American Service Men in Japan/OKINAWA

[Columbine]

Originally Posted by dogsbody70

*Ummm isn't it irresponsible not to worry what happens to babies.

No obligation? that does seem very odd to me.

Well actually unless the girl or the man always carries contraceptives or the girl has injections against pregnancies surely self control does always come into it.

Are both partners always prepared?

So from what you are saying perhaps there are many abortions?

The abortion rate is quite high in Japan, and it's a fairly open and well accepted practice. There's no need to worry about an unwanted baby if it's never born, right? And in Japan there's nothing like a strong christian presence to make anyone feel morally bad about terminating an unwanted pregnancy. Not that I'm saying most women who get abortions don't ever feel bad about it, but compare to the UK where some girls would never tell anyone they had an abortion because of the huge guilt and shame factor. We always sketch around the subject for fear of finding out someone in the conversation is a pro-lifer.

Of course there's a social obligation to keep a child if you give birth to it in Japan, but there's not quite the same social bias towards going through with a pregnancy solely because it's the right thing to do.

Bit confused by what you mean by self-control, do you mean abstinence? I'm sure some couples practice it if they aren't prepared, but you can buy condoms in convenience shops, which are everywhere and stay open very late, so unless you really live stuck out somewhere, it's pretty easy to nip out and buy a packet. Injections and pills and so forth aren't really that popular, so yeah, I suppose people do carry condoms.

[cranks]

Well, the moral values in Japan aren't based on the bible or the church. They are something among people and are often not explicitly told. Japanese people hate holier than thee attitude more than anything so they won't preach you, but that doesn't mean there is NO moral obligations. Japan actually has a lower abortion rate than UK.

http://www2.ttcn.ne.jp/honkawa/2247.html

The data can vary depending on the source you refer to, but I doubt any of them show you a considerably higher rate in Japan.

Girls don't talk about abortion in Japan either. I have yet to meet a girl who confessed to having an abortion. Single mothers are relatively not common in Japan, so adding that to the statics, I can only assume they are more careful or they get married if they do get pregnant.

Anyway, I'm not sure about the era right after WW2, but nowadays, most Japanese girls who marry American military guys either go to the US, or follow their husbands around the world. There is a slang, ミリ妻, to describe these wives, and while I assume there are many problems due to cultural and linguistic differences, I don't think marriages between US military personnel and ミリ妻s are something that only last until the husbands go back to the states.

[Columbine]

Originally Posted by cranks

Well, the moral values in Japan aren't based on the bible or the church. They are something among people and are often not explicitly told. Japanese people hate holier than thee attitude more than anything so they won't preach you, but that doesn't mean there is NO moral obligations. Japan actually has a lower abortion rate than UK.

Exactly, you don't get the preaching. No one's going to condemn you for choosing to terminate a pregnancy. I appreciate this isn't quite the same as universal acceptance. Thanks for the link, I guess my information was out of date! I'm surprised at the rates, though I'm not sure why as I knew Japan's was declining and ours was rising. Again though, I suspect this has much to do with each countries respective attitudes towards sex and contraception. We really fail at marketing it well.

Originally Posted by cranks

Girls don't talk about abortion in Japan either. I have yet to meet a girl who confessed to having an abortion. Single mothers are relatively not common in Japan, so adding that to the statics, I can only assume they are more careful or they get married if they do get pregnant.

See, here I wonder if I've had unusually open conversations with Japanese girls, or if you (forgive me if I'm wrong) being older than me, women your age have a different approach to the subject and women my age (i'm 23) and younger don't broach it with people older than them either. Of course, i'm foreign as well, which might well make a difference. :/ A couple of my close friends work in Japan and they say the topic has come up before as well. And when I say talk about it, i'm not saying they broadcast it to the world, but they might tell their immediate family or a few friends. I can pick out of my peers a few girls who definitely haven't told their family, and I know one girl who never even told the father of the baby, because they're scared stiff of what the social backlash would be. and not irrationally either.

I really don't know. It's all rather complicated.

[dogsbody70]

Umm I guess men are men and women are women wherever or whoever they are.

we do have a moral responsibility if we bring a child into the world. too many end up being fostered or IN Care.

No doubt some time in the future we will discover the effect of marriage to a Japanese girl and American service man. It is never easy for anyone who goes out with someone in the services when they often are posted anywhere in the world.

