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--></style><title>Re: [KS] in Korea--Josephine
Baker</title></head><body>
<div>Dear Steven, and All:</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>To wrap this up, from my end, some additional infos, things I
found (before Steven Capener's very short reply today):</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>(1)</div>
<div>The earlier discussed _Tonga ilbo_ article with photo from
February 8, 1940. Antti Leppänen already pointed out that the
soldiers in that press photo are Westerners. I just wanted to add the
likely location where this photo was shot: let us do the job properly,
so the same rumor does not start over again.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>From SEPTEMBER 1939 to MAY 1940 Josephine Baker was performing at
French Army frontline theatres together with the actor and entertainer
Maurice Chevalier. Please see below photo from November 1939
documenting this:</div>
<div
>http://www.photographersdirect.com/buyers/stockphoto.asp?imageid=184<span
></span>5182</div>
<div>There is absolutely no alternative: the _Tonga ilbo_ photo must
have been taken after one of these performances (given it was
published in early February 1940).</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Below are two quotes summarizing this and Baker's engagement
during WWII in general. Please NOTE that the mentioned "friend
and Resistance accomplice, Jacques Abtey" was by 1939 actually
already the head of the French military-intelligence. After the war he
wrote a detailed account of Baker's anti-fascist engagement: _La
Guerre secrète de Josephine Baker_ (Paris and Havana, 1948).</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>QUOTE A:</div>
<div>"De<b> septembre 1939 à mai 1940</b>, le ministère de la
guerre met en place le<b> théâtre aux armées</b>, organisant des
spectacles le long de la ligne Maginot. Des chanteurs vedettes tels
que Maurice Chevalier, Joséphine Baker, Fernandel se rendent ainsi
au front afin de maintenir le moral des troupes plongées dans la
"drôle de guerre". Leurs chansons ont pour vocation
d'égayer la longue attente des soldats. (...)"</div>
<div>Source:</div>
<div
>http://lhistgeobox.blogspot.com/2011/06/238-pierre-dac-tout-ca-ca-fa<span
></span>it-1944.html</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>QUOTE B:</div>
<div>"In 1937, Baker married a Jewish French industrialist, Jean
Lion, and became a French citizen. This marriage, which ended in 1942,
is often glossed over in American biographies and films of Baker.
Throughout World War II, she worked as a courier and counterespionage
agent for the French underground, using her home at Les Milandes as an
operating base before her transfer to Morocco. (...)</div>
<div> Josephine had just
returned from a tour in Argentina when war was declared in France on
September 3, 1939. During the last two seasons before her tour of
Argentina, Baker had participated in a series of revues organized by
Colette and later in a music-hall series with Maurice Chevalier. While
France was occupied, Josephine was barred from the stage and left for
the south of France with her close friend and Resistance accomplice,
Jacques Abtey, an undercover agent. Under suspicion because of her
fame and the failure of her marriage to Lion (during which she had
studied for conversion to Judaism), Josephine was a triple threat. She
and Abtey worked tirelessly for de Gaulle's exiled government as part
of the intelligence wing of the French secret service, both in France
and North Africa. When Baker performed for U.S. soldiers' Liberty Club
in Casablanca in 1943 and followed the Allied Forces across North
Africa in a campaign to integrate the U.S. Army, her commitment to
France was positive and her relationship to the United States was
supportive, although critical. She returned to Les Milandes in 1944
and received the Medal of Resistance with the grade of officer in
1946."</div>
<div>Source:</div>
<div>Bennetta Jules-Rosette, _Josephine Baker in Art and Life: The
Icon and the Image_ (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007):
70</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>The whole suggestion that Baker might have entertained Japanese
troops during World War II was pretty outrageous in any case.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>(2)</div>
<div>Now, the 2nd document, the essay by Yi Hyo-sôk, published in
the August issue of the literature magazine _Chogwang_: there is no
date mentioned in that article by Yi, and Steven later mentioned
"July 1936" -- but I do not see such a date, and Steven, you
did not answer my question where you saw that. (In another text by
Yi?) If it were July 1936, then please let us know and I'll be happy
to try to find out what Baler was doing in July.</div>
<div>Over the weekend I looked through the other texts in _Chogwang_
that Adam Bohnet so kindly provided us with ... THANK YOU for the hard
work, Adam! This second text certainly would need serious
investigation, because this was before the war, and because Baker did
indeed make a number of European and overseas tours before the war.
