Without wanting to get away from the specific historical context, it
seems obvious that soldiers may have sex with prostitutes and rape
civilian women for different reasons.
In civilian life, we no longer suppose that men rape primarily for
"sexual release," but rather for complex psychological reasons
entangled with sexuality, emotion and power. Therefore why should we
expect it of men in the narrowly-defined social situation of war?
Not that this is impossible, but if we accept this, we must define
some underlying facts about war life that would explain an anomalous
linkage of rape and sexual desire.
In light of the additional layer of racially charged meaning in this
case, given the colonial sexual imagination about dark-skinned men's
purported desire for light-skinned women and the slippery reliability
of wartime atrocity stories, we should proceed with extra care in
making assumptions about possible reasons for these rapes.