Interview with Professor Kirsten Ziomek on BOY SOLDIERS: THE SECRET WAR IN OKINAWA

Today’s special guest for  a discussion of  the devastating and illuminating Japanese documentary Okinawa supai senshi (Boy Soldiers: The Secret War in Okinawa) is Professor Kirsten Ziomek, Associate Professor of History at Adelphi University, and the author of Lost Histories: Recovering the Lives of Japan’s Colonial Peoples (Harvard Asia Center, 2019), a pathbreaking study of the ways the Japanese empire’s colonized population— mainly Okinawans, Ainu, Indigenous Taiwanese and Micronesians—  interacted with the metropole, astonishingly rich in detail and deeply challenging to today’s complacent notions of how the Japanese colonial empire actually worked. Her current book project is tentatively entitled The Disorder of Killing in the Pacific War:  the Colonial Soldiers, Laborers and Local Peoples at the Japanese Empire’s Edge, in which she seeks to examine the lives and experiences of the colonized and indigenous peoples during the Pacific War. This new book promises to be as powerful and upsetting to the status quo as her first, moving beyond the categorizations of the colonized and indigenous peoples as monochromatic victims or those who “joined the system” to become Japanese nationals. 

This interview was conducted in August 2, 2021 through Zoom. It has been edited and somewhat shortened for clarity and economy. The contents of this interview are copyrighted to Professors Kirsten Ziomek and Kyu Hyun Kim. Any reproduction of the contents therein without the explicit written consent of Professor Ziomek will be considered a breach of copyright laws as defined by the United States court system. “K” refers to Kyu Hyun Kim and “Z” refers to Kirsten Ziomek in the following interview text.

  

K: So grateful that you could join me today! To start off, could you tell me how you had come to hear about this documentary and your interest in the subject matter?

Z: I am writing a book, one of the chapters of which explores “spies” in wartime Okinawa. The more research I conducted, the more I have come to realize that these stories of Okinawans being subject to suspicion as spies by the Japanese military and executed are actually much more complex than previously thought, including a disturbing dimension of Okinawan civilian complicity in scapegoating or blaming fellow residents as spies. The rest of the chapter deals with the gokyōtai, the Okinawan youth who were mobilized to conduct guerilla warfare against the Americans, as “spies” by infiltrating enemy lines.  So not surprisingly, this film was extremely interesting and illuminating for me. For one, I had visited Iriomote and Ishigaki islands a long time ago, but I was then unaware of the terrible histories of relocation and violence told in the film. It was really shocking and powerful to listen to the testimonies of the survivors who had been children during this time, including that of Mr. Kudaka whose mother went insane after losing her son, a member of the gokyōtai (executed by Japanese officers), and his frank admission that he did not necessarily want his brother back but wanted his mother restored to normalcy.

K: The film draws upon two interrelated but distinct strands of discourses, one a more familiar anti-war message and another that specifically focuses on the sufferings of the Okinawans by the Yamatonchū or the “mainlanders (hondojin).” Do you feel these two strands are well integrated in the film?

Z: I feel that the first strand is always there, but whenever we deal with the modern history of Okinawa the question of colonialism is unavoidable. I cannot help but wonder if the Japanese wartime government would have treated the mainlanders the same way they had done with Okinawans as described in this film, for instance, forcibly and knowingly relocating a population of one island to a malaria-infested location just for strategic reasons. The directors’ main contribution to the discussion about the Japanese military’s treatment of Okinawan civilians during the Battle of Okinawa is to contend that how the Okinawans were treated- executed for being suspected “spies”- would have happened to Japanese civilians if fighting came to the mainland. Previous scholars have usually discussed the spy executions vis a vis the lens of colonialism; that is to say because Okinawans were seen as “others” they were viewed with suspicion, thus their mistreatment by the Japanese military. This film offers a different view, namely it was the military-civilian dynamic that took precedence over the fact that the civilians were Okinawan. It complicates the issue for sure, and I am torn whether what happened in Okinawa really could have been replicated on the mainland, as the filmmakers contend. 

