Really good documentary on History Channel about sex workers during WWII. The episode I am watching now is about 200 women in Honolulu servicing 1 Million service men. The red light district was legal and controlled bt the local police. If you catch it on a repeat, it is well worth catching. The prostitutes were the ones that really pitched in and helped out during the attack acting as nurses. They had lots of restrictions on their civil liberties that they wouldn't be hasseled if they stayed under these restrictions.

Amazing what has changed in our country's outlook about this subject.

Father of a friend who was stationed in Honolulu for a bit in WW  II  told me about one place that had three women working in it. He said when the Marines came in the streets were packed. He had a buddy who visitied this place every payday. This guy got so excited while waiting that he lost it before he got to the front of the line so he had to go to the back to regroup. The things they never teach you in school.

Yeah, I saw bits of it. Interesting points. I guess the whole "navy arrives, prostitutes arrive" phenomenon wasn't new to the history of sex (cf. every navy since Roman times and before, but especially the "Gut" in Malta). But what was news to me, was (A) that the USA gummint participated, and so overtly and (B) that things changed here so rapidly. What is it exactly that led to the sea-change (ahem. pun intended.) in our overly moralistic thinking?

I was watching "The View" (that 4-housewives-on-a-couch-plus-a-hot-Asian-chick morning talk show) and I saw something similar. They were talking the whole "Mars Venus" thing about how it's true and/or not true that men "need" to stray from their "committed partners" etc. And one of 'em (the ugly one, heh) mentioned that her parents told her, that when her dad was married but overseas, he'd write home about the prostitutes he'd seen. Like, "Hey, honey, I wish it were you that was here in Amsterdam where I'm on furlough from occupation forces in Germany. But since you can't be here, I fantasized about you with a woman I found who kind of reminds me of you. I remembered your ... umm ... left big toe, yeah, that's it ... and her's was juuuuust the same, and so it was like being back home."

Heh. I guess things have, as we have all surmised, been going down hill for a while. The moralistic puritanist moral minority are WINNING dang it. Maybe they need to be reminded that their heroes, "America's saviors" the WWII generation were a LOT more licentios than they like to pretend things "used" to be.