Not many Americans get the opportunity to visit Burma AKA Myanmar; not many Americans want to visit the communist country run by a totalitarian dictator.
A few years ago before retirement, I visited Burma because IBM had nineteen employees still struggling to operate a tiny unit-record (no computers) office there. The employees were grateful for my daring to come see them, and I was grateful for the opportunity. The government would allow citizens to leave the country, but they weren’t allowed to come back. So the nineteen employees would not leave.
Getting into the country, past customs and immigration, was tedious at best and nerve-wracking at worst. My wife went with me and had her customary travel jewelry with her—she had to list every piece and declare a value-in pencil on a sheet of foolscap. She was warned that each piece must be accounted for on her departure, and that any jewelry bought in the country must be declared and a heavy duty paid thereon.
The hotel we stayed in had been built by the Russians and was dilapidated, but the only show in town. The swimming pool was one of the most disgusting sights I’ve ever seen. Needless to say, despite the hot humid weather nobody was brave enough to jump in the mess. One of the grand old world-class hotels—one that entertained many famous people, including Ernest Hemmingway—the Strand was now a derelict of its former grandeur.
We knew that the public water supply would be unsafe, but hoped that the hotel maintained a filtration system. But when I saw the hotel attendant go outside and fill the so-called safe water pitcher from an ordinary faucet, I broke out my bottle of iodine pills to purify enough water to brush our teeth. We only drank beer, that we hoped had been pasteurized.
Rangoon, once known as the “pearl of the orient” was now a crumbling reminder of the once resplendent city. The government, having no funds for upkeep (or anything else, but the Army it seems) simply let the jungle begin to take over. Normal systems didn’t work: garbage was strewn everywhere, electricity was sporadic, and air-conditioning was non-existent. Hordes of flies were everywhere, making dining a constant battle to keep them away from the food.
I was told that the day after the military coup, shop owners told me that they were either to leave their businesses or become clerks working for the government. Those shopkeepers in ill favor with the military weren’t given any choice—they were simply told to vacate their stores and not come back.
The dictator, U Win, would not tolerate any disagreement with his personal dictates. He once had his armed palace guard chase several intrepid expatriates congregated for a Christmas celebration from the hotel into the streets for making noise that disturbed his sleep.
The main tourist attraction in Burma was/is the collection of temples, usually seen on National Geographic travelogues. These gold-leafed structures are sad reminders of their once resplendent iconic presence; now with virtually impenetrable jungles for backgrounds. Visitors must remove shoes before entering the holy areas, but much like other parts of the city, care must be taken to avoid stepping in stuff that might remind one of walking barefoot through a cow pasture.
An intrepid soul might hire a taxi for a visit to the vast opium poppy fields along the border with Thailand and Cambodia, but the risk of being shot with a poison dart from the hill tribes was not insignificant; that is, unless you advertized that you were there to buy opium.
The citizens we met were friendly and hospitable, the food was delectable, and shopping was a tourist’s paradise. Precious stones, particularly rubies were inexpensive and plentiful, but the duty on exiting the country was prohibitive. To hide these stones from customs lackeys was an easy way to rot in a Burmese jail—one could not count on U. S. diplomatic help, as there was no American embassy.
Most readers will have read or heard about Aung Sang Suu Kyi, the popular leader of people striving for a democratic process. She has been under house arrest for over twenty-five years. She turned sixty-five years old this year.
So, I leave you dear reader, with the following admonitions:
-don’t drink the water-take purifying pills along
-delcare all purchases and pay the exorbitant duty
-don’t go wandering about in the environs of the hill tribes
-read up and adhere to the law of the land, no matter how abhorrent
U Win is long since dead, but his son has followed in his father’s footsteps.
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Travel to Borneo
Borneo, the home of P. T. Barnum’s “wild man of the jungle,” mysterious head-hunters, the Phantom-that-never-dies, and the richest man in the world; sorry Bill.
The “wild man of the jungle” of Barnum’s Greatest Show on Earth was an “orangutan”. “Orangu” mans “jungle” and “tan” means man, so Mr. Barnum used a little imagination when he plastered this sobriquet on the poor caged animal. Anyway, the orangutan is a kind of ape that looks more like a person than chimpanzees and gorillas and often acts with more sense.
