Mary Lynn Bracht in her note says “Of those tens of thousands of women and girls enslaved by the Japanese military, only forty-four South Korean survivors are still alive (at the writing of this book) to tell the world what happened during their captivity, how they survived, and how they returned home. The thing is - there nothing ordinary about this book. It seems cliche to say this is heartbreaking and gut wrenching but it is difficult to find anything other than these ordinary words. This appears to be well researched and I read several articles confirming what happened during this time to the Koreans.
It’s a work of fiction but it holds the truth of the past as a good work of historical fiction can do. Grief and guilt and love of family, the burdens of the past prey on Emi and she finally tells her children of her losses, her sorrow, the awful things that happened to her village and her family. Emi, though not taken by the Japanese soldier relives the horrific times that she endures. Hana’s chapters alternate with her younger sister Emi’s when years later in 2011, Emi recounts the past that she has kept from her family, not telling them of the day her sister is taken by a Japanese soldier, as Hana tried to save her little sister from this fate. What happens to Hana is not for the faint of heart. Her story of brutal and vicious treatment cuts to the core. In spite of the Japanese occupation, their life on this small island off the coast of southern Korea has remained quiet yet vigilant while fearing the Japanese soldiers.
Hana, the older sister begins her telling in 1943, when at sixteen she has learned her mother’s skill as a “haenyeo”, a diver, a fisher woman. Their separate narratives are told decades apart, but they each are very much a part of one another’s thoughts and dreams and memories. These horrific events of barbaric treatment, this story of what happened to these women is depicted through the lives of two sisters. It’s also a tribute and a remembrance as the author points out in her note, to all women around the world subjected to rape during wartime. It’s a beautifully written tribute to Korean women who were taken from their homes during the Japanese occupation and forced to be “comfort women”, an inconceivably gentle phrase for the sex slaves they were made to be. This was not an easy book to read, yet I’m glad that I did.
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