The Showa period. Japan. December 1945.
The Great War had ended just 3 months ago. The Allied Forces had won. Our great country had to surrender. It was a time of unparalleled ignominy, poverty, and humiliation.
It was also a time of occupation.
The American soldiers occupied our country for the next 7 years. They left in 1952, leaving us homeless, penniless and destitute. For millions of my fellow Japanese countrymen, lives were upended forever. For the women, survival became a matter of chance.
I belonged to a poor farming community in a tiny village on the outskirts of Okinawa. My parents were farmers, just like everybody else in that tiny hamlet. We watched in shock and horror as Allied soldiers marched into our village in September. Just at the end of the harvesting season.
It was 1945. It was another era. And it was the beginning of a nightmare.
Our ordeal began the day the foreign soldiers stomped into our village. They invaded our land, our homes, our personal spaces. They spoke in a language we didn't understand, ordered us around with hand gestures we couldn't follow, and smoked and drank a lot.
But that was the least of our problems.
They would go on surveillance tours all day and night, disturbing our peace and sanity. Groups of 20 soldiers would barge into our homes at odd hours to check for weapons that didn't exist.
Worse, they would enter the paddy fields in the daytime and interrupt our harvesting. They would segregate the men and women into separate groups and bark orders at us. Nobody in our village spoke English, so we just kept quiet and stood motionless.
I don't remember what they did to the men. But I have vivid memories of what they did to the women. They would frisk us and pat us down under the pretext of checking for hidden weapons. They would inevitably grope and fondle our boobs in the process.
Sometimes hard. Often too hard.
I was all of 21 years old at that time. And they took a particular fondness to humiliating and shaming me.
They would lift up my skirt and stare at my pubic hair with lust in their eyes. We were poor farming girls, we didn't wear undergarments those days. Nor could we afford any even if we wanted to. And in 1945, it was unseen and unheard of among the rural community in my country.
The soldiers learnt this fact in the first couple of days. And then our period of torment began.
They would tug at my pubic hair. They would pinch my bare butt. They would ask me to bend down so that they could check for hidden weapons. They would then finger my pussy and tickle my asshole shamelessly.
Every single one of them.
Those days, we were taught to be submissive. By 'we', I mean the women. Young or old, virgin or whore, married or not, women were supposed to be submissive and obedient in front of men. We were brought up like that. We were conditioned like that.
Little wonder then that the soldiers got away with doing what they were doing. Nobody dared to object to their behavior or resist them. Not that we had much of a chance. They were heavily armed while we were at the mercy of the elements and our new occupiers.
My name is Kasumi. And this is my memoir of the darkest chapter of my life.
CHAPTER 1 -- THE ESCAPE
"Haha, they are doing bad things to me," I went crying to my mother one day after returning from the fields early.
"Who is doing what?" Mom was aghast seeing me wailing.
"The soldiers. They are putting their fingers in bad places," I sobbed and tried to narrate my ordeal without being explicit.
That day, one of the soldiers had tried to insert his finger a little too deep into my asshole. It felt revolting and disgusting. I could not take it silently anymore. I had to share with my Mom. My haha.
"Oh no, Kasumi! It's horrible! You can't stay here anymore," Mom responded in shock and horror. "What if they take your virginity? You are just a flower, you have a whole life ahead of you."
"What do you mean I can't stay here anymore," I stopped wailing and looked at her in curiosity. "What are you talking about?"
"You are the honor of our home. We can't let that get tarnished. I will talk to your chichi today," she replied with a stubbornness that baffled me.
"Talk to chichi about what?" I wondered out loud.
"About sending you away. To the Iya Valley in Shikoku. There are no foreign soldiers there."
Iya Valley? That's the remotest place in all of Japan. What was I going to do there? And why would I leave my parents behind?
"I am not going anywhere without you and chichi," I told her politely. Those days, children were not supposed to raise their voices in front of parents. And fathers -- chichi -- used to be the final authority when it came to decision making.
"You don't have a say in this matter," Mom replied emphatically. "Besides, an old friend of your father stays there. He has been asking us to come over for our safety. Let us start with you."
And so it began. My journey into the great unknown. Outside the only world I knew of till then, my village. I was all of 21 and had to travel all alone to the mountains.
I packed my modest belongings in a cloth bag and bade a tearful farewell to chichi and haha.
It was the 3rd week of December when I reached Iya Valley. And I was in for a shock.
The weather was brutally cold. Bone-crushing cold. Everything was covered in a sheet of white snow. Everywhere I looked, I could see only white.
White leaves, white trees, white pathways, white houses.
I was not used to this kind of cold. Born and raised in Okinawa, I was used to a moderate climate typical of seaside locales. The severe chill in Iya Valley made my fingers numb and my joints ache. It kept my nipples hard and dry throughout the day.
My father's distant friend came to pick me up from the nearest rest stop. He was an elderly gentleman named Takeshi. I had never seen him in my life prior to that day. I was instructed by my parents to treat him with respect, obey his command, and address him as "ojisan" (uncle).
Iya Valley sits between mountains. And the rest stop was miles away from Takeshi's village. It took hours to reach there on foot. And his house was located far and high from the rest of the village.
CHAPTER 2 -- THE TRAP
Day 1
The 1st thing I noticed after arriving in the village was how cold it was. It was much colder than the rest of Iya Valley. The trees were not just covered in snow. They were buried in snow.
Takeshi was extremely happy to see me. We were meeting for the very first time. He did not utter a word on our journey, but suddenly welcomed me with open arms after unlocking the main door.
He was wearing only a white vest and white pyjamas even in this biting cold. He gave me a hug that sent shivers down my spine. Warm, tight, feeling up my butt with one hand, and trying to grope my tits with the other.