Daisy's Story: Filipina Migrants and Other Women in the Shadow of the U.S. Military Bases in Okinawa

Abstract

As long as U.S. military bases have existed in Okinawa, sex workers have served the troops. What has varied over the decades has been the women's backgrounds, their working conditions, and their degree of agency. During the Pacific War, the Japanese military notoriously set up a “comfort women” system in which they enslaved thousands of women from Japan's colonies and occupied territories to supply sex to Japanese soldiers. After the war, during the U.S. military occupation of Okinawa from 1945 until 1972, prostitution was legal, and thousands of Okinawan women were pushed into sex work around the U.S. bases in order to provide for themselves and their families. After the reversion of Okinawa to Japan, Filipina migrants replaced Okinawan women in the entertainment districts around the U.S. military bases. A common belief has been that these women were trafficking victims. But the story of Daisy, excerpted from Night in the American Village: Women in the Shadow of the U.S. Military Bases in Okinawa, illustrates how the migrants also had agency.