I guess on an American Base there will be plenty of contraceptives available.

doesn't mean they are always used of course. Abortion is very traumatic remedy, and hard for a woman to live with afterwards.

I read that in America that the morning after pill was popular.

In this day and age with all the sexually transmitted diseases-- including AIDS couples need to be careful.

Yet AIDS is a very serious problem yet still many girls do not protect themselves. certainly here in the UK.

What does it take to realise how dangerous unprotected sex can be.

I hope that japanese women married to or with a relationship with a service man-- can have a happy and satisfying life. But I do wonder?

[dogsbody70]

website with article on this subject. It is not recent but surely is informative


Okinawan Women Fighting for Support From U.S. Servicemen

[dogsbody70]

AMERICAN MILITARY IN JAPAN - Japan | Facts and Details


this also is relevant.

[cranks]

Originally Posted by Columbine

Exactly, you don't get the preaching. No one's going to condemn you for choosing to terminate a pregnancy. I appreciate this isn't quite the same as universal acceptance.

I find everything about Japanese moral are a gradation from black to white, not clear cut black and white, though I have a feeling that people in the UK and other European countries are more like this compared to the people in the new world.

Originally Posted by Columbine

See, here I wonder if I've had unusually open conversations with Japanese girls, or if you (forgive me if I'm wrong) being older than me, women your age have a different approach to the subject and women my age (i'm 23) and younger don't broach it with people older than them either. Of course, i'm foreign as well, which might well make a difference. :/ A couple of my close friends work in Japan and they say the topic has come up before as well. And when I say talk about it, i'm not saying they broadcast it to the world, but they might tell their immediate family or a few friends. I can pick out of my peers a few girls who definitely haven't told their family, and I know one girl who never even told the father of the baby, because they're scared stiff of what the social backlash would be. and not irrationally either.

I really don't know. It's all rather complicated.

Haha, I may be old (38) but I don't think I'm so old that my moral values are totally different from people in their 20's. My younger brother was in his 20's until just last year too. When I was much younger and was a collage student, there were some rumors of girls having abortions, so there were probably talks among close friends. I wouldn't be surprised if a Japanese girl didn't tell her parents about it, or told her parents, probably just mom, but not her friends. But I too don't know. They just didn't talk openly especially with guys… some J girls might find it easier to divulge certain things to non-Japanese people though.

Originally Posted by dogsbody70

website with article on this subject. It is not recent but surely is informative
Okinawan Women Fighting for Support From U.S. Servicemen

mmm, typical NY Times tone they use when they talk about Japan and race, which is sometimes utterly inaccurate, so I'll take it with a grain of salt. For starters, there are 200 born in a year, and 4000 are abandoned. The math doesn't really adds up. But I found a Japanese paper that estimated the number of marriage between servicemen and local Japanese girls about 150 a year so I guess there is some truth to it.
沖縄タイムス | 米兵の邦人妻　苦悩　文化の違い　偏見に直面　琉大・ 宮西さん調査 Ｙナンバー車乗用せず／普天間包囲には参加も
It seems to be really hard for Japanese wives to find their husbands who simply left for the US, leaving their wives and kids behind, and some people are calling for a treaty that stipulates the US government find these guys and make them pay the child support. Germany has such a treaty, but Japan doesn't. Interesting. Thanks for the link.

[Nyororin]

Originally Posted by dogsbody70

I guess on an American Base there will be plenty of contraceptives available.

No, in Japan there are plenty of contraceptives available.
Japan is a modern country. Things like that are not difficult to come by at all. They are surely available at least to the same levels as they are in the US and (I assume) the UK.
Not to mention that there seems to be less embarrassment about buying them in general. It`s not taboo for people to be having sex even at younger ages, so there isn`t any stigma attached to picking up a box of condoms.
---------------------------

Regarding abortion in Japan.

It is NOT as simple and easy as things seem to make it look. I had to have one the end of last year for medical reasons... (ie. the baby had attached at the opening to the right fallopian tube due to severe uterine scarring caused by the horrific events of my last pregnancy.)

You would think that with the opinion of two different doctors being that there was virtually no chance of the baby surviving, and that to leave it past the 10th week or so would be risking my life... That getting a procedure done would be easy.

