Reports on Troubles Between the Soldiers of the Allied Occupation Forces & Japanese [Seven police reports in English and Japanese]

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Sapporo, Japan: Sapporo Police Department, 1945. Very Good. Sapporo, Japan: [Sapporo Police Department], 1945. Fourteen single-sided folio sheets (35.5x25.5cm). Seven total reports, each one duplicated in English and Japanese. Some reports stapled. Sheets toned and creased; small chips and tears to edges. Some soiling throughout, especially to versos. About Very Good.

Seven police reports documenting crimes committed by American servicemen, dated from the month immediately following Japanese surrender. The country was swiftly occupied by Allied soldiers in September 1945, the majority of whom were American.

Many of the incidents noted in these reports are robbery and petty theft - robbing a pedestrian of beer, for example. Descriptions frequently state that American soldiers "came to the house for pleasure," whether a restaurant or a brothel, as was evidently the case in one report filed by a woman whose occupation is listed as prostitute. The most extreme report details the attempted rape of a 73-year-old Japanese woman in a field near her home. Though no comprehensive documentary evidence exists, historians believe rape to be a widespread and under-reported phenomenon in Allied-occupied Japan, based on testimony accounts.

These documents constitute a compelling, if unsettling, primary source about the presence and behavior of American servicemen in post-war Japan. .