Trafficking American Style
Sex and the single Vietnam War soldier
It’s no secret that wherever you find military installations, you’re gonna find women who satisfy the sexual urges of military men in close proximity. At times, it was a more or less benign arrangement in which girls signed on willingly to make a small fortune at the world’s oldest profession.
But other times (like with the Japanese army in World War II), it was about Korean and Chinese women forced into sex slavery. And then there was the Vietnam War — and the American soldier’s libido. How did that go?
Rural Vietnam was an area inhabited mostly by subsistence farmers intent on living their spartan lives in peace. Politics was the furthest thing from their minds. They were just trying to feed themselves.
But when the North decided to invade the South…and America came to the South’s “rescue,” all hell broke loose. And it was the dirt farmers who paid the heaviest price.
Some heeded the American military’s warnings and relocated to unspeakable housing in Saigon to avoid being bombed back to the Stone Age. The propaganda line was that America was affording rural Vietnamese a better life. But that was debatable. In reality, the Saigon ghetto was more akin to an internment or POW camp. Not enough food, cardboard housing, and nowhere to…