It`s not. Japan has some very strict policies on getting abortions the normal route. First, no major hospitals perform them. There is a policy of "save the life at all costs" in normal hospitals. They are only done by private clinics unless the death of the mother is eminent. You NEED the permission of the father. He has to fill out a number of forms and identify himself as the father. In the case that he cannot be located, I was told that the parents would have to be notified. This was regardless of age and I believe it had something to do with potential complications. I also had to present my "reasons" for the procedure. There was also a minimum week wait. No religious hoops, but still hoops all the same.

There are indeed women who are turned away because they cannot go through the hoops. In the past it was fairly common for a regular obstetrician to offer it as part of their services, but there has been a huge crackdown on those who did this without going through the proper paperwork. Now there are a handful of obstetricians offering the service and many dedicated clinics. (There are doctors who still offer it secretly, but once the rumor goes out they tend to be cracked down on pretty promptly. From what I`ve heard, for not going through the hoops they would charge twice the regular fee.)

In my case we chose to go to a private clinic to have the procedure done because the hospital would only do so once my life was in direct danger. To me, personally, removing a tiny speck and removing a formed baby are very different things regardless of the necessity. We found a private clinic and paid out of pocket. (Insurance would only cover it once it was deemed necessary to save my life.)

Which brings me to another point. It is expensive. I don`t know what it costs in other countries, but it was a 400,000yen deal for us. This is NOT the type of money you can just come up with out of the blue, especially if you`re young and are keeping it a secret from your parents.

It isn`t really something that is talked about openly - but it sort of falls into the same category as condoms and the like. Women don`t go and start up conversations about condoms with guys... But if they know another woman is having some condom issue they might chime in with their experience. Once I had to have this procedure mother-in-law told me she`d had to have one for a different reason after she had sister-in-law.

As for trauma... Japan is pretty harsh on having it done ASAP. Anything after 6 weeks is about 30% more in price, and after 8 weeks you usually have to stay overnight and pay twice as much. After 12~14 weeks they will keep you for 2 days and you pay another huge fee. Anything later and you really NEED a very good reason as there are very few clinics that will do it. Most of them are therefore done very early, long before there is a real sense of a baby being present. All are done sedated - there are none where you are awake through the procedure.

I would say it ranked fairly low on the trauma scale, but then again I knew from pretty much day one that there was no physical way to have the baby. Waiting until it naturally died was just prolonging the inevitable. I do imagine that feelings would likely be different if the circumstances were different, but at the same time there is little of the religious morality and pressure.

[steven]

Wow, Nyororin you give some very good information about this stuff. I'd always wondered about this stuff. It seems like my perception was similar to what a lot of non-japanese have: getting an abortion in Japan is "guilt-free" and "easy". At approx. 40万, I think the "easy" part of my assessment is wrong. That's without mentioning all the hoops you have to go through!

This helps me understand a little better why there seem to be so many 出来ちゃった結婚 recently. I know that kind of thing happens in America and didn't think it happeend in Japan, but I learned that prhase almost immediately after coming to Japan. That kind of thing seems to not only be common, but it seems to be like it's getting to be the majority (purely speculation). The fact that abortions are so hard makes this situation more understandable to me.

Also, I remember seeing a video a few years ago (it's older than just a few years... maybe late 80's or early 90's) about this kind of thing (American Service men in Japan). It specifically talked about WWII and Korea. It had a lot of interviews of the kids and grandkids-- the so called "halfs". While the video focused on the linguistics of the word "half" and the meaning behind it, it had a lot of insight of this topic during that time period.

Also, just last night I was reading a book called "The Stragglers" which is about a man's experience in the Korean War. At any rate, he briefly (and I mean briefly) touched on the situation back then. I don't have the book on me so I can't quote it, but he said that (obviously from his "American" POV) the Japanese women loved the servicemen and the families of these women would let the service men in their homes and basically become a part of their family. I can't imagine how devistated that family would become if that serviceman were to basically pack up and leave. Culturally speaking I feel like that would make you the embarassment of the neighborhood. On a lighter note, I had a good chuckle imagining American servicemen circa 1950 encountering a Japanese families... circa 1950. Imagine the communication that happened between the parties!! If only they had portable video cameras and youtube back then. It's not like these servicemen knew ANYTHING about Japan and the culture before they got there.