K: Indeed. I was too surprised to see a direct acknowledgement in the film of the fact that the Japanese military had never really sought to “protect” civilians, that they really did not care how many ordinary Japanese citizens ended up dying in the course of protecting the emperor and the “national body.” This point is somehow not clearly conveyed in some of the more conventionally pacifist, anti-war films made in Japan. 

Z: I am looking at the Japanese military mobilization of the native population in New Guinea in my new book, and historically I could chart the relationship between the occupying Japanese and the native population that had begun at least with the stated intent of friendly cooperation and progressively deteriorated into something abjectly cruel and exploitative as conditions of war worsened. And again, this narrative reminded me of the Okinawan experience since it seemed so opposite. Namely, there was no pretense of civilian protection in Okinawa. In some respects, the Japanese military treated their own compatriots in Okinawa on par with or worse than how they treated foreign populations they forcibly occupied during the war.

K: In my research on the Japanese wartime mobilization of Koreans, I have come across time and again the characterization of Koreans by the colonial state and the Tokyo headquarters as “human resources” (jinteki shigen). Equally disturbing is the fact that this view of regarding its own population as resources has been squarely adopted and even flourishing in today’s East Asian nations— China, North and South Korea, Japan.

Z: Yes, and there is almost a kind of pointlessness built into the whole mentality behind seeing the population as exploitable resources. Exploit them towards what ends?  The answer the film provides-civilians were utilized in order to protect the nation’s power hierarchy is unsatisfying. Were soldiers so devoted to the emperor that they unquestionably saw civilians as resources to be utilized and disposed of as they saw fit? It is often told that when Japanese soldiers died they called for their mothers and did not say the emperor’s name. It is hard to believe this cruel attitude toward civilians was so simplistically conveyed and embraced. My previous research has found bonds of friendship between Okinawans and Japanese soldiers- not enough to combat the   view of the Japanese military as aggressive perpetrators, but enough to question if it is historically accurate to view the Japanese military with having such a single-minded and unified aim that could be executed during the war. I wonder to what extent the treatment of  Okinawans  during the war was due to the circumstances of war and how much it was due to specific military orders. The flimmakers want us to believe it was only the latter, but I am not certain.

K: I have also not seen in any other film the argument against operations of the Self-Defense Forces in Okinawa presented in this one, that the latter will not protect the Okinawan population against an external threat, whether it is China, North Korea, or whichever “enemy,” because that is not what they are set up to do. Do you feel that the filmmakers are attempting to expand the scope from the Okinawan experience to address the larger issues of Japanese geopolitics and do you think the attempt was successful?

Z: I think they are attempting to link what happened during the Battle of Okinawa to present day Okinawa with the SDF bases but they talk about the SDF bases without mention of American bases. The situation in Okinawa is obviously very complicated. Their attempt to link what happened to Okinawans during WWII to Japan’s current geopolitical position (Japan being an outpost of American empire) I think was halfhearted and not satisfying. That being said, I still think this film is very much an Okinawan story. The Okinawans I have encountered, from academics to cab drivers, continued to make a distinction between Uchinānchū (Okinawan natives) and Yamatonchū. The Nagano School agents sent to Okinawa were able to draw upon the ambivalent and complex relationships between Okinawans and Japanese in order to mobilize the youth as soldiers.  This film made me think of Matthew Allen’s “Wolves at the Back Door” (See references) where he describes a group of civilians, including some Koreans, who resided on Kumejima island and were killed in August 1945, after the war had officially been terminated, by a group of Japanese soldiers who had suspected the former of “working with the enemy.” The commanding officer, a man named Kayama Tadashi, survived well into the postwar period.  In media interviews he was completely unrepentant, assuming the attitude of “we did what had to be done.” While the Kumejima massacre is one of the most well-known cases of Okinawans being executed as spies, the filmmakers do not discuss this event. Instead they offer many examples of how and why Okinawans were executed as spies including how Okinawan civilians worked to root out other Okinawans as “spies.”

K: Unfortunately, I have seen this kind of dehumanization of the “local population as enemies” more than once when I was growing up in South Korea. There was, for instance, a military training instructor at my junior high school, a Viet Nam War veteran who used to reminisce with relish about his killing of “Viet Congs.”

Z: Yes, and I keep coming back to this terrible fact that all these horrors are known to us today because the eyewitnesses had experienced them as children.

