The TERRIFYING Truth About Prostitution In The Vietnam War 

The TERRIFYING Truth About Prostitution In The Vietnam War 

Many people think prostitution during the  Vietnam War was simply an unavoidable side   effect of thousands of young soldiers being  sent overseas. But as American involvement   grew, something much bigger began taking  shape. What started as scattered private   arrangements soon became an enormous  wartime industry that trapped hundreds   of thousands of women and left scars  that lasted long after the war ended.

In 1960, fewer than a thousand American military  personnel were stationed in South Vietnam. At   that point, the United States was still playing a  limited advisory role in the Vietnam War. But over   the next few years, that changed at an astonishing  pace.

 By 1968, the number of American troops had   grown to more than 500,000. Most of these soldiers  were teenagers or men in their early twenties,   sent to Vietnam on one-year tours of duty. They  received regular pay and often had long periods   of downtime between combat missions, especially  when they were stationed at large military bases. The earliest arrangements were informal and  happened on an individual level.

 Many American   soldiers hired Vietnamese women as “hootch  maids.” A hootch was a simple military hut   or living quarters, and these women were paid to  clean the barracks, wash clothes, and cook meals.   Over time, some servicemen also entered into  private arrangements for s*x with the same   women.

 There was no official military system, no  written policy, and no organized network in the   beginning. These were simply private transactions  between individual soldiers and local women, many   of whom were struggling to survive in a country  already devastated by years of war and poverty. That informal system did not last for long. As  more American troops poured into South Vietnam,   the demand for goods, entertainment,  and prostitution grew rapidly.

 By 1965,   a huge black-market economy had formed around the  expanding U.S. military presence. It was run by   suppliers, dealers, middlemen, and local hustlers  who saw an opportunity to make money from the war.   Bars, nightclubs, and brothels  quickly appeared around nearly   every major American military base  in southern Vietnam, turning entire   neighborhoods into entertainment districts  built almost entirely for foreign soldiers.

Officially, the South Vietnamese government  banned prostitution. In reality, however,   it had become one of the country’s biggest  sources of American dollars. According to   multiple accounts, government officials allegedly  collected around 30 percent of the earnings from   prostitution districts operating outside U.S.  bases.

 Lower-ranking officials often demanded   additional payments directly from the women, using  threats or harassment to extort money from them.   One official in Saigon, the capital of South  Vietnam, reportedly described the trade very   bluntly, calling it an almost endless source of  U.S. currency flowing into the country’s economy. By 1966, the rapidly growing network of brothels  outside American bases had become more than just   a moral issue. Military commanders saw it as a  security problem.

 They worried that enemy agents   from the Viet Cong could use these areas to gather  intelligence, plant explosives, or attack soldiers   when they left the safety of their bases. At the  same time, se*ually transmitted infections were   becoming a serious concern because infected  soldiers often had to be removed from combat   duty for treatment.

 Instead of trying to shut the  trade down completely, military leaders chose a   different solution. They decided to move part of  it inside the security of the bases themselves. That same year, the U.S. Army established  official military brothels within the   perimeters of base camps at An Khe, Lai Khe, and  Pleiku. The official reason was straightforward.   By providing controlled facilities  inside secured military compounds,   commanders hoped to keep servicemen  away from dangerous off-base areas   while also reducing the spread of  s*xually transmitted infections.

One of these facilities became widely known among  American troops by the nickname “Disneyland East.”   The name reflected how ordinary and routine  the operation had become for many soldiers.   Rather than feeling like an illegal underground  business, it functioned as a fenced and guarded   compound where prostitution was managed almost  like any other military service.

 To many troops,   it became just another part  of daily life on the base,   no different from visiting the mess hall for a  meal or the supply depot to collect equipment. The responsibilities were carefully divided.   The U.S. military provided security for the  compounds and strongly pushed for regular   medical examinations of the women in an effort  to reduce disease among soldiers.