[Nyororin]

Originally Posted by steven

Wow, Nyororin you give some very good information about this stuff. I'd always wondered about this stuff. It seems like my perception was similar to what a lot of non-japanese have: getting an abortion in Japan is "guilt-free" and "easy". At approx. 40万, I think the "easy" part of my assessment is wrong. That's without mentioning all the hoops you have to go through!

And that 40万 was at 5 weeks, literally as early as possible as pregnancy tests don`t show until around 4 weeks along. A week or two later would have pushed it up to 60万 (at the least.) I saw quotes starting at 120万 for ones at 12 to 14 weeks.

This helps me understand a little better why there seem to be so many 出来ちゃった結婚 recently. I know that kind of thing happens in America and didn't think it happeend in Japan, but I learned that prhase almost immediately after coming to Japan. That kind of thing seems to not only be common, but it seems to be like it's getting to be the majority (purely speculation). The fact that abortions are so hard makes this situation more understandable to me.

Actually I don`t think there is any connection. I think it`s more about procrastination and seizing opportunities.

Getting married is a lot of money. Even if you feel that a ceremony isn`t necessary and that just registering the marriage is enough - chances are the family feels differently. It`s a pain to get the money together for a wedding or to convince the relatives that not having one isn`t a total failure for the family. Throw in both sides working and you get a timing issue - when do we decide that it`s a good time to get married? As marriage almost always equals having a baby in the first year or two, it`s lumped together with "When are we ready to have a baby?" - a question that is pretty hard to say "Now!" to. This can drag out for years and years and years...

But throw a pregnancy into the mix.

The family; A girl wants to have our son`s child and become part of our family! The guy wants to be a father and is thrilled about marrying our daughter. A grandchild is in the works and our child is serious about having it! Sure, having a big wedding is best, but the stress of one on a baby isn`t good so we can easily explain the lack to relatives. Even if we don`t like the partner, they`re having a baby - we can`t toss around too much complaint as it`s our grandchild!

The couple; We do want to get married, and we do want a baby... Now wasn`t the best timing, but it`s as good as ever! The baby made the big choice for us. We suddenly have family support - we didn`t think we`d be able to make it on our own with a baby! We don`t need to worry about having that big wedding to impress everyone!

Etc etc.

I know quite a few marriages that were おめでた婚 and all of them follow this pattern. The pregnancy provided the push, not the reason itself.

Also, I remember seeing a video a few years ago (it's older than just a few years... maybe late 80's or early 90's) about this kind of thing (American Service men in Japan). It specifically talked about WWII and Korea. It had a lot of interviews of the kids and grandkids-- the so called "halfs". While the video focused on the linguistics of the word "half" and the meaning behind it, it had a lot of insight of this topic during that time period.

There was a recent documentary on about some of the children from one of the orphanages for those left behind by their servicemen fathers. A recurring theme was the mother selling all her things, either handing over the money to the serviceman for her travel or buying things he had told her she`d need to bring with her... And then basically starving to death, leaving the baby to other relatives - who also had their hands full trying to stay alive. An almost guaranteed survival for the baby was an orphanage as they were receiving aid at the time.

When these children grew up and researched their fathers, they often found that there was no chance of them ever taking their Japanese girlfriends home to get married - they already had wives and children back in the US.

My grandfather was stationed in Japan long term after the war, and he can tell countless stories about how the men were split into two groups - one side thought of the Japanese as less than human, so the women were quaint little things to have fun with then discard... And the other side that saw that as cheating on their loved ones back home, or who honestly DID want to take their Japanese girlfriends home. The ones that were serious had a wedding in Japan. The ones that weren`t would ask to be moved if they had a baby in the works, and would request their location be withheld from non-military inquiry. (The woman and her family) He said that in some of these they would decide they were sick of the girl and the two kids they had, so would ask to be transferred to another location - possibly to do the same. The women would come every day for months and months begging to at the very least be given information on whether their loved was even alive as he just disappeared one day (often with all her family treasures in tow).

There was one guy posted with my grandfather who married his Japanese girlfriend and she came along when they were moved to a base outside of Japan. Once they went to the US she went to live with his family, but he later heard she killed herself after being unable to handle the pressure and hatred lashed at her from them. I guess she sent a desperate letter - the guy got it and took emergency leave but got there a few days too late.

BUT - this is all WWII stuff. I think the situation is quite a bit different now.