The Borneo orangutans used to come out of the jungle and attend local dances, but the village boys didn’t like that much, so they told Barnum that he could have all of them if he wanted. Orangutans really could dance, but they didn’t know the modern styles so the girls just laughed and made fun of them. That’s why they have such a doleful look on their faces, which by the way may account for the strong resemblance to my uncle Ezekial Hammertong who lives in Cottonpick, Alabama. Uncle Hammertong was a bit hairy, with long arms, walked with a stoop, and never did fare well at dances. Of course, people in Cottonpick had never heard of an orangutan.
Now, a word about the mysterious headhunters of Borneo: They are mysterious because it is a mystery why anyone would want to fool around with them at all, much less inquire about their hobby of collecting heads. They don’t shrink the heads they lop off their enemies, who by all accounts may be anyone with a head that would look nice hanging in the hunters long-house. Their cousins in Africa and down in South America figured out a way to shrink the heads and put them on key chains so as to cater to tourists that don’t have a whole lot of room in the luggage for souvenirs. But, the head-hunters of Borneo don’t bother to shrink them; they just skin them, hang up the skulls and brag.
The island of Borneo has a sultanate, called Brunei, two more (called “states” now) belonging to Malaysia and a large section called Kalimantan that is claimed by Indonesia. It was from this latter section that the head-hunters mainly collected their trophies.
Some of you not-as-young-as-you-once-were readers may remember the Phantom who was featured in a comic strip in many newspapers in years past. He was a bona fide do-good-combat-evil sort of fellow who wore purple body tights, sported a Lone Ranger type mask and carried two humoungus .45 Colt automatics which he needed because everyone tended to laugh and point their fingers at his purple tights until he waved the .45s around. He often rode a great white horse bareback and walked funny because riding without a saddle made his rump sore all the time.
The legend got started when the King of Malaysia awarded a foreigner a sultancy for as long as he lived. So the foreigner devised a scheme to keep the title forever by donning his purple tights and mask, adopting the name Phantom-Who-Never-Dies, and when he got too old, dressing his son in the same purple tights and mask thereby maintaining the legend that the Phantom lives forever.
The richest man in the world is the Sultan of Brunei that sits on top of a humoungus oil supply. The Sultan provides for all welfare of his subjects so there are no taxes for them to pay, all government services are free, and all his subjects live happily ever after. He is so rich that the members of the United Nations go out their way to keep him happy so that he doesn’t buy the whole organization and auction it off.
Now that you have a little history and culture of Borneo, you are ready for travel tips. When you are ready to visit Borneo, start in Brunei and see how a country is run by someone richer that a dozen Bill Gates. All government services are free to the citizens of Brunei and everything is really clean and spiffy. Remember though, Brunei is a Muslim country so you need to be careful not to offend locals by ignoring Muslim traditions which include removing your shoes and covering your head if you are a woman when visiting their mosques. If you mess up there, you may be tied to a stake so the locals can chunk rocks at you. Since the mosques are open on all sides which allows bugs to enter, I suppose the name for the little buzzing bugs that bite are called “mosquetoes”.
Next, you should visit the Malaysian state of Sabah where you can look for the Phantom or buy souvenir purple body tights to raise the envy of your neighbors back home. The urge to be the only guy in the neighborhood with purple tights and Lone Ranger mask is overwhelming. That’s why they sell so many of these things. Of course, you cannot bring back a white horse or twin .45s, but that’s just as well, as walking funny back in the old neighborhood wearing purple tights might give your neighbors the wrong idea. And if you were wearing .45s someone would likely haul out the old 30 ought 30.
The next place to visit is the Malaysian state of Sarawak where you will find nice beaches, great bargains in the open-air markets and some real exotic food. The piece de resistance (which means in French, “even if it sounds or looks disgusting, eat it anyway.”) is a local soup made from home grown veggies, fertilized by carabao pooh and which contains two varieties of worms; a large white one with a black head and reminds me of my fish bait. This worm is particularly succulent; the other is the bamboo worm that you must extract from its home in a bamboo shoot after it is cooked in the soup. It is skinny as it lives in a skinny shoot, but is just as succulent as the white one.
Don’t expect to find anything from a hog though, as the Muslims shun pork of any kind. The Koran, which is a lot like the Old Testament in the bible, warns against eating pork, but doesn’t say anything about eating worms.
