"Teenage prostitutes, familiarly called "pom pom" or "pan pan" girls. They solicited American soldiers in particular, because these men had more money than the military personnel of other Allied forces... Some forms of prostitution--in particular the pan pan teenage amateurs--were the direct result of the presence of GIs as sources of income and images of liberation." Photo taken by an army photographer.

From: Bennett, John W. Doing Photography and Social Research in the Allied Occupation of Japan, 1948-1951: A Personal and Professional Memoir, 2002,
http://library.osu.edu/sites/rarebooks/japan/2_1_photos.html.