and then there were GIs in France at the end of World War II

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/books/rape-by-american-soldiers-in-world-war-ii-france.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Jack

At 12:27 PM 5/23/2013, Crookston, Andrew James wrote:
>The article Rodney sent out reminded me of 
>another article I just read last week about a 
>nationalist Japanese mayor who made a statement 
>justifying the forced prostitution and forced 
>sexual slavery of women in Japan and the korean 
>peninsula during World War II.  Here is a link to the story:
><http://news.sky.com/story/1090626/japan-mayor-defends-use-of-wartime-sex-slaves>http://news.sky.com/story/1090626/japan-mayor-defends-use-of-wartime-sex-slaves
>
>Andy Crookston
>PhD candidate
>Department of Sociology
>Washington State University
>
>----------
>From: Human Rights & Social Justice 
>[[log in to unmask]] on behalf of 
>Coates, Rodney [[log in to unmask]]
>Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2013 9:17 AM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Rape and Justice in the Civil War
>
>
>
>Rape and Justice in the Civil War
>
>
>
>By 
><http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/crystal-n-feimster/>CRYSTAL 
>N. FEIMSTER source: 
><http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/rape-and-justice-in-the-civil-war/>http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/rape-and-justice-in-the-civil-war/ 
>
>
><http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/disunion/>Disunion 
>follows the Civil War as it unfolded.
>
>
>TAGS:
>
>
>
><http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/blacks/>BLACKS, 
><http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/civil-war-us-1861-65/>CIVIL 
>WAR (US) (1861-65), 
><http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/sex-crimes/>SEX 
>CRIMES,<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/slavery/>SLAVERY, 
><http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/women-and-girls/>WOMEN AND GIRLS
>
>President Lincoln’s General Orders No. 100, also 
>known as the Lieber Code of 1863, set clear 
>rules for engaging with enemy combatants. But 
>the code also clarified how Union soldiers 
>should treat civilians, and in particular women. 
>Largely forgotten today, the Lieber Code 
>established strict laws regarding an issue that 
>was everywhere and nowhere in the consciousness of the Civil War: wartime rape.
>
>Three articles under Section II declared that 
>soldiers would “acknowledge and protect, in 
>hostile countries occupied by them, religion and 
>morality; strictly private property; the persons 
>of the inhabitants, especially those of women” 
>(Article 37); that “all robbery, all pillage or 
>sacking, even after taking a place by main 
>force, all rape, wounding, maiming, or killing 
>of such inhabitants, are prohibited under the 
>penalty of death” (Article 44); and that “crimes 
>punishable by all penal codes, such as … rape, 
>if committed by an American soldier in a hostile 
>country against its inhabitants, are not only 
>punishable as at home, but in all cases in which 
>death is not inflicted the severer punishment shall be preferred” (Article 47).
>
>Together the articles conceived and defined rape 
>in women-specific terms as a crime against 
>property, as a crime of troop discipline, and as 
>a crime against family honor. Most 
>significantly, the articles codified the 
>precepts of modern war on the protection of 
>women against rape that set the stage for a 
>century of humanitarian and international law.
>
>Such explicit prohibition was necessary, because 
>even after the code was in place, sexual 
>violence was common to the wartime experience of 
>Southern women, white and black. Whether they 
>lived on large plantations or small farms, in 
>towns, cities or in contraband camps, white and 
>black women all over the American South experienced the sexual trauma of war.
>
>Union military courts prosecuted at least 450 
>cases involving sexual crimes. In North Carolina 
>during the spring of 1865, Pvt. James Preble 
>“did by physical force and violence commit rape 
>upon the person of one Miss Letitia Craft.” When 
>Perry Holland of the 1st Missouri Infantry 
>confessed to the rape of Julia Anderson, a white 
>woman in Tennessee, he was sentenced to be shot, 
>but his sentence was later commuted. Catherine 
>Farmer, also of Tennessee, testified that Lt. 
>Harvey John of the 49th Ohio Infantry dragged 
>her into the bushes and told her he would kill 
>her if she did not “give it to him.” He tore her 
>dress, broke her hoops and “put his private 
>parts into her,” for which he was sentenced to 
>10 years in prison. In Georgia, Albert Lane, 
>part of Company B, in the 100th Regiment of Ohio 
>Volunteers, was also sentenced to 10 years 
>because he “did on or about the 11th day of 
>July, 1864 … upon one Miss Louisa Dickerson … 
>then and there forcibly and against her will, 
>feloniously did ravish and carnally know her.”
>
>Black women were in even more danger. Rape was 
>one of the many horrors of slavery, though 
>whites rarely recognized it as such. 
>Interestingly, it was only in the context of war 
>that Southern whites for the first time were 
>forced to acknowledge the rape of black women. 