If you like spicy food, you can get some homegrown black pepper (it grows on a tree, by the way), except that it isn’t black, it’s white. The locals don’t care for the black part of the peppercorn; they use the outer white portion, just the opposite of what those “strange folk do in Europe and America.”
Another interesting thing is that it is bad manners to point with your index finger (or your middle finger, for that matter). You are supposed to point with your thumb.
Next on your itinerary is what you came for in the first place, a visit to the headhunters of Borneo. The trek into the deep jungles where they live is accomplished by riding in narrow dugout canoes poled, dragged and sometimes carried by two natives. If you are concerned that they may be headhunters, ask them for their identification cards. They will show you an embossed card clearly stating “The bearer of this official identification card is not presently a head-hunter of Borneo. The skull hanging from his neck was purchased from a real head-hunter”.
The river on which the hollowed-out tree trunk starts is fairly big and fairly deep, but soon becomes a small shallow stream. You may have to get out of the boat and wade every now and then. If you pick up a leach or two, don’t worry as this is a recognized treatment for certain blood diseases, and they won’t suck out enough blood to really matter anyway. Save the ones you unstick from your legs though, as the natives use them to add flavor to their soups. Just kidding, folks, they use them in their blowguns when they only want to stun small prey. So, if you see a native with a big black blob on his tongue, you know that he didn’t blow before the leach latched onto his tongue. Their traditional lore states plainly, “If a leach latches onto your tongue before you can blow it out of your blowgun, don’t mess with it.” Roughly equivalent to our “If the shoe fits, wear it”.
On arrival at the heat-hunter’s village, you will be ushered to a special foreigner’s house that resembles the natives’ “long-house” except that your long-house is really short. You will be assigned a pallet, a mosquito net and a flashlight in case the generator fails, which it will surely do. Your meals will be cooked in your short-house, but you are advised not to look on the process too closely and never, never ask, “What in the world is this in my soup?” To do so, in a headhunter’s village is really risky on two fronts; first it could be taken as an insult justifying adding another trophy to their collection, and second they may actually tell you what’s in the soup! After settling in, you will be invited to review the collection of skulls the warriors have accumulated over time. Then you may be given the opportunity of taking target practice with a poison-dart blowgun they normally use to kill monkeys. Be careful that you put the dart with the sharp end pointing away from you so it doesn’t end up on your tongue, and don’t aim it toward any of your fellow travelers. Even though the natives would be quite happy to salvage the head of a tourist, it isn’t considered good form in headhunter circles to end up the journey with fewer tourists than they started with.
In the evening you may visit the village long-house. It’s called “long-house” because it is long. Each time a bride and groom join the clan, they just add a room or two on the end of the existing structure. So over time, it becomes long, so they call it a “long-house”. I don’t know if in the beginning, they called it a “short-house”.
After a couple of days and nights (Nights are particularly interesting as the beasts of the jungle prowl around making scary noises and all you have between you and them is a mosquito net.) you are ready for return to civilization. The two native guides, or their substitutes if either of them has contributed to the collection of skulls, will round up all the touristers, count noses to see if as many are ready to return as started out. If there is a shortage of noses, they will change the number that they recorded at the outset of the trip so that they can account for everyone when they check in with their supervisors back where they started. It is a good idea to make sure that the guides record the number of tourists in ink at the outset because it harder for them to change the count.
If these tips don’t stir your blood to book for a trip to Borneo today, you may be among the tourists who really do not care to parade around your neighborhood in souvenir purple tights, mess up Muslim tradition, eat worms and white pepper, pick leaches, point with your thumb or contribute to headhunters trophy collection. If so, keep checking my BLOG for additional travel tips that you probably won’t find in tourist brochures.
The “wild man of the jungle” of Barnum’s Greatest Show on Earth was an “orangutan”. “Orangu” mans “jungle” and “tan” means man, so Mr. Barnum used a little imagination when he plastered this sobriquet on the poor caged animal. Anyway, the orangutan is a kind of ape that looks more like a person than chimpanzees and gorillas and often acts with more sense.
The Borneo orangutans used to come out of the jungle and attend local dances, but the village boys didn’t like that much, so they told Barnum that he could have all of them if he wanted. Orangutans really could dance, but they didn’t know the modern styles so the girls just laughed and made fun of them. That’s why they have such a doleful look on their faces, which by the way may account for the strong resemblance to my uncle Ezekial Hammertong who lives in Cottonpick, Alabama. Uncle Hammertong was a bit hairy, with long arms, walked with a stoop, and never did fare well at dances. Of course, people in Cottonpick had never heard of an orangutan.
