There was no question of wives accompanying general officers--who though much of the Japanese Army in Burma was, for long periods in certain areas, an army of occupation.  The Siberian expedition (1918-20) taught the Japanese Army what the risk of venereal disease was.  They lost 1387 men killed in that period and had 2065 wounded, but the VC casualties reached 2012.  When the Japanese Army moved into China in the 1930s, a system of brothels was inaugurated, known as ianjo or "comfort houses", staffed by ianfu, "comfort girls", prostitutes from Korea, China and Japan.  The Japanese prostitute, usually from the southernmost islands of Amakusa, off Kyushu, and known by the generic name of `Karayuki San' had long been a feature of life in Southeast Asia.  But the majority of the girls in the army comfort houses were Korean.  The system began in January 1938.  The first house established was the Yang Chia Chia (Willow House) in Shanghai, where the Line of Command General Headquarters controlled brothels.  The set-up was under the supervision of a Japanese Army medical officer, Aso Tetsuo, later head of a hospital in Fukuoka.  The reason was not simply the one put forward by Army authorities in nineteenth-century India, namely that only in this was could rampant venereal disease be controlled.  That was a factor, but it was also important to control the excesses of the soldiers in Shanghai and Hangchow in case they repeated their performance at Nanking where they raped at will after taking it by storm.  10 Army covered 200 miles in a month, with repeated daily battles, before it reached Nanking,a nd that may explain what happened there.  `No virgins after the Japanese Army passed by', was what was said, and in the Tokyo trial there were witnesses who claimed to have seen gang-rapes of one woman by thirty Japanese soldiers.

This violence was reported by foreign missionaries on the spot to diplomats in Shanghai and Nanking, and repeated by journalist for overseas consumption. The Army's prestige was at stake, and so, too, was the future of the occupation, for which it was necessary to `win the people's hearts'.  Hence the higher command's decision to institute `comfort houses, to calm the lust of their troops and ensure that, with the control and inspection of prostitutes, venereal diseases were kept in check.

The collection of the girls was carried out in Japan by officially authorized traders who used Army funds.  The price paid for a girl was 1000 yen, so after she had earned this sum she was theoretically free to return.  At 2 yen per soldier, this meant freedom after 500 men.  An early contingent travelled by train to Hang-Chow, which was over a two-day journey.  When the curious garrisons of the wayside stations learned who they were, they asked them to pause for a while en route.  Railway wagons were turned into temporary comfort houses, and at a rate of three minutes per soldier-the usual rate was two yen for thirty minutes-the girls had more or less earned their liberty money by the time they reached their destination.  There was no time for them to sleep,a nd they simply napped as best they could with a soldier riding on top of them.

From the point of view of prestige again, it was felt to be undesirable to have the houses under direct Army control, so they were run by civilian traders, the Army retaining the responsibility of medical inspection.  The need was calculated on the bases of one girl to forty men, so 80,000 girls were drawn into the system before the war was over.

In Japan itself, the system was treated as secret, and newspaper articles or photographs which touched upon it were stopped by the censor.  There are some photographs surviving, though: a group of girls in kimono bashfully or calculatingly eyeing the camera, a pretty girls smiling happily as she wears naval cap and reads a book, a row of wooden huts with a soldier waiting outside, and the notices displayed: `We welcome with our hearts and bodies the brave soldiers of Japan.'

Strict rules were laid down for the use of the ianjo:

1.    Entry to this comfort house is authorized only for personnel attached to the Army (Army coolies
       excepted).  Personnel entering the house must be in possession of a comfort house pass.

2.    Personnel must pay the required fee in cash and obtain a receipt, in exchange for which they will be given
       an entrance ticket and one condom.

3.    The cost of entrance tickets is as follows: N.C.O.s, other ranks, attached civilians: 2 yen (A sergeant earned
       30 yen a month in 1945, a private first class 10.50 yen, but the pay was higher overseas.  Pay was every ten
       days, and a PFC overseas would receive 7.80 for that period).

4.    The validity of the ticket is for the day of purchase only and if the comfort house is not entered the amount will
       be refunded.  No refund is payable once the ticket has been handed to the attendant (shakufu).

5.    Ticket purchasers must enter the room indicated by the number shown thereon.

6.    The ticket must be handed over to the attendant upon entering the room.

7.    The consumption of alcohol inside the room is strictly forbidden.

8.    After use of the prophylactic solution, the user must leave the room forthwith.

9.    Those who fail to observe the regulations or infringe military discipline must leave the room forthwith.

10.   It is forbidden to have intercourse without the use of a condom.

Some more fatherly Japanese medical officers preferred to advise young soldiers to indulge in masturbation or homosexuality, a state of affairs not alien to the samurai tradition.  Nakamura Isamu, a medical lieutenant from Kokura in Northern Kyunshu is shown introducing a class of recruits in sexual hygiene" `No going to comfort stations for you lot.  Just show some love for your comrades in arms, and masturbate each other. You're better off doing that than going with clandestine prostitutes who are sure to be riddled with VD....'

