Comfort Woman

Comfort Woman is the debut novel by Nora Okja Keller, published in 1997. Using alternating points of view, Keller tells the story of Beccah, a Korean-American woman born and raised in Hawaii, and her Korean mother, Akiko. When Akiko passes away, Beccah is largely ignorant of her mother’s life story, and the reader learns about Akiko’s life concurrently with Beccah’s discoveries.

The story opens with Beccah remembering her mother confessing to the murder of her father, who had died several years earlier. Akiko makes it clear that this was not a fast, sudden act of violence but rather a result brought about through intention—she wished him dead, and eventually he died. Beccah worries that she has done the same when Akiko passes away, remembering many times in her youth when she wished Akiko dead. She reflects on her relationship with her mother; she loved her very much when she was calm, but she recalls how she would go into fits and commune with spirits. After her father’s death, Akiko tries to move them both back to Korea, but only makes it as far as the Big Island of Hawaii, where Akiko is forced to put Beccah into school and get a job. After a series of bad jobs she is hired by Auntie Reno, who employs her as a waitress in her café but also believes that Akiko has a real connection to the spirit world and employs her as a medium. Beccah reluctantly admits that this probably saved their lives.

The story switches to Akiko’s point-of-view as a young mother. Her name is not really Akiko, it is Soon Hyo. She reflects on the fact that her daughter, Beccah, is the only living thing she loves. She remembers that after her own parents died in Korea during World War II, her older sister, in need of a dowry to get married, sold her to the Japanese. At first Akiko serves in the recreation camp by helping the women in the stalls, who all have iterated names such as Tamayo 29 or Akiko 40. The women in the stalls serve as prostitutes for the Japanese soldiers and they take on the name assigned to their stall. They live terrible lives confined to the stall. Akiko 40 suffers a breakdown and begins shouting in defiance, so she is brutally executed as a message, and Akiko finds herself selected to replace her as Akiko 41.



Beccah remembers her childhood. She was teased by her classmates because her mother was so strange, making her resentful of Akiko. But she also remembers her mother telling her about Saja the Death Messenger; when Beccah had nightmares about the demon, her mother took a dead chicken and made bait out of it to fool the demon, allowing Beccah to relax.

Akiko experiences incredible horror as a Comfort Woman. Every night a long line of soldiers forms, waiting to take their turn with her. She is raped, beaten, and otherwise abused. She becomes pregnant and undergoes a horrific forced abortion that has a terrible impact on her health. Some of the soldiers adore her and wish to be abused in turn. Slowly, Akiko loses her sense of identity and believes that her soul dies in the camp, leaving her as a shell, untouched by the horrors inflicted on her body.

Beccah remembers growing up with her mother and being terribly embarrassed by her behavior. Akiko goes into trances and fits at an increasing pace, encouraged by Auntie Reno, who simultaneously believes Akiko is crazy and gifted with a spiritual connection. Beccah does like the connection to her Korean heritage that Akiko offers her.



Akiko seizes an opportunity and flees from the Recreation Camp. She is taken in by Christian Missionaries, but she fears being put up for adoption, knowing that many Japanese families adopt Korean children as servants. The minister takes Akiko’s silence and blankness for self-possession and maturity, and he encourages her to marry Mr. Bradley in order to get out of Korea. Akiko agrees, even though she does not love Bradley—but there is a sort of mutual regard, and Bradley takes Akiko’s silence as obedience. Bradley eventually moves them to Hawaii, and Akiko is surprised to find herself pregnant despite her experiences in the camp.

In the current time, Beccah has learned the truth of her mother’s experience and struggles to process it. She realizes that Akiko suffered incredibly and yet tried, in her way, to protect her daughter and pass down her cultural legacy to her. Beccah realizes that it is now up to her to use the knowledge she has gained.

Keller’s use of dual points-of-view allows her to contrast the experiences of Akiko and Beccah, both of whom struggle against forces they don’t understand. Akiko’s horrific experiences in the Recreation Camp make her insane, but her daughter slowly realizes that Akiko’s fits, trances, and dancing are all understandable reactions to her suffering, and along with the reader sees Akiko as a hero by the end of the story.