6. Western Allied soldiers raped tens of thousands of women across the European and Pacific theaters of war
It would be remiss to discuss the widespread rape of civilians during the Second World War without mentioning the role of Western Allied forces in this far-reaching atrocity; beyond the actions of the Soviet Red Army, the conduct of the United States military in both Europe and Asia warrants equal attention. Although “fraternization” with enemy women was forbidden under U.S. military codes, commanders routinely overlooked their soldiers engaging in such activities with one such officer recorded as offering the defensive counter-rebuttal that “copulation without conversation does not constitute fraternization”.
Whilst precise estimates are incalculable due to the lack of contextual reporting, historical analysis has placed the number of women raped by American servicemen just in Germany between 1945 and 1945 at over 11,000. Civilian women in France fared little better during their own liberation, with hundreds of women estimated to have been raped during the arrival of Allied forces in major metropolitan areas including Le Havre, Cherbourg, and Paris. U.S. military magazine Star and Stripes even tacitly encouraged such behavior, offering helpful French phrases such as “Are your parents at home” for soldiers to employ.
Not isolated to the European theater, the Pacific saw far higher rates of rape by the United States military against Japanese women, with one analysis of the invasion of Okinawa suggests as many as 10,000 women were raped on the island by U.S. Marines. Worst still, even after the Japanese surrender in August 1945 occupying American troops who remained behind continued to rape with impunity. Within the first ten days after the surrender, just in the Kanagawa prefecture of the Kantō region of Japan 1,336 rapes were formally reported. In response to the high levels of rape by Allied soldiers, the Japanese government was compelled to establish the Recreation and Amusement Association, providing access to a network of dozens of military brothels forcibly employing 20,000 Japanese women as young as their early teens for sexual amusement of the occupying U.S. servicemen.