Sanitized Sex: Regulating Prostitution, Venereal Disease, and Intimacy in Occupied Japan, 1945-1952 by Robert Kramm

Author:Robert Kramm [Kramm, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Asia, General, Japan
ISBN: 9780520968691
Google: ODEyDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2017-09-26T00:52:22.579000+00:00

PREVENTIVE CARE: PROPHYLACTIC FACILITIES

In another important public health strategy implemented to limit the spread of venereal disease among the occupation personnel and to sanitize the servicemen’s sexuality, the occupier’s military medical departments set up prophylactic facilities. Prophylactic facilities and the provision of chemical prophylaxis had a long history in the U.S. military and had been in common use since the First World War in Europe, but also in units stationed within the United States.80 During the Second World War the U.S. military used prophylactic facilities in Hawai‘i as an integral part of the military’s informal regulation of prostitution and brothels.81 The military established and maintained prophylactic facilities to counter the high rate of venereal disease and the high number of incapacitated servicemen, and integrated into a broad social hygienic anti-VD education campaign with lectures, pamphlets, and posters, they proved a practical tool for the biomedical control of venereal disease. The U.S. military called these facilities prophylactic stations—in military jargon mostly abbreviated as pro stations. Initially erected in military units, during the postwar period prophylactic stations were also increasingly located in brothels and red-light districts. The BCOF referred to them as prophylactic ablution centres (P.A.C.) or, to indicate smaller facilities usually located within the unit area, as prophylactic ablution rooms (P.A.R.). Prophylactic facilities were an intimate place off-limits to nonmilitary personnel and usually equipped with sinks, toilets, and sanitary products, where servicemen could wash their bodies in private. Within the prophylactic facilities servicemen had access to contraceptives and chemical prophylaxis, such as sulfathiazole and mercurous chloride, to protect themselves against venereal infections. Pro stations were a space in the occupation health regime where discursive regulations (such as anti-VD propaganda and hygienic instructions) coincided with everyday personal hygiene practices—the concrete sanitation and protection of the male soldier’s body and his genitals.82

The occupation forces had immediately instituted prophylactic facilities upon their arrival in occupied Japan. Since early September 1945, medical officers had been going ashore to inspect brothels in Tokyo and Kanagawa Prefecture and medically securing recreational facilities by establishing prophylactic stations. On September 30, 1945, Lieutenant Colonel James H. Gordon of the PHW noted in a memo that a Major Philip Weisbach, M.C., commanding officer of the 1st Medical Squadron of the 1st Cavalry, had “reported that he had surveyed the major prostitution areas of Tokyo shortly after the arrival of troops in the city and had set up four prophylactic stations” in Tokyo’s Senju and Mokojuna, in Yokohama, and near the barracks of the First Brigade.83 Maps drawn by the PHW indicate that ten further prophylactic stations had been established outside military facilities in the Kantō region by January 1946, at the train stations of Tokyo, Ueno, Shinbashi, Yokohama, and Sakuragicho. All facilities were built close to well-known red-light districts, like Noge in Yokohama and alongside the Keihin highway between Tokyo and Yokohama. Their exact locations were made known in VD lectures and also advertised on so-called pro kits—the BCOF called them E.T. packets (abbreviation for Emergency Treatment packet). These small

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