About a book 'Flutter, Flutter, Butterfly'

Book Cover

<Plot>

The main character, Soonboon, was a 15 year old girl who dreamed of meeting a kind husband, having children, and living happily ever after. one spring day when virgin birth rumors were common, Soonboon was met by a butterfly while bringing snacks to her parents who were working in the fields. Worried that their daughter might be taken away, her parents hid her all day in a haystack. However, she was discovered and dragged away by a Japanese soldier when she came out from the haystack in order to chase a butterfly.  

Soonboon was sent to a police station and then put on a train and then a ship, both for the first time in her life.  There she met Kumok, Bongnyu, and many other young girls who were in a similar position.  None of them knew where they were being taken. While they were being transported to the comfort station the young girls witnessed Japanese soldiers using swords to kill young girls, drowning others in the sea, and taking girls away to commit sex crimes. 

The girls only found out where they were being taken when they arrived at the comfort station.  There they were raped countless times by numerous men every night.  Whenever Soonboon was humiliated by soldiers, she met a white butterfly.  She desperately wished that the butterfly she used to play with would take her back to her hometown, and she daydreamed about flying around the world. Butterflies were special to Soonboon as they were her only way to find some type of escape the hellish brothel.  

When a girl conceived a child, her uterus was pulled out while she was awake and the child was taken out.  When it was discovered that one girl had transmitted a syphilis to a soldier, her pubic area was burned with a steel rod so that her flesh peeled away.  Some girls were given opium so they could forget their pains for a while.  

Soonboon and Bongnyu attempted to escape, but unfortunately they were recaptured. In order to save Soonboon’s life, Bongnyu was forced to roll between a nail board filled with nails and an iron plate studded with nails. Her flesh was torn into pieces and she died. The other girls were given meat soup a few days later, not realizing that it was made with Bongnyu’s body.  

Unable to forget the pain they were put through, some girls committed suicide. All girls had to take strong antibiotic drugs to prevent them from being infected with STDs, which shrunk their uteruses and made them sterile. They lived their lives day after day, knowing that they would never be able to bear children.  Kumok died a gruesome death, committing suicide after becoming addicted to opium. By the war's end Soonboon was the only survivor.

Soonboon dearly wanted to go back to her hometown.  She missed her parents, and dyeing her fingernails with the balsam flower petals that her father had planted under the fence. But she was a disgraced woman and a polluted body, and she could never go home again. Soonboon decided to float around the world with the butterfly and find a place where no one knew her. Until her final days on earth she would live like a flower petal in the spring breeze, floating around the world.

Do you really think the girls in the picture were well-paid prostitutes? We must ensure that the world will never forget the women and girls trafficked, raped, physically and emotionally abused, and imprisoned in an institutionalized system of sexual slavery by Imperial Japan. 

Please help, join us in our effort realize the publication and sale of this book to public libraries and schools in the U.S.  We mustn't allow students in the U.S to be taught fake, distorted histories. Our purpose is not only justice for the girls in the picture, it is about basic human rights everywhere in the world.  

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2013325118/a-real-truth-about-a-15-year-old-comfort-woman

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