K: I am conflicted about the pacifist messages prevalent in the postwar Japanese culture, many of which seem to be predicated on two premises: that the postwar Japan is so different from the prewar Japan that it will never engage in a similar type of behavior regarding its “outside” population or its own citizens, and that the Japanese people in general are exempt from “war responsibility,” however the “bad apples” responsible for the war might be defined.  I am in principle sympathetic to these pacifist sentiments and ideas but as a historian I cannot help feel that they miss out important stories and experiences as well as the broader picture of the Japanese empire. 

Z: I wholeheartedly agree.  The film we are discussing certainly locates a significant piece that fits into the larger puzzle picture constituting the war experience for Asians.  Having said that, it should remain a constant struggle for historians like us, journalists, artists and ordinary citizens, too, to try to find other equally relevant puzzle pieces and at the same time not to lose sight of the whole picture.

K: Any aspect of the present documentary that you had questions about, or any subject matter that you feel could have been covered in greater depth or detail?

Z: The relocation of the Hateruma island residents, for one, could have fleshed out more from my historian’s point of view, and there are other instances where I felt more corroborating evidence would have been helpful. However, I understand that  Mikami Chie has published her research in book form and I assume the book presumably answers some of my questions- I have not yet finished reading through it yet (see References). The stories about the Nakano School have been well researched. Stephen Mercado’s study (see References) deals with this institution but I was not aware that some 42 graduates were sent to Okinawa, a large number by any standard. The documentary also offered invaluable first hand testimony from former gyokyōtai, which Mercado’s study does not include.

K: This is perhaps a sideline point but the parallel between Okinawa during the Pacific War and Cheju [Jeju] island before and after the Korean War, as well as the islanders’ postwar struggles with the wartime legacies and subsequent militarization of the islands is quite striking.

Z: I have heard about what happened after WWII at Cheju Island but can you tell me a bit more about what you mean?

K:  Hyôn Kirôn (1949-2020), for instance, has written a story about a Cheju diver who is promoted as an anti-Japanese nationalist heroine, but she herself remains conflicted about the relationship with the “mainlanders” and questions others seeing her in such a light. The imposition of the nationalist narrative, compounded by the Cold War dynamics, on the Cheju population tends to obscure the semi-colonial or internal colonial relationship the islanders had had with the rest of the Koreans.

K: I am, then, not far off when I say you approve the current documentary for alerting the viewers to certain important aspects of the Pacific War and Okinawan experiences?

Z: No, I wouldn’t say you are far off. I would say it is a significant contribution that will offer new information to many who think they know the typical narratives about of how Okinawans suffered during the war.

K: Thank you so much for the insightful discussion! Let’s keep the discussion going about these and other matters of common interest.  

Z: Absolutely!

 

References:

Allen, Matthew.  “Wolves at the Back Door: Remembering the Kumejima Massacres,” in Laura Hein, Mark Selden, eds. Islands of Discontent: Okinawan Responses to Japanese and American Power (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).

Mercado, Stephen. The Shadow Warriors of Nakano: A History of the Imperial Japanese Army’s Elite Intelligence School (Washington D.C.: Brassey’s Inc., 2003).

Mikami Chie. Shōgen Okinawa supai senshi  (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 2020).

Ziomek, Kirsten. Lost Histories: Recovering the Lives of Japan’s Colonial Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Asia Center Publication, 2019). (For more information see: www.kziomek.com)

 

 

Solidarity in Facing the Future- Interview with Ms. Hong Hyewon, a Korean Volunteer in Malawi, on THE BOY WHO HARNESSED THE WIND

Helping us appreciate The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is a special guest, Ms. Hong Hyewon, with a unique experience of having worked in Malawi as a young South Korean volunteer. Ms. Hong is an undergraduate student at Sogang University, majoring in French Culture and Political Science. A Korean native, she has studied French, English, Japanese, Arabic languages and learned the basic command of Chichewa to work for the Africa Future Foundation in Malawi in 2017. Since January 2019, she has been volunteering at a Korean shelter service for international refugees, many of whom Africans, called Refuge pNan.

