A downright lie is "So Far from the Bamboo Grove".

[korean guest]

What do you think about "So Far from the Bamboo Grove"?





Korean Parents Angry over "Distorted" U.S. School Book

Korean parents and students in America are angry over a novel used in U.S. schools that contains distorted and erroneous facts about the way Koreans treated Japanese women as they fled Korea at the end of World War Two.
Written by Japanese-American Yoko Kawashima Watkins, "So Far from the Bamboo Grove" depicts the time when the Japanese colonial occupation of the Korean Peninsula ended in 1945 from the perspective of 11-year old Yoko, who has to flee Korea with her family.

In the story, reportedly based on the real-life experiences of the writer, young Yoko witnesses Koreans¡¯ ruthless attacks and rape of the fleeing Japanese and the ensuing hunger, agony and death while she escapes from Namam in today¡¯s North Korea through Seoul and Busan to Japan. When U.S. planes bomb their train, the family is forced to finish their dangerous journey on foot.


'So Far from the Bamboo Grove' and the Korean version.



But while critics have commended the author for her courageous tale of survival, a number of historical inaccuracies have been discovered in the story. Among them is the erroneous claim that Japan¡¯s military occupation of Korea was justified by the Taft-Katsura Agreement of 1905.

The bombing of the train by U.S. planes is also suspect, as the American military did not bomb any part of North Korea during the time frame of the story. Further, the claims of daylight rapes of Japanese women seem unbelievable, as occupying Japanese troops were not disarmed until weeks after Korea¡¯s liberation on August 15, 1945.

The writer also claims that she and her mother were forced to steal the uniform of a dead Communist soldier in order to hide from North Korean forces, but North Korea¡¯s Communist army was not founded until 1948 so there would have been no uniforms of that type at that time.

Yoko also writes that her father, who worked in Manchuria, was against the war, but records show that he was a war criminal who served for six years in a Siberian prison. Finally, the bamboo groves mentioned in the title of the book existed only in the southern part of Korea until the 1920s.

Korean parents¡¯ groups in New York, Boston and Los Angeles have questioned the novel's failure to mention the many atrocities committed against the Korean people by Japanese troops.

They are also angry that their children are being compelled to read a book that paints a false picture of Koreans, the victims of the occupation, committing unspeakable acts of vengeance against the Japanese.

The Korean Consulate in the U.S. is trying to stop the usage of this book in American schools.

([e-mail] )

english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200701/200701180008.html
english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200701/200701180008.html

[KG]

.S. School Text Homes In on Japanese 'Victims' in Korea


'So Far from the Bamboo Grove' and the Korean version.



A book containing gruesome scenes of Koreans threatening and raping Japanese who flee Korea in the aftermath of World War II is being used as a middle-school course book in the U.S. despite complaints from Korean Americans.
Written by Japanese-American Yoko Kawashima Watkins, "So Far from the Bamboo Grove" depicts the time when the Japanese colonial occupation of the Korean Peninsula ended in 1945 from the perspective of 11-year old Yoko, who has to flee Korea with her family. In the story, reportedly based on the real-life experiences of the writer, young Yoko witnesses Koreans¡¯ ruthless attacks and rape of the fleeing Japanese and the ensuing hunger, agony and death while she escapes from Nanam in today¡¯s North Korea through Seoul and Busan to Japan.

The book was translated and published here in 2005, despite the fact that it was banned in both Japan and China.

The Boston Globe in a series of reports said some Korean American parents and students complained about the book, which is used as a set text around the U.S. According to the daily, the Dover-Sherborn Regional School Committee recently voted to revamp English lessons based on the book. The vote came following a demand from 13 parents who said the story was biased and the scenes of rape too graphic for 11- to 13-year olds.

The newspaper quotes a Korean American mother who worries that the book portrays Koreans as villains while remaining mute about Japanese atrocities during Korea¡¯s 40-year occupation. She voiced concern about the book¡¯s influence on his son, whose own great-grandfather she says was beaten to death by the Japanese for speaking Korean, the Globe said.

But the book reportedly gets mixed reactions in the Korean American community there. Jeff Lee, a 17-year-old Korean American student at Dover-Sherborn High School spoke in favor of the book, saying, ¡°I think it should just be taught better," the report said. "It's a good book -- I really liked it."

