Tag Archives: military prostitution

Okinawa’s Sitting Bull

I want to warn you that if you are a member of the uber-sensitive politically-correct mob—some of these people even want to censure literature and rewrite history to fit their politically correct sensitivities—and you are often offended at the use of vulgar/racist words, don’t read this post.

To history buffs, this post is not about the famous Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux holy man (1831-1890) who led his people as a tribal chief during years of warfare with the United States government.

This post is about an Okinawan whore in early 1966, who made a lot of money servicing dozens of American Marines nightly. Some of her paying customers were addicted to having sex with her and were willing to wait for an hour or more outside of her small house in Ken village across the street from Camp Hanson in Okinawa.

Maybe the U.S. Marines who were her customers and fans called her Sitting Bull because she sort of resembled the famous Sioux chief at a younger age.

The one time I saw her, she was wearing a knee length bath robe; had frizzy hair sticking out in all directions and was so overwhelmed from the dozen or more orgasms she’d already experienced that night, she had trouble walking as she came out of the bedroom to call in the next customer in line.

I think she was called Sitting Bull because her fiancé—a U.S. Marine—was a full-blooded Lakota Sioux. I don’t know his name but I know he was a Sioux and his job as a Marine was to drive one of the M48 Patton medium tanks in the 1st Marine Division tank battalion we were both members of.

While Sitting Bull, the whore, was conducting business in one end of her small house, her fiancé was watching TV with Sitting Bull’s mother and children at the other end of the house. She must have been one hell of a fuck, but I never found out. The only reason I stood in that line was out of curiosity. Once I saw her, I left and went to a local bar to get drunk.

Before we shipped out to Vietnam a few weeks later, Sitting Bull’s fiancé went a little crazy—no, really very crazy.  He wanted to marry her and take her home but his request was denied by the U.S. Military after a background check of his fiancé.

The Sioux tank driver got drunk and attempted to drive a tank off base so he could be with his woman. The base commander talked him out of his drunken urge and sent him to the brig instead.

In 1969, at the height of the U.S. War in Vietnam, the Okinawan police estimated that 7,362 Okinawan women were working in prostitution though others estimated this number to be 10,000 or more.  Today, some 7,000 Filipinas … are prostituted women—on entertainment visas—for U.S. military personnel in Okinawa. Source: GenuineSecurity.org

What is going to happen to the world’s prostitutes once the United States stops playing at being a global empire and brings the troops home from more than 611 foreign military bases (According to The Washington Post)?

Discover Kill Anything that Moves

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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

His latest novel is the award winning suspense-thriller Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.

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US Troops and the Prostitutes that Service Them: Part 3/3

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Before I shipped out to Vietnam, I never received any classes, lectures, inservices or workshops on Southeast Asian culture and at that age—without a college education—I wasn’t curious or interested.

We were US Marines trained to kill. We weren’t there to understand the culture. The only workshop I remember was one about how to avoid getting an STD and how dangerous one strain of syphilis/gonorrhea was in Vietnam.

We were told that if we were careless with a Vietnamese woman, it could be a very painful death sentence from a viral form of an STD that no drugs could cure.

In fact, I didn’t know anyone in my unit who expressed the slightest bit of interest in Vietnam’s culture or history. When we went on five days of R&R during our tour of combat—for example to Hong Kong, Thailand, Okinawa, Japan, or the Philippians—most of us were interested in only one thing: getting drunk and getting laid.

And the hundreds of thousands of US troops who felt the same way were not alone in history.