The interview was conducted via Skype between Seoul, Korea, and Berkeley, USA, in April 19, 2019 [Pacific US time]. It has been edited for length and clarity. The copyright for the interview content belongs to Ms. Hong Hyewon and anyone who wants to quote from the interview below should contact  Ms. Hong for an explicit permission. The letter “Q” indicates Kyu Hyun Kim, the interviewer, and “H” indicates Ms. Hong.

Q: My first question relates to the issue I have raised in the review, that William Kamkwamba's initial accomplishment, amazing as it was, was, in real life, not directly tied to the dramatic alleviation of drought as illustrated in the film. Perhaps this level of dramatization was necessary to get the project off the ground.  What do you think about this issue?

H: Right, as you have indicated in the review, this is a question of representation versus reality. I have read Kamkwamba's book [the source for the film], and he does state that the primary motivation for building the windmill generator was to get electricity for his home.

Q: I should state that the need for electricity and illumination, so that one could study at home in the nighttime, does not strike me in any way as less “important” or “desperate” than running a water pump, in the real-life context wherein someone like Kamkwamba found himself.

H: I absolutely agree. I think the irrigation pump was a dramatic device, in a way, to make Kamkwamba's “eccentric” behavior ultimately meaningful for those around him, to show that his accomplishments could benefit the community he belonged to.

Q: I see. So, he had to demonstrate to the community that his projects were not just for himself.

H: Right. And also to show those outside the local community that this type of engineering feat could be done with the meagre resources available within. I think the compressed narrative and dramatization strategy Ejiofor employs was necessary, generally speaking. Otherwise, his messages might not have been conveyed with the kind of urgency and strength seen in the film.

Q: It is worth noting that his peers and friends were the most sympathetic members within his community.

H: Yes, not only in the movie, but also in the Kamkwamba's book on which the film is based, William's cousin Jeffrey and Gilbert, the Chief of Wimbe's son, were early and important supporters of his endeavors. 

Q: What aspects of the Malawi culture and life that you had experienced and observed that you feel were not captured in the film? Or, this is perhaps a related question, what aspects of the Malawi culture you had observed that would have come across as different from what we usually expect from a film of this type?

H: Are we assuming the perspective of a typical Korean viewer?

Q: Well, you don't have to, but that is fine. We are both Koreans, after all [Laughter]. I suppose I could also take on the viewpoint of an American viewer, typical or whatnot.

H: Yes, well, I definitely am not an expert on the Malawi culture, so I hope the readers do not take my comments in that way. Having said that, to give an example, the scene in which the villagers gather together at Chief Wimbe's residence is a lot less like an American town hall meeting in real life than it perhaps appears in the film. The Chief's authority is complexly localized, and there are many types of protocols to follow.  I don't think we could simply assume that the locals would obey the chief's authority and decide what they would with the lands, either. The movie sort of collapses these forms of traditional authority into a series of symbolic depictions, and tends to focus on the individuals who already are "modernized" or being transformed into those in that mold, who could sell their lands essentially without the consent of their community.  So a village meeting is, for better or worse, not as simple as just a show of hands and then moving forward with everyone speaking their frank minds.   

Q: Before that the village meeting scene, I was not aware that Gilbert was Chief's son. William wants to attend the meeting too but he gets kicked out of it by his father [Laughter].

H: Yes, Gilbert is a designated heir to the village's leadership so he is given the privilege to attend the meeting. I thought it was clever for the film to point to the boy's privileged identity through that scene.

Q: Can we touch on a bit more personal dimension, in terms of resonances between Kamkwamba's experiences and your own?

H: Yes, well, I feel that William Kamkwamba had an orientation toward scientific inquiry and Western modes of thinking to start with, and possessed both an ability and a drive to look for opportunities and colleagues who could help him navigate through the complex processes of negotiating with his own society and culture.  At Malawi I did observe some startling cases of the old traditions and these scientific, modern orientations co-existing-- some folks resisting blood tests because they believed that the samples might be used for occult purposes, for instance. Having said that, his father's contradictory behavior in the film-- wanting his son to go to school and “succeed,” and yet stick to traditional values of-- in the film, at least-- a farmer, deeply resonated with my own ambivalent feelings. 