Now, a word about the mysterious headhunters of Borneo: They are mysterious because it is a mystery why anyone would want to fool around with them at all, much less inquire about their hobby of collecting heads. They don’t shrink the heads they lop off their enemies, who by all accounts may be anyone with a head that would look nice hanging in the hunters long-house. Their cousins in Africa and down in South America figured out a way to shrink the heads and put them on key chains so as to cater to tourists that don’t have a whole lot of room in the luggage for souvenirs. But, the head-hunters of Borneo don’t bother to shrink them; they just skin them, hang up the skulls and brag.
The island of Borneo has a sultanate, called Brunei, two more (called “states” now) belonging to Malaysia and a large section called Kalimantan that is claimed by Indonesia. It was from this latter section that the head-hunters mainly collected their trophies.
Some of you not-as-young-as-you-once-were readers may remember the Phantom who was featured in a comic strip in many newspapers in years past. He was a bona fide do-good-combat-evil sort of fellow who wore purple body tights, sported a Lone Ranger type mask and carried two humoungus .45 Colt automatics which he needed because everyone tended to laugh and point their fingers at his purple tights until he waved the .45s around. He often rode a great white horse bareback and walked funny because riding without a saddle made his rump sore all the time.
The legend got started when the King of Malaysia awarded a foreigner a sultancy for as long as he lived. So the foreigner devised a scheme to keep the title forever by donning his purple tights and mask, adopting the name Phantom-Who-Never-Dies, and when he got too old, dressing his son in the same purple tights and mask thereby maintaining the legend that the Phantom lives forever.
The richest man in the world is the Sultan of Brunei that sits on top of a humoungus oil supply. The Sultan provides for all welfare of his subjects so there are no taxes for them to pay, all government services are free, and all his subjects live happily ever after. He is so rich that the members of the United Nations go out their way to keep him happy so that he doesn’t buy the whole organization and auction it off.
Now that you have a little history and culture of Borneo, you are ready for travel tips. When you are ready to visit Borneo, start in Brunei and see how a country is run by someone richer that a dozen Bill Gates. All government services are free to the citizens of Brunei and everything is really clean and spiffy. Remember though, Brunei is a Muslim country so you need to be careful not to offend locals by ignoring Muslim traditions which include removing your shoes and covering your head if you are a woman when visiting their mosques. If you mess up there, you may be tied to a stake so the locals can chunk rocks at you. Since the mosques are open on all sides which allows bugs to enter, I suppose the name for the little buzzing bugs that bite are called “mosquetoes”.
Next, you should visit the Malaysian state of Sabah where you can look for the Phantom or buy souvenir purple body tights to raise the envy of your neighbors back home. The urge to be the only guy in the neighborhood with purple tights and Lone Ranger mask is overwhelming. That’s why they sell so many of these things. Of course, you cannot bring back a white horse or twin .45s, but that’s just as well, as walking funny back in the old neighborhood wearing purple tights might give your neighbors the wrong idea. And if you were wearing .45s someone would likely haul out the old 30 ought 30.
The next place to visit is the Malaysian state of Sarawak where you will find nice beaches, great bargains in the open-air markets and some real exotic food. The piece de resistance (which means in French, “even if it sounds or looks disgusting, eat it anyway.”) is a local soup made from home grown veggies, fertilized by carabao pooh and which contains two varieties of worms; a large white one with a black head and reminds me of my fish bait. This worm is particularly succulent; the other is the bamboo worm that you must extract from its home in a bamboo shoot after it is cooked in the soup. It is skinny as it lives in a skinny shoot, but is just as succulent as the white one.
Don’t expect to find anything from a hog though, as the Muslims shun pork of any kind. The Koran, which is a lot like the Old Testament in the bible, warns against eating pork, but doesn’t say anything about eating worms.
If you like spicy food, you can get some homegrown black pepper (it grows on a tree, by the way), except that it isn’t black, it’s white. The locals don’t care for the black part of the peppercorn; they use the outer white portion, just the opposite of what those “strange folk do in Europe and America.”
Another interesting thing is that it is bad manners to point with your index finger (or your middle finger, for that matter). You are supposed to point with your thumb.