“According to Beth Bailey and David Farber, during the Second World War a large number of prostitutes in Hawaii, each servicing upward of 100 men a day, made a fiscal “killing.” “Shackjobs,” or long-term, paid relationships with women of Hawaiian or Filipino descent were also common among military personnel stationed in Hawaii (as they were later in Vietnam). …”

And “during the war in Indochina, U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright and Sunday Times of London correspondent Murray Sayle maintained, independently of one another, that U.S. forces in South Vietnam had turned Saigon into a “brothel”—a reference to the estimated 500,000 Vietnamese prostitutes who served an approximately equal number of GI’s. … Source: John Brown University

 

In fact, “There were 20,000 prostitutes in Thailand in 1957; by 1964, after the United States established seven bases in the country, that number had skyrocketed to 400,000.” Source: Prostitution in Thailand and Southeast Asia

In addition, “At the height of the US presence in the Philippines, for example, more than 60,000 women and children were employed in bars, night clubs and massage parlors around the Subic Bay and Clark Naval bases alone. Estimates of the total numbers of Filipina women and girls engaged in prostitution and other sex-based industries range between 300,000 and 600,000.” Source: PeaceNews.info – Command and control: the economies of militarized prostitution

And if you think times have changed, read this: “As recently as 2002, a brothel in Australia closed their doors when a group of 5,500 U.S. Sailors coming back from a war zone stopped off in Australia. From the article: Mary-Anne Kenworthy said she was forced to close the doors of her famous Langtrees brothel for only the third time ever yesterday because her prostitutes were so worn out they could no longer provide a quality service.” Source: Cause of Liberty – Prostitution

Do you condemn those who sinned—if it was a sin—or is it wrong to send a young virgin off to possibly die for his country while denying him the pleasure of a woman even if a prostitute was his only choice? What do you think?

Return to US Troops and the Prostitutes Who Service Them: Part 2 or start with Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

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And the woman he loves and wants to save was fighting for the other side.

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US Troops and the Prostitutes Who Service Them: Part 2/3

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When I joined the US Marines, I was a high school graduate and an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy. I was not an intellectual—instead, I was a walking libido filled to overflowing with testosterone like so many of my fellow Marines.

I turned twenty-one in Vietnam, and up to that time Vietnam veterans were the best educated force the United States has ever sent into combat—79% had a high school education or better. Two-thirds of the men who served in Vietnam were volunteers, and eighty-six percent of those who died in Vietnam were Caucasians, 12.5% were black, and 1.2% were from other ethnic/racial groups.

If I had gone straight to Vietnam instead of spending a few weeks in Okinawa for additional training, I could have died a virgin—having never known what it was like to be sexually intimate with a woman.

And that reminds me of a film called Mrs. Henderson Presents staring Judi Dench as Mrs. Laura Henderson who opens a theater in London during World War Two with an all-nude female review for the allied troops, because her son had died a virgin in combat and she didn’t want these young men to die without having at least seen a young, nude woman at least once.

Continued on June 28, 2013 in US Troops and the Prostitutes Who Service Them: Part 3 or return to Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

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US Troops and the Prostitutes Who Service Them: Part 1/3

“The sin we condemn — the sinner … we try to understand.”
– Adam Michnik (1946 – )

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The subject of this series of posts is about US troops and prostitution. It has been said that prostitution is the world’s oldest profession.

For example, in 2400 B.C., the Sumerians listed prostitution in one the earliest lists of professions, and the practice of prostitution in ancient Rome was both legal and licensed, and even Roman men of the highest social status were free to engage prostitutes of either sex without incurring moral disapproval. In fact, rent from a brothel was considered a legitimate source of income in the Roman Empire.

In addition, Hammurabi’s Code (1780 B.C.) specifically mentioned the rights of a prostitute or the child of a prostitute.

And in China—600 B.C.—brothels were legal, while in Greece (594 BC) state brothels were founded and a prostitute’s earnings were taxed. Source: Historical Timeline – Prostitution

 

In fact, historically, “where there are soldiers, there are women who exist for them. … In some ways, military prostitution (prostitution catering to, and sometimes organized by, the military) has been so commonplace that people rarely stop to think about how and why it is created, sustained, and incorporated into military life and warfare.” Source: The Asia Pacific Journal

That leads to when I was a US Marine age twenty in Okinawa on my way to fight in one of America’s wars, and I arrived a virgin who desperately didn’t want to be one. And when I left Okinawa for Vietnam, I had achieved a goal that hundreds-of-thousand—and maybe millions—in the US military have achieved both during peace time and war.

Continued on June 26, 2013 in US Troops and the Prostitutes Who Service Them: Part 2

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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran.

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