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Kokura incident

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1950 mass rape by the United States Army
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Kokura incident
Part of the Korean War,
World War II Occupation of Japan
LocationKokura, Fukuoka Prefecture
DateJuly 11, 1950 (1950-07-11)
TargetJapanese women
Attack type
mass rape
PerpetratorsUnited States United States Army 24th Infantry Regiment
MotiveAnti-Japanese racism

The Kokura incident (小倉黒人米兵集団脱走事件) was a mass rape event by mutinous American soldiers of the 24th Infantry Regiment (United States) against Japanese women in the city of Kokura, Fukuoka Prefecture, in July 1950, after the soldiers rioted against deployment to Korea.

Preceding incident

On 4 July 1950, 22-year-old American soldier James L. Clark from Marks, Mississippi attacked a Japanese family in Kokura. Clark killed the family's two sons and their parents, leaving Keiko, a seven-year-old girl, as the family's sole surviving member. American soldiers and their wives later contributed to a fund for Keiko's support.[1] Clark's original death sentence was commuted and he was not executed.[2][3]

Riot

On 11 July 1950 in Kokura,[4] soldiers of the U.S. 24th Infantry Regiment, which was at Camp Jōno, were ordered to deploy into the Korean war. The soldiers rioted and 75, 100,[5] 200,[6][7] or 250[8] soldiers escaped the camp and began attacking and raping Japanese women in Kokura; they also killed a Japanese man.[3] According to later testimony “revealed in the 1975 Fukuoka Prefectural edition of the Asahi...some women were sexually assaulted in front of their husbands".[9] The mass rapes were mentioned in a U.S. military police report to the Fukuoka Area Provost Marshal, chief of Kyushu Civil affairs region, on 17 July 1950.[10]

The U.S. military censored all mention of the rapes in Japanese media.[11]

In media

Seichō Matsumoto, a Japanese man from Kokura, wrote a novel based on the events.[12][13][14][15] African-American scholar Duchess Harris' essay, "How negative stereotypes in material culture impact global politics", critices Matsumoto's novelisation for focusing on race in the incident, saying "The image of the Black GI as rapist has become something of a staple in Japanese pornography and films about the Occupation. The Black rapist trope also appears in Matsumoto Seicho’s short story, Kuroji no e.” Others also criticised his racial focus.[16]

Aftermath

After fighting in the Korean War, the 24th Infantry regiment was dissolved on 1 October 1951 and its soldiers discharged from duty.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Soldier Faces Death Sentence Kobe, Japan". St. Petersburg Times. Sep 3, 1950.
  2. ^ [1] [dead link]
  3. ^ a b Parker, Clark (December 12, 2016). "Occupied Japan: The Kokura incident, "committing excesses", and murder on the 4th of July 「黒地の絵」". the tokyo files 東京ファイル.
  4. ^ Roehner, Bertrand M. RELATIONS BETWEEN ALLIED FORCES AND THE POPULATION OF JAPAN (PDF) (Report). Institute for Theoretical and High Energy Physics, University of Paris 6 Laboratoire de Physique Th´eorique et Hautes ´Energies, UPMC, Paris Working Report. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 September 2008.
  5. ^ Bowers, William T.; Hammond, William M.; MacGarrigle, George L. (1997). Black Soldier, White Army: The 24th Infantry Regiment in Korea (illustrated ed.). DIANE Publishing. ISBN 0788139908.
  6. ^ Morris-Suzuki, Tessa (December 27, 2013). "Lavish are the Dead: Re-envisioning Japan's Korean War 死者の奢り あらためて日本の朝鮮戦争を思い浮かべる". Asia-Pacific Journal : Japan Focus. 11 (52).
  7. ^ ISHIMARU, Yasuzo (December 2007). "The Korean War and Japanese Ports: Support for the UN Forces and Its Influences" (PDF). NIDS Security Reports (8): 55-70. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 December 2010.
  8. ^ 李, 彦樺 (2015-03-31). "松本清張「黒地の絵」論". 國文學. pp. 1–30. hdl:10112/9249. ISSN 0389-8628. Archived from the original on 2 January 2024.
  9. ^ Media, Propaganda and Politics in 20th-Century Japan SOAS Studies in Modern and Contemporary Japan. Barak Kushner , Yoichi Funabashi. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2015. ISBN 978-1472512260.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  10. ^ KASHIMA, Takumi (2012-12-30). "Matsumoto Seicho's Kuroji-no-E His Origin of Dynamism A Critical Biography of Matsumoto Seicho,1958". The Journal of Nagasaki University of Foreign Studies (16). 長崎外国語大学: 1–36. ISSN 1346-4981. Archived from the original on 26 January 2022.
  11. ^ Yamamoto, Mari (2004). Grassroots Pacifism in Post-War Japan: The Rebirth of a Nation. Routledge Japanese Studies Series (illustrated ed.). Routledge. p. 254. ISBN 1134308183.
  12. ^ Matsumoto, Seicho (January 1, 1965). 『黒地の絵』 Kuroji no e. Shinchosha. ISBN 4101109036.
  13. ^ Molasky, Michael S. (2005). The American Occupation of Japan and Okinawa: Literature and Memory. Routledge Studies in Asia's Transformations. Vol. 1. Routledge. p. 86. ISBN 1134652798.
  14. ^ KASHIMA, Takumi (2012-12-30). "「黒地の絵」-松本清張のダイナミズム- 評伝松本清張:昭和33年". The Journal of Nagasaki University of Foreign Studies (16). 長崎外国語大学: 1–36. ISSN 1346-4981.
  15. ^ Molasky, Michael S. (2005). The American Occupation of Japan and Okinawa: Literature and Memory. Vol. 1. Routledge. p. 86. ISBN 1134652798.
  16. ^ "●イーストウッドに「黒地の絵」の映画化を". 2015-04-02.
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