Here is some more information and reflections from the colleague who
raised the question.
----- Forwarded Message from Darius Rejali ---------------
Just for your info, I've investigated the Moroccan and Algerian
divisions in the battle for Italy. The 3rd Moroccan and 2nd Algerian
divisions were used in Italy. They landed at Naples and went to Rome.
This would fit the de Sica movie. However, it turns out that the
4th Mountain Tabor Moroccan division was used in the occupation of
Sicily. This is important because Fentress and Wickham argue that
there were no Moroccan troops in Sicily and so the Palermo stories
are an instance of "Italian social memory" of Moorish invaders.
However the source he cites (Kogan) is thin and inaccurate. It may
be that there were no Moroccans in Palermo, where the story
originates. What one can say, building on Fentress and Wickham's
argument, is that actual events may have been shaped into a prior
social narrative. This might be added to the info you have posted.
Walzer cites an article on Just and Unjust Wars from *Dissent* that
apparently says that raped women were given a small pension by the
Italian state, and this is how the exact number can be determined.
I am checking this out.
The point about locating military trials is absolutely correct, and
I was hoping the Clayton reference would cite where I could find
these. I have not read any place that there were comfort women, but
this is unlikely to be recorded by WWII historians of the battles.
The question of prostitution is succinctly raised by Brownmiller
herself when a US army general says "wherever there are soldiers
there are prostitutes." To which Brownmiller retorts, "why then do
soldiers rape when there are prostitutes available?" To which the
general said beats me. This is important, say, in the case of the
Rape of Nanking, where 20,000 women were raped. Trying to account
for the scale of this event over six weeks in terms of finding
comfort women seems very thin to me.
There is an instance cited in Snow's *Scorched Earth* which raises
this point concretely . Japanese troops show up looking for women in
a Nanking "safety zone" (not just in Bosnia it turns out were such
euphemisms used) and the missionaries in the camp asked the "singing
girls" if they would go instead of the "non-professional women". The
singing girls discussed this and went even though they despised the
enemy as much as anyone else and they were definitely marching to
their deaths. Did such distinctions also make sense to the Japanese
soldiers? Did they draw distinctions between comfort women and
other women? Brownmiller's question ("why do soldiers rape when
prostitutes are avilable") would then have a great deal of force.
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My colleague also sends the following source material. I
find it suggestive of European uses of images of colonial soldiers.
If the "immunity" described really existed, it also points to
racialized official legal/social construction of colonial soldiers in
realms of material action and violence beyond the discursive and
propagandistic.
The quotes below are from an article by Ignazio Silone entitled
"Reflections on the Welfare State" which appeared in *Tempo Presente*
(December 1960) and was translated for the spring 1991 (8:2) issue of
*Dissent*. The quote speaks directly to the absence of any records
of trials of Moroccans:
"In the spring of 1994, Moroccan troops of the French army
entered the country. People have not yet forgotten what then
happened in some towns of the Frosinate region. All the women who
did not have time to take shelter in the mountains were, as they
say, `moroccanated' there is no consideration for the age of the
women; every woman, from ten to seventy, was raped. (A brief
parenthesis on the colonial problem is worthwhile. About that same
time, General Juin commander of the French armed forces in Italy,
was received by the Pope. The Pope complained to him about the
immunity granted to the soldiers responsible for the brutalities.
The general informed him that North African soldiers could not be
punished since the war code of the French army granted to these
troops, in enemy territory, the right to rape and plunder.)"
"In its turn, the Italian government could do nothing but grant
the `moroccanated' women a modest subsidy. Since it had been a
sad experience and one not to be proud of, it was reasonable to
expect that many of them would prefer to hide their misfortune.
It is possible that this happened; however, local authorities were
very surprised when they began to receive requests for the subsidy
from women who had been elsewhere at the time of the incidents."