Carter Eckert, a professor of Korean history at Harvard, meanwhile, argues, ¡°While Yoko's story is compelling as a narrative of survival, it achieves its powerful effect in part by eliding the historical context¡± in which many Koreans were, the newspaper reminds them, ¡°conscripted for forced labor and sexual slavery to serve the Japanese imperial war machine.¡±

The Korean Consul General in Boston Ji Young-sun said the issue was first raised last September, when Korean American parents near Boston and in New York publicly complained about the book being used as a set text. This prompted an organized campaign against the book. Ji said many Korean students were shocked by the book and experienced discrimination because of it.

Ji said the fact that the book is taught in U.S. schools was ¡°in a way racial discrimination and violation of human rights,¡± adding Korean parents will file formal complaints with U.S. education authorities and state government. The consulate has already written to federal and state education authorities.


([e-mail] )



english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200701/200701170042.html
blog.naver.com/kingeye1979?Redirect=Log&logNo=30013370691

[mikey]

Now, I’m someone who can sympathize with war victims, regardless of their nationality, but when the victims are caught playing loose with the facts, one can’t help but wonder about the purity of their motives. And, frankly, this appears to be a distressing example of how modern-day Japanese nationalists try to deflect criticism away from Imperial Japan’s atrocities by suggesting things like: “See??? The Koreans and the Americans were just as bad as we were!”

Well, baloney. Of course the Koreans weren’t all saints, but it’s plainly clear who the primary aggressors were in World War II, and it sure wasn’t the Koreans.

Controversy over the use of these kinds of books in Japanese schools has led to almost yearly outrages in Korea and China, but this particular book is apparently so ridiculous that even the publishers in Japan have rejected it (imagine that)! Yet, some idiot American school administrators have decided to make it required reading for their students?

I can only guess that these administrators want to present a “War is Hell” message to their students, but that they don’t know enough Asian history to even understand the material that they’re requiring their students to read.

[kathleen34]

I'm on my way out but I just checked the board saw your post.

I'm afraid, Mikey, that there are more idiot American school administrators out there than we can imagine. Korean Parents should stay on the administrations case.

[disturbed]

There is a claim that the father of a writer YoKo Kawashawa Watkins might have been a war criminal who served in 731 medical battalion, which was a infamous human experimental unit, as a high ranking officer.

* 731 medical unit not only used Chinese and Korean but also Russian, American and other Allied POWs, as human guinea pigs.
Accoring to Watkins' book , her father was "high ranking government official". She never mentioned what exactly her fater did , however there is a sentence that when Imperial Japan lost the war, he and his family became a target of Russians and anti-Japanese Korean partisans (it was simply not true. anti-Japanese Korean partisans all but annihilated by repreated Japanese anti-partisan operations, those who survived either belonged to Soviet or Chinese red army) ."They will be looking especially for you and your family. They will kill you. Because of your husband's work for Japanese interest in Manchuria." Watkins never mentioned what happened next , however she wrote after serving 6 years in Siberia , her father finally sent back to Japan. According to her second book, her father was listed neither the list of Japanese Pow who sent back to Japan in 1948 nor the one of Japanese War Criminals made public by Russians.

According to several experts (historians), it was only members of 731 battalion who served 6 years

Kim Chang Kwon , the chair man of committee for truth of 731 battalion, explains " From December 25 to 31st , 1949,there was trials of 12 members of 731 battalion in Khavalovsk war criminal court,sentence varied from 5 years to 25 years.yet all of them sent back Japan in 1956"

Moreover, lots of Japanese characters in the book strangely coincide with those who served in 731 battalion.

For example, there is a record of the trial that Taketa kazuzo ,who is a college buddy of Watkins' father in the book, served in 731 battalion. there are also Matsumura, Yamada and Kawashima's trial records. They are described as Military doctors and NCOs in the book

Taketa graduated from Kyoto medical School, If watkin's father was a really college buddy of Taketa, he was a surely graduate of the Kyoto medical school.Interestingly , including Ishii Shiro , the founder of 731 battalion, and sizable number of 73 battalion members were graduates of the Kyoto medical school.

It is also very similar to the description in the book that on August 11th 1945, family members of 731 battalion evacuated from Harbin,Manchuria by train.