 However,   recruiting the women, setting prices, and  running the business itself remained entirely   in Vietnamese hands. This arrangement allowed  American commanders to publicly describe the   brothels as Vietnamese-operated facilities,  even though the U.S. military was closely   involved in regulating their security and  health procedures on a day-to-day basis.

At the Pleiku base, the facility contained around  twenty rooms. The buildings had been freshly   whitewashed and furnished so they could be used  continuously by large numbers of soldiers. Nothing   about the site suggested it was temporary. It  was not an improvised wartime arrangement thrown   together for a few weeks. It had been deliberately  built and organized for long-term operation.

From time to time, the South Vietnamese government  carried out highly publicized crackdowns in an   attempt to show that it was enforcing the  country’s anti-prostitution laws. In 1967,   for example, a social welfare officer  in the coastal city of Nha Trang led   a major raid that resulted in the arrest of  more than 300 women and 50 pimps.

 But these   operations did little to change the larger  system. The profits were simply too large,   and the demand created by hundreds of thousands of  American troops showed no signs of disappearing. The military officially called it R&R,  short for Rest and Recuperation. It was   meant to give soldiers a short break  from the stress and danger of combat.  

But many servicemen had their own nickname,  calling it I&I, Intoxication and Intercourse.   That unofficial name reflected how many  troops actually viewed these trips. Once during a combat tour, an American soldier  was usually given several days away from the war   zone.

 They could choose from several approved  destinations, including Bangkok in Thailand,   Hong Kong, Tokyo in Japan, Manila in  the Philippines, Taipei in Taiwan,   Singapore, and a quiet stretch of Thailand’s  eastern coastline known as Pattaya Beach.   Marine veteran Lloyd Lofthouse later said  he could not remember a single man in his   unit who showed any real interest in visiting  historical sites or learning about the local   culture during these trips. For most soldiers,  the purpose of R&R was focused on one thing.

Before the Vietnam War, Pattaya was nothing  more than a small and relatively unknown   fishing village on the Gulf of Thailand.  Everything changed after the U.S. government   began directing large numbers of American soldiers  there for their R&R leave during the mid-1960s.   Within just a few years, hotels, bars, nightclubs,  and brothels spread across the coastline to   serve the constant flow of American troops.

 The  Vietnam War played a major role in transforming   Pattaya Beach into one of the largest and most  well-known red-light districts in the world. Thailand’s government had many of the same  financial motivations as South Vietnam. The   arrival of thousands of American soldiers brought  a huge amount of U.S. dollars into the country’s   economy.

 Businesses expanded rapidly to meet  the demand, and entire local industries grew   around the R&R program. By the time American  involvement in the Vietnam War ended in 1975,   Pattaya had been permanently transformed. Long  after the last American soldier left Southeast   Asia, it remained one of the world’s  best-known destinations for s*x tourism. The R&R system also had another long-term  effect.

 It normalized the idea that paying   for s*x with local women was simply another  part of military deployment. For many soldiers,   it became something that was expected, almost  like booking a flight or checking into a hotel.   That attitude came with serious consequences. The  cost was not measured only in money, but also in   the growing number of se*ually transmitted  infections spreading through the ranks.

The problem appeared surprisingly early. As far  back as 1963, before the United States had fully   escalated its involvement in the war, American  troops were already recording more than 300 cases   of gonorrhea for every 1,000 person-years  of service, a standard way of measuring   how often a disease occurs within a population  over time. On one U.S.

 Navy aircraft carrier,   the annual gonorrhea rate climbed even higher,  reaching 582 cases per 1,000 crew members.   Another infection called non-gonococcal  urethritis, which causes inflammation of   the urinary tract but is not caused by gonorrhea,  was close behind at 459 cases per 1,000 sailors. By 1967, the situation had become so serious  that General Earle Wheeler, the Chairman of   the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the  U.S. Congress about the growing crisis.

