Beccah Bradley has grown up resentful of her mother, Akiko. When her mother takes ill, she reveals to Beccah that she is responsible for her husband's death. She wished death upon for years until finally she ensured he would succumb. Beccah becomes afraid, worrying she has done the same to her mother since she's often wished her death. Growing up in Hawaii, Becca remembers her mother working for a cafe owner named Auntie Reno who employed her as a psychic. Akiko was an erratic person who often passed into trances, obscene dances, and communication with the spirits. She took great care of Beccah but was largely emotionally unavailable. After her dad died, much to Beccah's relief, she moved with her mother to the Big Island although they had plans which never came to fruition to return to Korea. Beccah grows up wishing her mom were normal but sensing her maternal love.
On her deathbed, Akiko tells her daughter a huge secret about her past. From Akiko's point of view, readers learn that she was a child in Korea during WWII. when her parents died, she was sold to the Japanese by her sister who needed the money for a dowry. Akiko is sent to work in a Japanese recreation camp for the duration of the war. The women are brought to this camp to serve as prostitutes for the soldiers. At the beginning she works cleaning up the stalls in which the other women -- the sex slaves -- work and live. These poor women are robbed of all identity and autonomy, named after the stalls in which they work. When one of the women rebels, she is brutally executed to be an example to the others to cooperate. Akiko takes her place. She goes from being Soon Hyo -- her birth name -- to Akiko 41, the name which she's born ever since.
She and her fellow slaves are called "Comfort Women," a sort of sick joke to make light of their position. Never allowed to leave her stall, Akiko services thousands of soldiers over the years. They all line up and wait their turn with her. Some of them love her. Some of them beat her. All of them abuse her to the point of reducing her to an animal. As time progresses, she grows weaker and sicker and increasingly depressed. She has forgotten all sense of purpose, feeling like her soul has died to leave only her body to be used by these men. At one point she get's pregnant and is forced into a painful abortion which compromises her health forever.
By some miracle, Akiko manages to escape from the camp one day. She seeks refuge with some Christian Missionaries who plan to help her be adopted. As a Korean, Akiko knows that Japanese families often treat Japanese children whom they adopt no better than slaves. She's eager to avoid another situation in which she's considered property, although she has long ago abandoned any feelings of independence or value. She keeps quiet. Faced with her silence, the minister who is taking care of her decides to offer her another option: marriage to a man named Bradley who wants to take a wife back to American with him. Although she's not thrilled about the idea, Akiko continues to keep silent which Bradley interprets as submission. He takes her to Hawaii where she soon discovers that she's pregnant from the her time at the camp.
Beccah is astonished to hear her mother's story. She is the product of a brutal rape while her mother was imprisoned as a sex slave in a different country. It's a shocking blow. As she processes the news, Beccah realizes that her mother's odd behavior is just a natural result of all the trauma she's experienced. In order to survive, Akiko had convinced herself that she has a connection with another world -- the spirit world. Beccah is left wondering what she should do with this new information. She forgives her mom and makes peace with her.
