Yep I am on my history high horse yet again….since we celebrated Veterans Day I thought I would look back to the war of my generation…..Vietnam….this time about sanctioned brothels….
When I was serving in Vietnam I took my 5 day R&R in Singapore….there was a hotel that was reserved for GIs on their combat break and in this hotel were girls….all shapes and sizes….and they were there for a price to make us war weary GIs smile (if you know what I mean)….basically it was a big brothel…..to help separate GIs from their cash.
Can you believe it?
But that was nothing new….
Military brothels are state-sanctioned or military-operated facilities providing commercial sex to soldiers, justified historically by governments as a means to maintain troop morale, prevent sexual violence against local civilians, and control venereal disease (VD)
- Pre-Modern and 19th Century: Armies have long tolerated or managed camp followers and localized prostitution. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, colonial powers increasingly formalized these systems. The Imperial Japanese military utilized regulated brothels during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) in Manchuria.
- World War I: Staggering rates of syphilis prompted European powers to institutionalize field prostitution. Germany and Austria-Hungary created organized field brothels on the Eastern and Western Fronts with mandatory medical inspections.
- French Mobile Brothels: France instituted the Bordel Militaire de Campagne (BMC)—mobile field brothels using large trucks or tents—during WWI to supply regulated services to frontline troops.
- Imperial Japan’s “Comfort Women”: From the early 1930s through 1945, the Japanese military forced an estimated tens of thousands to over 200,000 women—primarily from Korea, China, and the Philippines—into institutionalized sexual slavery in military “comfort stations.” Marketed under the guise of preventing unsanctioned rape and disease, the system relied on deception, kidnapping, and extreme violence.
- Nazi Wehrmacht Brothels: During WWII, Nazi Germany established roughly 500 military and concentration camp brothels across occupied Europe and the Soviet Union. Driven by racial ideology and disease control, the military forced at least 34,000 European women—recruited via roundups, coercion, or from concentration camps—into systemic sexual exploitation.
- Post-War Japan and U.S. Occupation: Following WWII, Japanese authorities established the Recreation and Amusement Association (RAA) with official approval and funding to create brothels for occupying Allied forces. Facing soaring rates of sexually transmitted infections among American GIs, General Douglas MacArthur ordered these facilities made off-limits and shut down on March 25, 1946.
There you have a very short history lesson on military brothels….but funny there is no mention to the pseudo-brothrels that the US ran in the R&R destinations from Vietnam…what is written is mostly about the prostitution within the country and its effects…..little info about the R&R scene.
I needed to step back into my past and get it off my chest…..thanx for reading.
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”