\u201c[S]mall, weak, submissive and erotically alluring\u2026eyes almond-shaped for mystery, black for suffering, wide-spaced for innocence, high cheekbones swelling like bruises, cherry lips\u2026. When you get home from another hard day on the planet, she comes into existence, removes your clothes, bathes you and walks naked on your back to relax you … She’s fun you see, and so uncomplicated. She doesn’t go to assertiveness-training classes, insist on being treated like a person, fret about career moves, wield her orgasm as a non-negotiable demand…. She’s there when you need shore leave from those angry feminist seas. She’s a handy victim of love or a symbol of the rape of third world nations, a real trouper.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>\u2014 Tony Rivers, \u201cOriental Girls\u201d, Gentleman’s Quarterly (1990)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Next month, Miss Saigon will open in Saint Paul, Minnesota at the Ordway Theater. On the 25th anniversary of its original release, the play just broke the box office in London. The Guardian<\/a> reports: \u201cBy tea time on Monday, the first day of sales, \u00a34.4m had been taken at the box office.\u201d I had to Google this, but \u00a34.4m is $6,903,160. The producer is \u201cflummoxed,\u201d which in translation would be exactly my reaction: What the f*ck.<\/p>\n I\u2019m glad that Minnesota Public Radio<\/a>\u00a0did the segment it did last week, interviewing Asian American activists who plan on protesting the opening of the show who speak to the sexual violence that APIA women have to deal with as a result of centuries of (mis)representation as submissive, desperate, sexually available and disposable characters in the White male supremacist imagination, dating way back to Marco Polo and as recently as Day Above Ground with their music video Asian Girlz<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sadly, quotations from Patricia Mitchell, President and CEO of the Ordway, and Manna Nichols, a Chinese American actor who is playing the tragic female lead, are not even half-excuses. Mitchell\u2019s reaction is basically a shrug and an \u201cOh wells, it\u2019s art and it sells.\u201d Nichols says “It’s actually incredibly historically accurate compared to most musicals.” Obviously my understanding of the word \u201caccurate\u201d is different from hers.<\/p>\n The stuff that I\u2019m talking about that would make Miss Saigon (including the dozens of simultaneous productions of it that occur all around the U.S.A. and Europe at any given time) actually accurate would be the following monstrous facts about the U.S. military in Asia:<\/p>\n In 1945 after WWII ended and allegedly also the military mass rape that took place in so-called “comfort” stations*, the U.S. and Japan set up brothels with estimates of 70,000 women<\/a> who \u201cserviced\u201d up to 60 G.I.s a day<\/a> through this initiative of the U.S. military\u2019s Recreation and Amusement Association. Many women and girls committed suicide during the RAA\u2019s opening days, and upon their closure (for fear of embarrassment), there were reports of 330 rapes per day in Japan.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n U.S. soldiers did some more \u201cRest and Recreation\u201d when the government set up camp during the Vietnam War. Up to 500,000\u00a0women<\/a> working (forced or otherwise) in the sex economy in South Vietnam by 1972. It\u2019s important to note that wherever the U.S. military builds a base, there are usually few options for women and girls other than to participate in camptown economies<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/images.publicradio.org\/content\/2013\/09\/05\/20130905_misssaigon02_39.jpeg\")
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Were there U.S. soldiers in Vietnam during the war? Yes. Was there rampant military prostitution? Yes. Did U.S. soldiers rape, pay for sexual services or otherwise knock up and abandon thousands of Vietnamese women and children? Yes. Did U.S. soldiers call sex workers \u201cslits\u201d or other disgusting racist and rape-culturey names? Yes. So I suppose if that\u2019s what she means, it\u2019s accurate.<\/p>\n\n
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