Betty Jean O’Hara (1913-1973) was a famed lady of the night and madam in Honolulu, Hawaii’s Hotel Street red-light district during World War II. O’Hara came up with a novel solution to cope with the demand of randy US sailors during the conflict.
O’Hara set up a Hotel Street brothel that combined sexual services with the assembly-line efficiency of a Ford plant. Each of O’Hara’s employees rotated between a series of three rooms. In one room a man would be undressing, in another a fellow would be engaging in an act of carnal knowledge. In a third room, a satiated sailor would be getting dressed. The Hotel Street red-light district of Honolulu lasted throughout most of World War II.
I never served in the military, but I have met many men who have. In the 1980s I met a man a few years older than me who was stationed in South Korea with the US Army in the late 1970s. He told me stories of “Miss Oh”, a local courtesan in Daegu, South Korea. Based on the gleam in his eye when he reminisced, Miss Oh must have been a proverbial firecracker.
One of my high school acquaintances was in the US Marine Corps during the 1980s. (I’ll call him Mitch.) Mitch also served in the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91.
Many years later, I ran into Mitch at a reunion and he told me some war stories.
While relating his experiences abroad, Mitch also mentioned a handful of experiences with professional women—mostly in the Philippines, where large numbers of US service personnel were stationed through about 1992.
I was somewhat surprised. Mitch had been the archetypical ladies’ man in high school: a handsome, charming, multi-sport athlete. Not the kind of guy one associates with sex workers.
Perhaps sensing my surprise at his revelation, Mitch explained: “You’re a young guy in a foreign country, working in a mostly male organization (the Marine Corps). There aren’t many opportunities for conventional dating and relationships.”
Things are different, though, in this enlightened 21st century. The USS Abraham Lincoln has just docked in Thailand. The aircraft carrier and its crew participated in US military operations against Iran, and stayed at sea for more than 260 days—almost nine months.
And what are people worried about? Some of the male members of the crew may visit prostitutes in Pattaya, Thailand, a city famed for its red-light district.
Thai officials are locking up sex workers in advance of the US personnel coming ashore. Meanwhile, US military officials are reminding servicemen of the zero-tolerance ban on such activities under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).
The brass isn’t kidding about this. Under UCMJ Article 134, the patronization of Betty Jean O’Hara’s brothel would today be a criminal offense. Potential consequences include dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and benefits, and even imprisonment.
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Ours is a culture of stark contradictions. Lindsay Clancy, who murdered her three children, attracts hundreds of supporters to her trial in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Schoolchildren are taught that they can change their genders at will.
The Republican President is a twice-divorced, thrice-married philanderer who purportedly had an affair with porn star Stormy Daniels. Every other day, Fox News gives us another story about another B-list celebrity who has opened an OnlyFans account.
Forty percent of all US babies are now born out of wedlock—as opposed to just under five percent when the aforementioned Betty Jean O’Hara was a Honolulu madam.
You see what I’m getting at. In most ways, 21st-century America has become the United States of Sodom and Gomorrah. But there is far more moral panic over transactional sex than there was eighty years ago. Does no one else see the contradiction here?
This contrived moral panic is largely based on a specific narrative—that no woman would choose to earn a living this way, unless compelled at gunpoint by a brutal pimp. And yet—just a few months ago, a former finance professional whose nom de guerre is Meida Marek told a Forbes journalist about how she willingly quit her day job to become a high-priced escort in Silicon Valley. She makes thousands of dollars per hour.
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But back to the US military. US sailors in wartime Honolulu, bound for combat with the Empire of Japan, had plenty to worry about. But at least they did not have to worry about the contradictory, cockamamie ordinances of 21st-century sexuality.
There will be no Hotel Street for today’s warriors. As a consolation prize, perhaps OnlyFans will offer them a military discount on its cheesy, cyber-delivered pseudo-sex instead.
-ET