August 1936, when that issue of _Chogwang_ was published, was the
month of the Berlin Summer Olympics, and the majority of nations where
then already critical but most were not yet so clearly against fascist
Germany, Italy, and Japan. In theory at least, such a visit by Baker
would have been a possibility to consider. But there is no mention
anywhere, in no Chinese sources and no Japanese studies, not in any
Baker biography, article about her, etc. Looking at Yi's text itself,
and at the other texts Yi wrote in 1936, I would argue (especially in
as seen in the context of other text in the magazine) that this text
itself (please also see Adam Bohnet notes) is clearly not written as a
factual report but as a fictitious report, as a fictitious memoir of
such a trip and visit and performance by Baker. As Adam mentioned in
an email, there is first of all no date given for that performance.
Which writer reporting such a visit would not do that, if Josephine
Baker had actually visited. And by the way, the other _Tonga ilbo_
article from 1940 does neither mention a date nor a location--as it
must be considered a piece of propaganda rather than a news report.
"Look, they have CocaCola too!" said the captured German
soldier to his comrade when he saw a CocaCola poster at a U.S. POW
camp. Look, the Parisians have Josephine Baker too! (--but she is also
our's, performing for our fascist troops in our pupped state
Manchukuo, and even in a Korean coffee shop for our colonial
subjects.) It is very unfortunate that in 2011 such kind of story is
still (or again) mistaken for real. Those 1936 texts in _Chogwang_
again--with very few exceptions (maybe writer Yang Chu-dong and art
critic and historian Ko Yu-sôp)--most of the essays and short
stories in there truly celebrate all the "modern" and
modernist items and life styles the Japanese have brought, from Scotch
whisky over Cuban rum to perfumes from Paris and fashion magazines
from Tokyo. Yi Hyo-sôk is especially eager to list as many
"exotic" modern items and names of non-Koreans as a short
text can possibly hold without being mistaken for a shopping list or
day planner. He implants himself into the text (many texts he wrote),
as one who is experiencing all those modern-life changes, and so do
other writers in reports of other cities and places. The mixture of
dialogues, description, and self-reflection--then packaged as a
"memoir" of something in the past, that certainly was a very
common style at that time. Someone like Yi Sang did that too, and Yi
Hyo-sôk clearly admired him and it seems to me tries to even imitate
some of his style, just not in that same depth, that cannot be
imitated (or whatever other term might be more appropriate). Imagine
for a moment that Josephine Baker would indeed have been in Korea,
would have performed there. Do you think he would then have used this
dreamy, monologic style--writing about a visit that happened just a
month or so earlier, not 40 years ago? As you all know from photos and
recordings, Baker had an amazing talent, an amazing charm and humor
and many slapstick comedy qualities. This would have been the first
time Yi would have encountered a female black entertainer, and then
the best there was. Who really believes that all he would have to say
after such an experience a month or two ago would be as vague and
dreamy-creamy like what he wrote, a description of a teary-eyed
performance. THAT description alone, that one paragraph already shows
that this is phantasmagoria. We are being confronted with Yi's limited
colonial experiences in Korea, wishes, and phantasies, not with a
writer who is describing a performance by Josephine Baker that he has
most recently seen. That is completely out of the question.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Best,</div>
<div>Frank</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<x-sigsep><pre>--
</pre></x-sigsep>
<div>--------------------------------------<br>
Frank Hoffmann<br>
http://koreaweb.ws</div>
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