There are also other questions about her inconsistence on her birth place. She once said she was born in Manchuria (Harbin precisely , the very location of 731st battalion). she even wrote in the book "Japan, which I had never seen" and on the back cover of the book she wrote "all her life" she lived outside of Japan. However, in her second book she wrote she was born in Aomori , Japan. She also claimed her father was a "diplomat" but there is no name "Yoshio Kawashima" on the list of ex- or contemporary Japanese diplomats. In her second book, she also claimed that her father was an Oxford Graduate , but again there is no Oxford graduate with same name.

According to Korean American translator, Watkins once told her , her father did very secret work for Japanese goverment.

Yonhap news asked several interview to Watkins , but she refused them all.

some claimed that her father may be the top official related to 731 battalion. A school in America stopped using a book as a text when Watkins could not give a proof that she was not the daughter of above mentioned top ranking official.

[disturbed]

I really wondered why japanese government banned her book in japan. Maybe they had an idea what her father did in manchuria...

[disturbed]

sorry misinformation.

Chinese government bans her book in china. Japanese publishing companies have so far refused to print it.

I am not underestimating american middle school student but I am not sure how middle school students can handle this kind of book.

[TM]

Why is this thread here? What does it have to do with the drama series "Seoul 1945"? Shouldn't this be under the "General" section?

[Lucy]

Because it has to do with the Japanese occupation and the time period we've just gone through in this series. Does everyone want this thread to be moved? We can do that if it's bothering people here for some reason.

[TM]

What bothers me is that this board is being used as part of an orchestrated campaign to attack a 20-year old book about an 11-year old Japanese girl's recollection of her experience in Korea at the end of the war.

For example, if you go to Amazon, you will notice 80 reviews posted in the past week, virtually all of them discrediting the book and posted by people who clearly have not read the book.

Search Google News and see what I mean:

"South Korean netizens flooded Internet bulletin boards with messages ranging from simple anti-Japanese sentiments to conspiracy theories about Japan's attempt to distort wartime history."

[Binny]

TM said:

What bothers me is that this board is being used as part of an orchestrated campaign to attack a 20-year old book about an 11-year old Japanese girl's recollection of her experience in Korea at the end of the war.

For example, if you go to Amazon, you will notice 80 reviews posted in the past week, virtually all of them discrediting the book and posted by people who clearly have not read the book.

First off,if you do not like something like this,then ignore it by all means. Or what would be considered offensive,simply not reading threads like this. No one is forcing you to read these things. It is a personal choice made by you.

Yoko Kawashima's so called "recollection", is full of holes and misguided information. So I am not surprised to have Koreans upset over this book.

[mikey]

TM said:

What bothers me is that this board is being used as part of an orchestrated campaign to attack a 20-year old book about an 11-year old Japanese girl's recollection of her experience in Korea at the end of the war.

Surely, the reason why this book is newsworthy relates to the simple fact that it was recently made mandatory reading in an American public school. Otherwise, few people in the United States would have given it a second look.

As for moving the topic, I think it certainly does relate to the historical timeframe of “Seoul 1945,” but if there’s a chorus of people who want it moved, it matters not to me. However, aside TM, I haven’t seen anybody complaining.

[disturbed]

this summarizes well why koreans are upset about mandatory reading issue in middle school.

========================================
A matter of Context

By Carter Eckert | December 16, 2006

THE CONTROVERSY in the Dover-Sherborn Regional School Committee concerning the inclusion of Yoko Kawashima Watkins's book "So Far from the Bamboo Grove" in the sixth-grade curriculum underscores the importance of history in the teaching of literature, especially when the texts deal with a specific historical time and place.

Watkins's book, based on the author's life, focuses on the harrowing experiences of an 11-year-old Japanese girl and her family at the end of World War II in the northern part of Japanese-occupied colonial Korea. It is a well-written, gripping tale of terror and survival, and its first-person narration from the viewpoint of the girl, Yoko, makes it all the more powerful for sixth-grade readers.

Teaching should encourage students to think "outside the box" of American ethnocentricity and highlight human commonalities across cultural and historical divides. Watkins's book goes a long way toward accomplishing these goals. Through the magic of her prose and identification with her heroine, students are transported to a distant and different time and place and can experience Yoko's ordeal and triumph as their own.