Next on your itinerary is what you came for in the first place, a visit to the headhunters of Borneo. The trek into the deep jungles where they live is accomplished by riding in narrow dugout canoes poled, dragged and sometimes carried by two natives. If you are concerned that they may be headhunters, ask them for their identification cards. They will show you an embossed card clearly stating “The bearer of this official identification card is not presently a head-hunter of Borneo. The skull hanging from his neck was purchased from a real head-hunter”.
The river on which the hollowed-out tree trunk starts is fairly big and fairly deep, but soon becomes a small shallow stream. You may have to get out of the boat and wade every now and then. If you pick up a leach or two, don’t worry as this is a recognized treatment for certain blood diseases, and they won’t suck out enough blood to really matter anyway. Save the ones you unstick from your legs though, as the natives use them to add flavor to their soups. Just kidding, folks, they use them in their blowguns when they only want to stun small prey. So, if you see a native with a big black blob on his tongue, you know that he didn’t blow before the leach latched onto his tongue. Their traditional lore states plainly, “If a leach latches onto your tongue before you can blow it out of your blowgun, don’t mess with it.” Roughly equivalent to our “If the shoe fits, wear it”.
On arrival at the heat-hunter’s village, you will be ushered to a special foreigner’s house that resembles the natives’ “long-house” except that your long-house is really short. You will be assigned a pallet, a mosquito net and a flashlight in case the generator fails, which it will surely do. Your meals will be cooked in your short-house, but you are advised not to look on the process too closely and never, never ask, “What in the world is this in my soup?” To do so, in a headhunter’s village is really risky on two fronts; first it could be taken as an insult justifying adding another trophy to their collection, and second they may actually tell you what’s in the soup! After settling in, you will be invited to review the collection of skulls the warriors have accumulated over time. Then you may be given the opportunity of taking target practice with a poison-dart blowgun they normally use to kill monkeys. Be careful that you put the dart with the sharp end pointing away from you so it doesn’t end up on your tongue, and don’t aim it toward any of your fellow travelers. Even though the natives would be quite happy to salvage the head of a tourist, it isn’t considered good form in headhunter circles to end up the journey with fewer tourists than they started with.
In the evening you may visit the village long-house. It’s called “long-house” because it is long. Each time a bride and groom join the clan, they just add a room or two on the end of the existing structure. So over time, it becomes long, so they call it a “long-house”. I don’t know if in the beginning, they called it a “short-house”.
After a couple of days and nights (Nights are particularly interesting as the beasts of the jungle prowl around making scary noises and all you have between you and them is a mosquito net.) you are ready for return to civilization. The two native guides, or their substitutes if either of them has contributed to the collection of skulls, will round up all the touristers, count noses to see if as many are ready to return as started out. If there is a shortage of noses, they will change the number that they recorded at the outset of the trip so that they can account for everyone when they check in with their supervisors back where they started. It is a good idea to make sure that the guides record the number of tourists in ink at the outset because it harder for them to change the count.
If these tips don’t stir your blood to book for a trip to Borneo today, you may be among the tourists who really do not care to parade around your neighborhood in souvenir purple tights, mess up Muslim tradition, eat worms and white pepper, pick leaches, point with your thumb or contribute to headhunters trophy collection. If so, keep checking my BLOG for additional travel tips that you probably won’t find in tourist brochures.
Monday, March 15, 2010
First Person Story-Japan
I joined the U.S. Navy fresh from high school at age 17. The Korean Conflict had just begun and a navy recruiter promised I’d be assigned to Naval Intelligence if I signed up immediately. I was trained as a radio intercept operator, went to school for the Russian language and was sent to Japan to monitor adverserial nations. I arrived there in 1951, just before the military occupation officially ended, thereby qualifying me to wear the Occupation Ribbon.
My first duty station was in Yokosuka, followed by Chitose on Hokkaido Island and Kami Seya, a village among the rice fields near Yokohama. I worked in one of two tunnels equipped with the most modern communications monitoring equipment at the time. The structures were covered in reinforced concrete several feet thick. My group had evacuation priority just below women and children-because, I suppose, the navy had so much invested in our training.
It was heady stuff for a boy of seventeen, being 10,000 miles away from Auburndale, Florida, a small town in the middle of the state. I had migrated there in 1935 with my parents and younger brother during the Great Depression.