>In the spring of 1863, John N. Williams of the 
>7th Tennessee Regiment wrote in his diary, 
>“Heard from home. The Yankees has been through 
>there. Seem to be their object to commit rape on 
>every Negro woman they can find.” Many times, 
>troops and ruffians raped black women while 
>forcing white women to watch, a horrifying 
>experience for all, and a proxy rape of white 
>women. B. E. Harrison of Leesburg, Va., wrote a 
>letter to President Abraham Lincoln complaining 
>that federal troops had raped his “servant girl” 
>in the presence of his wife. Gen. William Dwight 
>reported, “Negro women were ravished in the 
>presence of white women and children.” Just as 
>the rape of white women implied that Southern 
>men were unable to protect their mothers, wives 
>and daughters, the rape of slave women told 
>whites they could no longer protect their property.
>
>A close examination of cases involving the rape 
>of black women reveals that, while black women 
>may have been particularly vulnerable to wartime 
>rape, the Lieber Code brought them for the first 
>time under the umbrella of legal protection. In 
>fact, some black women were able to mobilize miltary law to their advantage.
>
>In the summer of 1864, Jenny Green, a young 
>“colored” girl who had escaped slavery and 
>sought refuge with the Union Army in Richmond, 
>Va., was brutally raped by Lt. Andrew J. Smith, 
>11th Pennsylvania Cavalry. Thanks to the Lieber 
>Code, though, she was able to bring charges 
>against him, and even testify in a military 
>court. “He threw me on the floor, pulled up my 
>dress,” she told the all-male tribunal. “He held 
>my hands with one hand, held part of himself 
>with the other hand and went into me. It hurt. 
>He did what married people do. I am but a 
>child.” The idea that a former slave, and an 
>adolescent girl at that, could demand and 
>receive legal redress was revolutionary. Despite 
>his attorney’s argument that Green had 
>consented, Smith was discharged from the Army 
>and sentenced to 10 years of hard labor.
>
>
>RELATED
>
>
>
>
>
><http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/10/29/opinion/20101029-civil-war.html>Disunion 
>Highlights
>
>
>
>Explore multimedia from the series and navigate 
>through past posts, as well as photos and articles from the Times archive.
>    * 
> <http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/10/29/opinion/20101029-civil-war.html>See 
> the Highlights »
>
>This was not an isolated instance or a random 
>judge’s opinion. The effect of the Lieber Codes 
>was almost immediate, as was agreement on the 
>part of high-ranking officials. In reviewing 
>Smith’s sentence, Gen. Benjamin Butler – 
>notorious for his Women’s Order in New Orleans 
>that threatened rape of women who resisted 
>occupation by insulting Union soldiers – 
>supported the guilty verdict. In summarizing the 
>case, he explained, “A female negro child quits 
>Slavery, and comes into the protection of the 
>federal government, and upon first reaching the 
>limits of the federal lines, receives the brutal 
>treatment from an officer, himself a husband and 
>a father, of violation of her person.”
>
>Unwilling to entertain pleas for mercy on 
>Smith’s behalf, Butler declared the officer 
>lucky to walk away with his life. “A day or two 
>since a negro man was hung, in the presence of 
>the army, for the attempted violation of the 
>person of a white woman,” he argued. “Equal and 
>exact justice would have taken this officer’s 
>life; but imprisonment in the Penitentiary for a 
>long term of years, his loss of rank and 
>position — if that imprisonment be without hope 
>of pardon, as it should be — would be almost an 
>equal example.” Abraham Lincoln also reviewed 
>the case and wrote, “I concluded” to let Smith 
>“suffer for a while and then discharge him.”
>
>Southern women’s wartime diaries, court martial 
>records, wartime general orders, military 
>reports and letters written by women, soldiers, 
>doctors, nurses and military chaplains leave 
>little doubt that, as in most wars, rape and the 
>threat of sexual violence figured large in the 
>military campaigns that swept across the 
>Southern landscape. Nonetheless, the Lieber Code 
>made it possible for women to seek justice in 
>military courts and eventually established the 
>modern understanding of rape as a war crime.
>
>Follow Disunion at 
><https://twitter.com/NYTcivilwar/>twitter.com/NYTcivilwar 
>or join us 
><http://www.facebook.com/pages/Civil-War-The-New-York-Times/171184126228555>on 
>Facebook.
>
>--
>
>Inline image 1
>
>
>
>
>For more of my work please check me out at -
>
><http://redroom.com/member/rodney-d-coates>http://redroom.com/member/rodney-d-coates
>
>  "Only when the last tree has died and the last 
> river been poisoned and  the last fish been 
> caught will we realize we cannot eat money." 
> --Nineteenth century Nçhilawç (Cree) proverb
>
>“A true believer is one who does not hurt others 
>with his thoughts, words or actions.” (Prophet Muhammad)
>
>The song that lies silent in the heart of a 
>mother sings upon the lips of her child..Kahlil Gibran
>
>
>Rodney D. Coates
>Professor of Sociology, Social Justice and Gerontology
>Interim Director of Black World Studies
>
>

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