But context and balance are important. While Yoko's story is compelling as a narrative of survival, it achieves its powerful effect in part by eliding the historical context in which Yoko and her family had been living Korea. That context, simply put, was a 40-year record of harsh colonial rule in Korea, which reached its apogee during the war years of 1937-45, when Yoko was growing up. While some Koreans fared better than others, many were conscripted for forced labor and sexual slavery to serve the Japanese imperial war machine, while the colonial authorities simultaneously promoted a program of intensive, coercive cultural assimilation that sought to erase a separate Korean identity on the peninsula.

Watkins was a small girl as these events were unfolding and can hardly be blamed for them, let alone held responsible for the occupation itself. But the story she tells is unfortunately incomplete, if not distorted, by the absence of this larger context. For example, she notes in passing that "the Koreans were part of the Japanese empire but they hated the Japanese and were not happy about the war." Since no further context is provided, young readers knowing little of the larger history of Japanese colonialism or the wartime atrocities might be tempted to think of the Korean population as ungrateful or uncooperative toward the Japanese empire of which they were a part.

The author's depictions of Koreans in the "Anti-Japanese Communist Army" are similarly problematic. First, there is some question as to whom she is referring here. There was no organized "Anti-Japanese Communist Army" of Korean soldiers, except for Kim Il Sung (later the leader of North Korea) and his guerrilla partisans in Manchuria, but they did not arrive in Korea until early September 1945, long after the events described in the book. It is possible, of course, that she is referring to some scattered local Korean communist groups, who sought a violent redress of colonial grievances in the Nanam area where the story takes place. Such violence cannot be condoned. But simply to portray Korean communists in 1945 as endemically evil is not only empirically incorrect; it removes Korean communism from the larger historical context that explains its anti-Japanese stance and its appeal to many Koreans. Indeed, throughout Korea in 1945 communists were widely regarded as patriotic nationalists who had risked their lives against a brutal colonial regime.

Dover-Sherborn teachers should be applauded for trying to expand the minds of their students beyond the familiar, and to include works about Asia in their curriculum. But Watkins's book may not serve that purpose well, especially if it is taught simply as a heroic personal narrative of survival, without adequate provision of historical context. This is not an argument for censorship or banning books. There is no reason why Watkins's book cannot be used in the schools. Introduced carefully and wisely, in conjunction, for example, with Richard Kim's classic "Lost Names," an autobiographical novel about a young Korean boy living at the end of Japanese colonial rule in the 1940s, it can help students understand how perspectives vary according to personal and historical circumstances. But to teach "So Far from the Bamboo Grove" without providing historicization might be compared to teaching a sympathetic novel about the escape of a German official's family from the Netherlands in 1945 without alluding to the nature of the Nazi occupation or the specter of Anne Frank.

Carter Eckert is a professor of Korean history at Harvard University.

====================================

[soapygrams]

Thank you Lucy - you are right - NO ONE except TM signed in as a Guest has made any complaint about this discussion being in Seoul 1945 topic. I find it to be an extremely interesting subject I did not know much of Korean history before I started watching Korean TV and became a member of this group. We Americans don't have a really good understanding of other countries' history. Heck, half of the AMERICANS don't even know our own county's history. So my opinion is that the more knowledge we can garner for ourselves the better we will understand the people of our world. Thanks for all who have contributed information regarding this book. I myself have found it very informative. It's interesting to note how years after events have happened, some people want to rewrite history to suit themselves and their idea of what COULD/SHOULD HAVE happened rather than what actually did happen.

[Miko]

I also wonder why such a novel was used for a textbook. The novel is not widely known even in Japan, either.

If some US teachers wanted to teach some perspectives from Japanese citizens who experienced the war, there are much more appropriate and rather standard materias that are also used (either as a part of textbook, or recommended by teachers) in Japan for a long time.

Examples of such include "Black rain (Kuroi ame)" and "Leaving my child (Kono ko wo nokoshite)" etc. These are among the materials describing the sufferings of ordinal people after the country started the war. While these two materials do not talk about Japanese war crimes (and thus have to be combined with other materials to give a whole view; but no book can take care of everything), they met their own goals -- give a strong opinon against the war and teach kids how scary the war and how precious the life is. The materials are not at all political and in my recollection do not have anything that criticise the US. They're also rather law risk in the sense that they contain only a few main historical fact and story does not evolve with many historical facts, which often require "checking".

To me, these are good starting materials if some US teachers were looking for materials describing the experience of Japanese people during the WWII. Picking a pecurilar novel before introducing even basic (already tested) ones seems to me a naive decision.