About the Work

Let The Good Times Roll: Prostitution and U.S. Military in Asia (New York: The New Press, 1992),
S. Sturdevant and B. Stoltzfus (Co-authors).

IMAGES

The images seek to show the complexity of the lives of women who sell their sexual labor in the bars and brothels outside the U.S. military bases in the Philippines, Okinawa and Korea. Images include life in the rural or urban areas where the women grew up and in factories or agricultural areas where they worked before coming to the bars, neighborhoods where they live, of their children, families, work in the bars, the guys, the militarized and sexualized culture that is the bar area. Saundra Sturdevant is the photographer.

TEXT: Women’s Life Stories

Women’s stories about their lives comprise three-fourths of the text . Brenda Stoltzfus conducted the interviews and edited them for publication. Common historical experiences flow through each woman’s life.

The women are internal refugees, having migrated singly or with their families from fishing or agricultural villages or perhaps forest areas. These are traditional sections of the economy where rapacious colonial and post-colonial development policies, enforced by foreign and local militaries and their wars have destroyed or greatly impaired people’s rights and practices of living and earning a living. Great internal migrations ensued.

The Philippines and the southern part of Korea each experienced great destruction during the course of the Pacific War that ended in August 1945. Subsequent urbanization of their societies, with families making migrations from the countryside to the urban areas, occurred during in the 1950s and 1960s. This migrant labor force was illiterate or semi-illiterate and unskilled in ways necessary to survival in an urban economy. Primarily it was left to the young people to shoulder the responsibility of taking care of the family. It is within this context that many young women sold their sexual labor, or worked as maids or in a factory before doing so. Developed during the aftermath of the Korean War, Tongduchun north of Seoul is but one of the many bar and brothel towns servicing the 40,000 U.S. service personnel stationed in Korea. The U.S. military actively discourages wives from joining husbands during tours in Korea.

In the Philippines, the confluence of a large pool of surplus women’s labor and the arrival of hundreds of thousands of U.S. service personnel on their way to or from the Vietnam War created Olongapo, the town outside Subic Naval Base. Olongapo became the “model” Rest and Relaxation (R&R) area for U.S. service personnel during the Vietnam Era. Towns like Olongapo would be replicated in many other parts of the world where U.S. service personnel were to be stationed.

In Okinawa, a third of the island population had been killed during the three month Battle for Okinawa between the Japanese and U.S. militaries that ended in June 1945. With the immediate occupation of Okinawa by the U.S. military, it was common for many young Okinawan women to sell their sexual labor to U.S. service personnel. This was in large part necessitated by the extreme devastation of the island culture and infrastructure and by the fact that the only money allowable was U.S. military script. Later, Filipinas were imported for the exclusive use by U.S. serviced personnel. The Yakuza kept strict control of the boundaries, due in large part to known transmission of hard to eradicate sexually transmitted diseases U.S. military’ personnel brought with them. This control was heightened with the brining to Asia of AIDs by U.S. military personnel in the 1980s,

TEXT: INTRODUCTIONS and ANALYSIS

Introductions to the region and the countries comprise one-fourth of the text. Constributors are: Walden Bello, Cynthia Enloe, Aida F. Santos, Saundra Sturdevant, and Bruce Cumings. Brenda Stoltzfus and Saundra Sturdevant jointly wrote a concluding analytical essay.

WORK PROCESS

Saundra Sturdevant began her professional life with a Ph.D. in Modern Chinese History from the University of Chicago. She began to photograph professionally in the early 1980s when she ivied in Beijing and worked for the Foreign Languages Press, a work unit of the Chinese government. Since that time, she has photographed in Asia and the Americas.

From 1986 to 1988, Saundra Sturdevant worked as the Quaker International /representative for East Asia, an American Frieds Service Committee (AFSC) position based in Hong Kong. One of the main issues that she focused on during that time was women’s labor and, as it developed, the selling of sexual labor outside U.S. military bases in the region.

Brenda Stoltzfus worked for the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) for five years. Bi-lingual in Tagalog , she organized with women who work in the bars and brothels in Olongapo outside Subic Naval Base. Brenda and the women founded Buklod, a Tagalog word meaning “bonding.” Buklod provided night care, health education, community, and regional networking to combat the forces that oppress women selling their sexual labor to U.S. military. Brenda has also worked as a translator for a number of international films that have focused on the Philippines.

At the end of their respective contracts, Saundra and Brenda networked with women and labor based organizations in the three countries. The resulting relationships created the framework within which Saundra photographed and Brenda interviewed. Four months of intensive fieldwork became the material from which Let the Good Times Roll emerged.

SUBSEQUENT WORK on THIS SUBJECT

Saundra contributed a photographic essay, "Who Benefits? U.S. Military, Prostitution and Base Conversion," to Waller and Rycenga (eds), Frontline Feminisms: Women, War, and Resistance (NY: Garland Publishing, 2000).

The Center for Race and Gender, U.C. Berkeley choose Saundra’s image, “A Go-go Dancer,” as the Signature Image announcing the Inaugural of this department in 2000.

In 2003 under the direction of Kim Jin-soo, the Ingle Press, Seoul, Korea, translated and published Let The Good Times Roll in Korea.