Ever wonder why those Japanese war brides never took a trip back home?
Like many other war brides, when Aki decided to marry an American GI, she eliminated an option of returning to Japan no matter how difficult her life would become in the U.S. This reflects strong societal prejudice not only against women married GIs but also their bi-racial children. Source
What sort of woman would choose this? A woman who had no other options, who was already a societal outcast. A prostitute. A hooker.
In the destructive aftermath of losing a war, it is commonplace for women to turn to prostitution to survive, and the foreign occupiers are the only source of money. But women who make the best of a bad situation and make these hard practical decisions are viewed as "collaborating" with the enemy, the hated occupancy force. For their part, the occupying army tends to regard the locals as less than human, so they aren't making any friends on that front. Still, we've seen this in the aftermath of every war - women who "consorted" with the enemy being punished by their society for that. Here are some images from Europe - they publicly shaved these women's heads and paraded them undressed or even naked through the streets. Never mind if these women were rape victims - it was all the same to their countrymen.
https://akafkaesquelife.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/german-collaborators-after-the-war-in-paris2.jpg
They mocked them, tarred them, smeared them with feces, humiliated them:
http://www.mourningtheancient.com/truth-abuse6.jpg
Notice how it wasn't just the woman herself (who bore a foreigner's baby) who was punished, but also her mother, the babe's grandmother, presumably for remaining involved with her daughter and accepting her grandchild:
This sort of dynamic was probably present in Japan as well - if a daughter brought so much shame to her family, the family dare not continue to be involved with her for fear of bringing down the ire of the neighbors on their own heads as well. They had to cut off their prostitute daughters for their own safety. Remember in "Rising Sun", where Tia Carerra explains to Wesley Snipes that it was a horrible shame in Japanese society to have been born with a deformity, but what was worse was that she began an intimate relationship with a gaijin - a foreigner. And this was from the 1980s... There was STILL a stigma.
Forcibly rejected by Japanese society, these women had nothing holding them back from marrying Americans and moving away - forever. In fact, becoming a war-bride was their only hope. And Ikeda and his Soka Gakkai exploited this for their own benefit - and profit.
Posted Oct 1, 2016, 3:34 PM UTC · edited