The indication is that the system, though theoretically well supervised, was by no means always effective in preventing disease.  The bureaucratic detail of the regulations Senda quotes may be the result of the efficiency of medical personnel.  They could also be a joke on the part of the comfort house staff, says Ito Keiichi, who also claims that the system was not so brutalizing as we might suppose.  Where love begins normally from first impressions, he says, and develops step-by-step, the relation in the battlefield int eh very opposite.  It starts suddenly as a purely physical relationship, but feeling can become involved afterwards, even though speed is of the essence for the soldier, who does not know whether he will return from the next battle or not.

There was also a difference in attitude between regulars and conscripts. Not, as we might expect, between tough, experienced old sweats and timid young men fresh from the household' rather the opposite.  The old regular was ften occupied with military chores, and an eye on promotion and his army life had not left him much leisure for chasing women.  The young conscripts fresh from civilian life might in fact have more expensive sexual experience, and therefore stronger needs.  In China it sometimes happened that they would go off on their own, liking for a woman, and end up as the victim of some plain-clothes guerrilla.

In burma, there was something else.  When the tide of battle turned against the Japanese, the comfort girls were often trapped in beleaguered garrisons, and although they were told they were not under military command and could leave, the preferred to stick it out, witht he soldiers.  Int he fighting in Yunnan in September 1944, where the garrison at Lament was finally reduced to eighty men, who decided to commit suicide, the Japanese comfort girls said to their Korean counterparts: "You should escape from here.  You owe no duty to Japan, so save your own lives and return to your country.  You are orientals as they are, so the Chinese soldiers won't harm you.  We are going to stay behind with our soldiers."  The Korean girls waved white cloths and went out to surrender.  The Japanese girls swallowed the potassium cyanide with which the troops killed themselves, and the Chinese found seven Japanese female corpses among the dead they took the town.

The girls in Myitkyina were luckier.  Just before it fell, the garrison commander had rafts built and sent the wounded and the comfort girls to safety down the Irrawaddy.

Elsewhere in Burma, life was not always so hazardous.  In Moulmein, engineers of a naval unit shared their bungalows with comfort girls, but they seem to have been greedy as well.  Not content with what they had, they set out of the hills, where native labourers had told them there were women.  They found the women, in thatched nippa huts and paid them tow or three rupees each. One of them had the sense to get a supply of disinfectant from a nurse before he left, a purple tablet which he dissolved in water.  He washed himself with the solution and was safe.  His friend was not so lucky, and soon swellings began to appear on his thighs.  He was `crimed' for this, being guilty of the offence of using other than Army comfort girls, and was reduced to private
first class.

Since Burma was in theory a friendly country, whose people were to be won over, it was naturally desirable to avoid rape incidents.  Ito Keiichi give an account of one division in Burma in whose area the incidence of rape was high.  Its men had seen long years of hard service, and although often, after six or seven years, whey would be demobilised, in practice they were put on the reserve the same day there were released, sop their service seemed never ending and they never once returned home.  It was not easy to enforce sexual discipline among such men, and the division decided on the extraordinary device of letting it be known that if troops raped a woman, they should kill her, so that the crime should not be discovered.

On one occasion, when three men confessed to rape, after the woman had brought a complaint, their warrant officer asked them, `Why didn't you kill her?', to which the reply was, `We felt sorry for her and couldn't do it.' The Warrant Officer perjured himself on their behalf, but the men were sentenced, returned to Japan, and jailed.  In light of the surrender, this may not seem such a harsh outcome, but as Ito points out, it was a deep disgrace at the time and the men would never dare to return to their homes later.  As it was, this sentence almost certainly saved them from death by disease or starvation along witht he rest of the division.

The characteristic Japanese regulations do not imply that everything was carried out with mechanical seriousness.  When a soldier entered the comfort girl's room, those waiting outside would shout out, `What's happening? What are you doing? Get a move on!', even if the man had only been there five minutes.  If the girls was Burmese she would usually say, `Master, gowngde- la? 'Was it alright, Master?'.  These girls, and the Indian girls, stayed behind when the Japanese surrendered and simply plied their trade for the Allied troops when they moved into Tenasserim, according to Senda Natsumitsu. Besides Moulmein, there were comfort houses in Meiktila, Mandalay, Rangoon, Toungoo, and Pyinmana.  In most of them the proportion of girls was ten Koreans, four Burmese, two Indians and Chinese and Japanese 0.8.  How Senda arrives at his fraction for the Japanese is not clear, but Japanese girls were for the use of officers only.  The girls were usually around twenty years old, though int he early days one medical officer complained to headquarters that prostitutes who had reached the limits of their usefulness in Japan were being sent abroad as ianfu and he insisted that the troops of the Imperial Army were entitled to the very best.

There were also in Burma geisha houses, where the girls carried out their more refined entertainment of music and classical dancing for an audience of officers, among whom each girls would have a special client...
 

AN EXTRACT ON THE USE OF "COMFORT WOMEN" IN BURMA
from Burma: The Longest War, J.M Dent and Sons: London, 1984 pp 595-599