In this section of the Tattoo we see Ken make his “great escape” as he moves away from Kahaluu and transitions into town. He goes through a significant change in his thinking at this point. He no longer felt bound by his fate of being stuck in Kahaluu (like Koa), but instead tries to make something of his life. He was determined to attend classes and make college a positive experience. Although paying to sit in his 100 level courses was slowly killing him, he was determined to make it to UH Manoa. He manages to keep his goal. However, after saving one of the girls at Club Mirage the Club’s owner, a Korean immigrant, named Mama-san, hires Ken. Ken is captured by the lure of the underworld with its drugs, prostitution, and easy money. He lose all resolve to do well in school.
Ken eventually becomes Mama-san’s right-hand man. Things start going a lot easier for Ken. Working for Mama-san he no longer has problems with money. However, all that changes when he meets Mama-san’s daughter, Claudia. Somehow meeting Claudia has a direct influence on Ken. He starts to compare his life as Mama-san’s hired thug with his life with Claudia and he starts to be disgusted with his life as Mama-san’s hired thug. He gets together with Claudia much to the frustration of Mama-san, who wants her daughter to not have anything to do with the family business or Ken. Mama-san wants Claudia to attend a good school, become a doctor or marry a well-to-do husband. Claudia rebels and goes with Ken. Everything goes fine until Claudia becomes pregnant. After Mama-san learns of the pregnancy she becomes enraged. She sends hit men to kill Ken. They take Ken hostage, but Ken manages to overcome the thugs and escape the underworld of Hawaii with Claudia by moving back to Kahaluu. There they bide their time, hiding from Mama-san, saving money, and making plans to eventually move to the mainland.
Ken definitely goes through a lot of colorful experiences during this chapter of the book. However, the character of Mama-san is arguably the most interesting character in this section. Mama-san, her name in itself suggests a figure in authority. Although she appears as a powerful figure in the book (as the owner of Club Mirage, Club Nouveau, Happy Hands) we know little about her and her past aside from Claudia’s story. We know that Mama-san’s real name is Kilcha and her mother was “forced into the role of a comfort woman for the Japanese soldiers during the occupation before the end of World War II. Mama-san ended up as the same thing except Americans replaced Japanese. Raped by an American soldier when she live in a brothel by the thirty-eight parallel, Mama-san fled from Korea “poor, pregnant, and disgraced….Although most called her ‘whore,’ Mama-san, like her mother before her, was more of a slave” (McKinney 129). So when she Arrived in America the only business she knew pertained to the underworld of society with its prostitution with bars, strippers, and massage parlors.
The article entitled, “The Politics of an Apology: Japan and Resolving the ‘Comfort Women’ Issue,’” sheds some interesting light about the role that “comfort women,” like Mama-san and her mother, played durning the occupation of Korea in World War II. The article states that women like these:
“Euphemistically labeled ‘comfort women,’ between 80,000 and 200,000 women are estimated to have been coerced into supplying sex for Imperial Japanese soldiers during WWII. With approximately 80 percent of the victims ethnically Korean” (Chang 1).
Most of these comfort women were forced into prostitution at a young age (with the majority being under 18 years old). The conditions under which the women were forced to operate were often “inhumane and physically and psychologically traumatic.” Although the Japanese government was suspected to have played a part in setting up these “comfort stations” in occupied territories, they continually denied it for several years. Finally, government records where found that proved the Japanese Government was involved in managing these “comfort stations.” Thus, the Japanese government, by first denying, then continuing to diminish, the state's position in institutionalizing sexual slavery during the war, failed to satisfy the demands set forth by former comfort women.
The testimonies of former comfort women reveal how much pain and frustration they felt during their time as comfort women. “Our country was powerless. So we were forcibly taken by the Japanese and suffered, ‘commented one former comfort woman, Chung Seowoon. For Korea, the official Japanese occupation of the nation, beginning with the 1910 Annexation Treaty, initiated a setting of Japanese cultural and political dominance in Korea. The Japanese Imperial Period saw the enactment of policies that aimed to ‘assimilate’ Koreans as Japanese subjects” (Chang 1).
In conclusion, when I first read this chapter I assumed that Mama-san was just a money-hungry powerful business women; that she was the “bad guy” in the chapter obsessed with tearing Claudia away from Ken. However, after reading “The Politics of an Apology” I’ve begun to view Mama-san in a new light. She is moves away from being the “bad guy” in the chapter (although she still wants to kill Ken) I began to ask myself, could she be who she is because of her traumatic experiences as a former comfort woman? And although her businesses are not the cleanest, it now seems she does it not all just for the money, but to provide a better life for her daughter. Providing Claudia with the opportunity that she [Mama-san] didn’t have: to move away from the heritage as a comfort woman. I ask myself, “If I were Mama-san could I have done it any better?”
References:
Chang, M. (2009). The Politics of an Apology: Japan and Resolving the "Comfort women" Issue. Harvard International Review. Article.
McKinney, C. (1999). The Tattoo. Mutual Publishing, Honolulu, HI. Book.
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