 He told   lawmakers that the rate of venereal disease among  American troops serving in Vietnam was running   ten times higher than the rate among military  personnel stationed back in the United States.   He also admitted that the military’s education and  prevention campaigns were not working as intended. Gonorrhea accounted for the overwhelming  majority of infections.

 During the Vietnam War,   it became the single most common diagnosis  across the entire U.S. military healthcare   system. More soldiers were treated for  gonorrhea than for combat wounds, malaria,   or any other medical condition. The second  most common se*ually transmitted infection was   chancroid, a bacterial disease that causes painful  genital sores and can increase the risk of other   infections.

 Syphilis ranked behind both of them,  but it remained a constant concern for military   doctors because, if left untreated, it could  lead to severe and long-lasting health problems. Treatment was neither quick nor pleasant.  One former combat medic later recalled   reading military pamphlets that warned infected  soldiers they might need dozens of injections   spread over more than a year.

 By the time  he was treating patients in Vietnam, medical   practices had improved somewhat, but the standard  treatment still involved around ten high-dose   penicillin injections, which many soldiers  remembered as painful and difficult to endure. Alongside the real medical problems, rumors  also spread through the ranks. One of the most   persistent was the story of “black syphilis,”  a supposedly incurable strain of the disease.  

Soldiers whispered that anyone who caught it  would not be treated or sent home. Instead,   they claimed, the military would secretly send  infected men to a remote island to keep them   away from everyone else. No evidence has  ever shown that such a disease existed,   and no such island has ever been  documented.

 The story itself was   a myth. But the fear it created  among soldiers was very real. Behind every one of those statistics was a real  woman whose life had been turned upside down by   the war. For many of them, prostitution was not  something they had planned for or wanted. It   was something they turned to after the war had  taken away almost every other way to survive.

By the mid-1960s, fighting had spread across  much of South Vietnam, forcing hundreds of   thousands of civilians to leave their homes.  Villages were destroyed by bombing, farmland   became battlefields, and entire communities were  relocated for military reasons. As a result, large   numbers of people fled into cities such as Saigon  and Da Nang, hoping to find safety and work.

Many of the women working in the bars  along Saigon’s famous Tu Do Street were   war widows whose husbands had  been killed in the fighting,   whether they had served in the South  Vietnamese Army or fought for the Viet Cong.   Others were refugees who had lost their homes,  farms, and entire villages because of the war.

For many of these women, s*x work was not a  career choice in any normal sense of the word.   It was simply the quickest way to earn enough  money to keep themselves and their families   alive in a wartime economy that offered  very few opportunities. Jobs for displaced   women with little or no formal education were  extremely limited and often paid almost nothing.  

In contrast, a single night working in  a bar or brothel could earn more money   than an entire week at nearly any other job  available to them. For women trying to feed   children or care for elderly relatives,  that difference often meant survival. Cultural attitudes made this exploitation even  easier.

 Many American soldiers arrived in Vietnam   already carrying stereotypes about Asian women.  These ideas had been shaped over many years by   Western movies, books, and popular culture, which  often portrayed Asian women as naturally obedient,   submissive, and se*ually available. Historian  Amanda Boczar, who has researched the se*ual   economy of the Vietnam War, argues that  these stereotypes played a major role.  

According to her research, many American  servicemen had been culturally conditioned   to see the women around them not as individuals  struggling through an impossible situation,   but as people who were simply  available for their own use. In some cases, the desperation reached even  further.

 Families that had lost their income   sometimes pressured their own daughters or wives  into the trade because they saw no other way to   survive. U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright raised  this issue while criticizing the Vietnam War.   He referred to reports claiming  that some families were putting   their wives or daughters to work  as bar girls or arranging for them   to become mistresses of American servicemen  in exchange for money, food, or protection.

