[KS] in Korea--Josephine Baker

[Frank Hoffmann]

Dear Steven, and All:

To wrap this up, from my end, some additional 
infos, things I found (before Steven Capener's 
very short reply today):


(1)
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.

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:
http://www.photographersdirect.com/buyers/stockphoto.asp?imageid=1845182
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).

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).

QUOTE A:
"De septembre 1939 à mai 1940, le ministère de la 
guerre met en place le théâtre aux armées, 
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. (...)"
Source:
http://lhistgeobox.blogspot.com/2011/06/238-pierre-dac-tout-ca-ca-fait-1944.html

QUOTE B:
"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. (...)
         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."
Source:
Bennetta Jules-Rosette, _Josephine Baker in Art 
and Life: The Icon and the Image_ (Urbana: 
University of Illinois Press, 2007): 70

The whole suggestion that Baker might have 
entertained Japanese troops during World War II 
was pretty outrageous in any case.


(2)
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.
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.

Best,
Frank


-- 
--------------------------------------
Frank Hoffmann
http://koreaweb.ws
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