.                        What makes the situation more disturbing is that even after the women went through this terrifying experience, their families would not welcome them home.  As a result of the old beliefs that a woman was only to have sex with her wedded husband, the survivors of the comfort stations were thought to be unclean, and useless.  Often most of the women left the stations with their uterus’s removed, and at least one sexually transmitted disease.   After years of living in a nightmare, the women came home to live in nothing better.  Upon returning home to Taiwan, Teng-Kao Pao-Chu, reported, “I lost my life.  I was regarded as a dirty woman.  I had no means of supporting myself and my job opportunities were extremely limited.  I suffered terribly….”  Like Pao- Chu, Maxima Regala Dela Cruz of the Philippines also found her return home to be very difficult.  She said, “We went back home and we were crying…. It was so shameful so we dug a deep hole and covered it” revealing how comfort women felt they needed to keep their struggle buried deep inside them.              In 1942, the Japanese took five nurses, Lieutenants Leona Jackson, Lorraine Christiansen, Virginia Fogerty and Doris Yetter, along with Chief Nurse Marion Olds prisoner[19].  The women had been serving as nurses on Guam when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  The women were moved around by the Japanese officers after a year of working for them on Guam.  They were first taken to a military prison, Zentsuji Prison on Shikoku Island in Japan, where God only knows what occurred.   On March 12th the women were moved to Eastern Lodge in Kobe.   Eventually the women were transported to Mozambigue from which they were transported back home.  In August 1942 they were finally delivered.[20]  In America, there was a drastic difference in the response to these women coming home in comparison to the comfort women.   When the POW’s came home they were greeted by their families, who had been praying for their safety, many other nurses from their corps, along with festivities that showed their long-awaited return.  Again, it is in America that no matter what the women went through they were accepted back into society.  They did not have to worry about their families rejecting them for being raped.  If that had been the case, the women would most likely have been welcomed back with even more compassion.  It has been proven through the events of history that the views of American culture have been more accepting of women involvement in the society than those of the Japanese.