The little more than two years I was assigned to Japan provided me with a lifetime of memories, some of which I’ve included in my memoir, "The Misadventures of a Country Boy". When I arrived, the country was economically prostrate after the large companies had been shut down for their support of the war effort thereby eliminating thousands of jobs. Many breadwinners were killed in the Pacific battles leaving their families destitute. As a consequence, hundreds of young girls turned to prostitution. They were known as “skivvy girls” in military jargon.
One of my earliest memories was viewing the throng of girls soliciting in front of the navy base. These unfortunate girls, plying their trade for about $3.00 for a "short-time", were on the lowest level of the prostitution hierarchy ranging from the geisha to street-skivvy-girls. Girls working out of brothels called “skivvy houses” ranked in between.
During my stay in Japan, I visited skivvy houses where I taught English in exchange for learning Japanese. While doing so, I heard life stories from many of the girls: why they became prostitutes, how they often suffered brutal treatment by their customers, were exposed to venereal diseases, and had to fight continuously for survival in the callous world of prostitution. When they lost their youth, there was nowhere for them; the skivvy houses would dump them, they couldn't go back home to their village, Japanese men would have nothing to do with them, and since the girls rarely accumulated enough money to keep them from poverty, they usually had a miserable old age.
I left Japan in 1953, but carried the memories of that era in my head for over fifty years finally putting it to paper. My manuscript relating many experiences of that time, particularly the plight of the young girls is being reviewed by publishers at this time. Hopefully, it will be published soon.
If you're wondering, my wife of 55 years holds no uneasiness for the escapades of a teenage boy she did not know in a foreign country so many years ago. She has been invaluable in the construction of the manuscript: "Skivvy Girl: The Making and Redemption of a Japanese Prostitute.
If interested, go to my WEB site: www.earnestmercerbooks.com for a synopsis, or contact me via email: emercer2@tampabay.rr.com
My first duty station was in Yokosuka, followed by Chitose on Hokkaido Island and Kami Seya, a village among the rice fields near Yokohama. I worked in one of two tunnels equipped with the most modern communications monitoring equipment at the time. The structures were covered in reinforced concrete several feet thick. My group had evacuation priority just below women and children-because, I suppose, the navy had so much invested in our training.
It was heady stuff for a boy of seventeen, being 10,000 miles away from Auburndale, Florida, a small town in the middle of the state. I had migrated there in 1935 with my parents and younger brother during the Great Depression.
The little more than two years I was assigned to Japan provided me with a lifetime of memories, some of which I’ve included in my memoir, "The Misadventures of a Country Boy". When I arrived, the country was economically prostrate after the large companies had been shut down for their support of the war effort thereby eliminating thousands of jobs. Many breadwinners were killed in the Pacific battles leaving their families destitute. As a consequence, hundreds of young girls turned to prostitution. They were known as “skivvy girls” in military jargon.
One of my earliest memories was viewing the throng of girls soliciting in front of the navy base. These unfortunate girls, plying their trade for about $3.00 for a "short-time", were on the lowest level of the prostitution hierarchy ranging from the geisha to street-skivvy-girls. Girls working out of brothels called “skivvy houses” ranked in between.
During my stay in Japan, I visited skivvy houses where I taught English in exchange for learning Japanese. While doing so, I heard life stories from many of the girls: why they became prostitutes, how they often suffered brutal treatment by their customers, were exposed to venereal diseases, and had to fight continuously for survival in the callous world of prostitution. When they lost their youth, there was nowhere for them; the skivvy houses would dump them, they couldn't go back home to their village, Japanese men would have nothing to do with them, and since the girls rarely accumulated enough money to keep them from poverty, they usually had a miserable old age.
I left Japan in 1953, but carried the memories of that era in my head for over fifty years finally putting it to paper. My manuscript relating many experiences of that time, particularly the plight of the young girls is being reviewed by publishers at this time. Hopefully, it will be published soon.
If you're wondering, my wife of 55 years holds no uneasiness for the escapades of a teenage boy she did not know in a foreign country so many years ago. She has been invaluable in the construction of the manuscript: "Skivvy Girl: The Making and Redemption of a Japanese Prostitute.
If interested, go to my WEB site: www.earnestmercerbooks.com for a synopsis, or contact me via email: emercer2@tampabay.rr.com
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