Skivvy Girl

It was the 25th year of Showa in the reign of Japanese Emperor Hiro Hito, 1950 on Western calendars. WWII had ended just five years earlier and American armed forces had occupied the country since that time. Thousands of breadwinners in the patriarchal society that was Japan died in the war leaving their families in desperate financial straits. The economy was in shambles as the giant Zaibatsu cartels had been closed by the military for their support of the war machine. Many young girls felt driven to prostitution to support their fatherless family units. In military jargon, these girls willing to provide sex to occupying serviceman were called #xE2;#xAC;Sskivvy girls#xE2;#xAC;, a transliteration of a Japanese word that sounded the same to the GIs as the word they used for their underclothes. Matsuyama Yoshiko, at seventeen years old, is a composite characterization of these desperate young girls. She became a skivvy girl in the naval port city of Yokosuka. The na#xC3;#xAF;ve village girl with sexual experience limited to high school petting, had no concept of the life she had chosen, and had little defense for the callousness and pain she would encounter. A likeable young American sailor visited the skivvy house where Yoshiko accommodated her clients and changed her life forever. They formed a bond that would last for two years and endure language problems, cultural differences, and cataclysmic natural events. When the sailor departed to America, the heartbroken young girl abandoned the life of a skivvy girl and returned to her home village. Eight years later, the sailor returned to Japan hoping to find his former lover. Through a fortunate meeting with a former Yokosuka skivvy girl now working as a waitress, the sailor was able to locate Yoshiko. They were reunited in an idyllic relationship, but fate intervened and presented the star-crossed lovers with obstacles they could not overcome.