By the early 1970s, this wartime economy  had become deeply woven into everyday   life across much of South Vietnam.  Entire neighborhoods, businesses,   and thousands of livelihoods depended on the  presence of American troops. Then, in the space of   only about two months during the spring of 1975,  everything that system depended on disappeared.

On April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese tanks  crashed through the gates of the Presidential   Palace in Saigon, marking the final collapse of  South Vietnam. The South Vietnamese government   officially surrendered, bringing decades  of war to an end. For millions of people,   it was one of the most dramatic turning  points in the country’s history.

But for the women who had spent years working  in bars and brothels that existed because of   the American military presence, the end of the  war did not bring freedom or relief. Instead,   it brought a different kind of punishment. The  new communist government viewed prostitution as   a symbol of the corruption and moral decline  of the defeated South Vietnamese government.  

Many of the women involved in the trade were  treated not as victims of a wartime economy,   but as collaborators who had  helped support the old regime. Thousands of former s*x workers were  sent to so-called re-education camps.   These camps were designed to reshape people’s  political beliefs through strict discipline,   forced labor, and ideological instruction.  Many women remained there for years.

 They   were separated from whatever family they  still had, forced to perform hard labor,   and treated as social outcasts. Little  attention was given to the circumstances   that had pushed many of them into prostitution  in the first place. The government focused on   punishment rather than understanding the  desperation that had shaped their choices.

Even those who avoided the camps often found  that life remained extremely difficult. Many   returned to neighborhoods where everyone knew  about their past. Former neighbors who had   once lived beside them now viewed them with  suspicion or shame. Because of this stigma,   many struggled to find regular  work or rebuild their lives,   and some continued to face discrimination  for decades after the war had ended.

But the Vietnam War had left behind something the   new government could not imprison in  a camp or erase through public shame. Throughout the Vietnam War, relationships formed  between American servicemen and Vietnamese   women. Some were purely commercial,  with money exchanged for s*x. Others   were genuine romantic relationships,  while many fell somewhere in between,   making them difficult to define.

 Over the course  of the war, these relationships resulted in   thousands of children being born. No government  kept complete or accurate records at the time,   so the exact number is still unknown. Today,  historians estimate that somewhere between 25,000   and 100,000 mixed-race children were born in  Vietnam during the years of American involvement. Vietnamese society gave these children a  heartbreaking name: bui doi, which translates   to “the dust of life.

” In traditional Vietnamese  culture, family lineage, ancestry, and a father’s   identity carried enormous importance. Many of  these children had American fathers who had   returned home after the war and Vietnamese mothers  who were struggling to survive. As a result, many   grew up without fathers and faced discrimination  almost from the day they were born. Some were   abandoned, while others were abused or rejected  even by members of their own extended families.

For years after the war, the U.S. government  did little to help these children. In 1982,   the U.S. Congress passed the Amerasian Immigration  Act, allowing certain Amerasian children from   countries across Southeast Asia to immigrate  to the United States. However, the Vietnamese   government refused to fully cooperate with  the program, making it extremely difficult for   applicants to leave the country.

 As a result,  only about 6,000 Amerasians and around 11,000   of their relatives were able to immigrate under  that law. By 1986, more than 25,000 applications   remained unprocessed, and Vietnam eventually  stopped moving new cases forward altogether. A much larger change came on December 22, 1987,  when the U.S. Congress passed the Amerasian   Homecoming Act, which officially took effect in  March 1988.

 Under this new law, any child born   between January 1, 1962, and January 1, 1976,  to an American father and a Vietnamese mother   became eligible to immigrate to the United States.  The law also allowed many of their close family   members to come with them. In the years that  followed, nearly 30,000 Amerasian children and   approximately 80,000 relatives were resettled  in the United States through this program.

By 2009, roughly half of the Amerasians who  had immigrated had become naturalized U.S.   citizens. For many, it was the first time  they truly felt recognized by the country   that had played such a major role in their  existence. But that recognition came more than   twenty years after the United States had finally  acknowledged that these children existed at all.