Tattoo #2

In pages 94-159 of the novel The Tattoo, we are introduced to a character named Mama-san and her daughter Claudia. After witnessing an aggressive gentleman attack a stripper at Club Mirage that Ken was visiting in town he decided to take action. Ken had successfully detained the big aggressor and was offered a job as a bouncer by the owner of the place, Mama-san. Ken worked there for about four years and while working there he was introduced to her daughter Claudia. Ken and Claudia started dating which was fine with her mother until Ken got Claudia pregnant. As Ken and Claudia’s relationship progresses in the book we learn more about Mama-san and her relationship with her daughter Claudia. Claudia tells Ken about her Grandmother who was, "forced into the role of comfort woman for the Japanese during the occupation before the end of WWII. Raped by hundreds of soldiers. (McKinney, 129)" Unfortunately, 80,000 to 200,000 women are estimated to have been forced into this position during the war. The Korean women were tricked into this form of slavery the same way modern-day human traffickers trick their victims. Recruiters would promise these young Korean women, most of them under 18, employment in jobs such as factory work or nursing.  A majority of these women only realized what there true occupations were after they were brought to the comfort stations and raped. Having been the spawn of this woman, Mama-san was subjected to the same type of thing. Having fled to Korea she was raped by an American soldier while living in a brothel.

The slavery that Mama-sans mother went through had both a physical and psychological impact on Mama-san. Not only did she have to endure the same thing in a different context (Americans rather than Japanese) but also nurtured the idea of exploiting woman and profited from the idea. She ran three different businesses while in Honolulu, one being the strip club, another being a "massage" parlor and the last one, a loan sharking business. Mama-san would presumably trick women into working in her massage parlor only to have them solicit themselves for prostitution. Her loan sharking businesses would bring her lots of money from the recent Korean and Japanese immigrants looking to start their own businesses and those people who couldn't pay paid for it physically. While in her working life, Mama-san was really no better than the Japanese government who exploited her Mother, but in her personal life she was very protective of her daughter Claudia.  She made it clear that she did not want Claudia to come around the strip club, or get involved in any part of the business, and had very high exceptions for her. Claudia was expected to graduate from Stanford University and become a doctor or a lawyer. Having been fed up with living with these high exceptions her whole life, Claudia decided to stay in Hawaii and go to the University of Hawaii for an Art History degree. Mama-sans past carried over into her professional life and she profited off exploited woman even though you can see through her relationship with her daughter that she knew it was not right.

Racial stereotypes of ethnic races also come from social forces of the past. The stereotype of African-Americans being devious and law-breaking had been around since the days of slavery. This stereotype was reinforced in the minds of racist people during the new activism of the Civil Rights movement. During the Civil Rights movement, tens of thousand of African American people would gather in public places to make their cause known. Even here in Hawaii the stereotype of white people being greedy and only caring about themselves derived from the time of Captain Cook. To make a long story short, the newly arrived haoles went from landowners to essentially ruling the state in the last 200 years. This stereotype of haoles was only deepened during the Massie Affair of 1931, and in 1959, Hawaii was annexed into the United States to much the dismay of Native Hawaiians.

References

McKinney, Chris. The Tattoo. Mutual Publishing, 2000.