Q: As I have mentioned in my review, Chiwetel Ejiofor could have portrayed Trywell as his son's only or one of the few “supporters,” but I think he goes an extra mile to reject that kind of triumphalist characterization. Instead, he attempts to illustrate the difficulty, on the part of Trywell or someone like him, of adapting to a new world. In a conventional narrative, the obtuse and the unenlightened are either proven completely wrong at the end, or they get “enlightened” by the protagonists at the drop of their hats. This is not what happens in the film.

H: No, it's never that simple. I think colonial and postcolonial modernization of Malawi, mediated through the educational system of the British empire, has not really closed the gap between the “traditional” and the “modern” components of the nation. This is a bigger issue than merely a difference in wealth between upper and lower classes.

Q: I do not believe this type of dilemma was that different from the one that faced South Koreans, as late as in '80s. I believe many among democratic activists of my generation-- so-called the “386” generation, a term that I dislike but keep using, I plead guilty to that-- sometimes inadequately dealt with the gap between what they intellectually understood as “enlightenment” and “social revolution” as members of the elite classes and what the rural population actually wanted, during the former's encounters with the latter during a phase of agrarian activism (so-called nonghwal).  For the farmers, “enlightenment” did not necessarily mean learning how a world capitalist system worked, but learning such "mundane" stuff as how to keep the book properly, how to get loans without being cheated, or even how to get better transportation, sometime as simple as learning to ride a bicycle better.

H: Oh, what you just said reminds me of the case studies in Abhijit Bannerjee and Esther Duflo's Poor Economics. During my sojourn there, one of the strategies for inducing Malawi children to go to schools was to hand out soaps to them.

Q: Tell me about that.

H: We did a brainstorm session with the local project assistants to figure out the reasons for the children dropping out from schools and expressing reluctance to attend them. I eventually learned that the reasons were quite diverse: sometimes they had to skip school because they were too poor, but at other times they were ostracized for being dirty, or not clothed well.  Giving them bars of soap, change for buying clothes or sandals, or bags of salt or corn powder produced positive results in enhancing their “motivation.”

Q: I also feel that the kind of pat criticism directed to movies such as The Boy, to the tune of “Okay, so William Kamkwamba did make it, what about other children who had not have the kind of access to the knowledge he had?” really misses the point.  

H: I think I understand where such criticisms come from, but yes, I do agree that there is no shortage of the "motivated" people, once the kind of hurdles and obstacles more specific to the lived experiences are addressed.

Q: Can you talk a bit about Gule Wamkulu? Have you watched them perform?  

H: Yes, I did.

Q: Wow, tell me about that experience! [Laughter]

H: Well, not at a funeral. I watched them perform at the Kuti Wildlife Reserve in Salima, Malawi. They were introduced as Gypsy-like itinerant dancers.  Looking at their interaction with the tourists, I was reminded of the Korean masked dance troupe, who uses humor and satire to entertain the audience. And they were awesome: until watching them perform, I had never realized a human body could be shaken with so much energy and vigor.  And when they stamped their feet in rhythm, it was like an earthquake. But they demand money for their work, and from what I have observed, pretty on the nose, too.

Q: Well, why should it be otherwise?

H: Of course! [Laughter] In contrast to my first-hand experience, the Gule Wamkulu dancers in the film seem to function in similar ways to shamans and represent the tradition and community solidarity of Malawi.  In the early part of the film, they disrupt the Christian funeral rites led by a pastor, and the attendees cannot help but turn their gaze toward them, despite their professed beliefs in the new religion of the missionaries. They also seem to symbolize the natural world being displaced by the introduction of Western civilization and industrialism, as hinted in the scene where a lone dancer with a baby doll mask mysteriously gazes at William. William Kamkwamba's autobiography refers to the Gule Wamkulu several times: he actually sponsored their dance at a community gathering raising awareness for HIV/AIDS at one point.

Q: Anything else about the film that you have noticed you want to share?

H: I have visited Malawi during a wet season, so I have never experienced the wind the way it was depicted in the film. I felt that the wind was almost like a character in the film: the filmmakers did an excellent job of keeping it present throughout the feature, seguing into the climax where it is finally brought under control by Kamkwamba.  In addition, the struggle between Annie and Agnes I strongly sympathized with, in the sense that even very loving and intimate relationships could be affected by material needs in such a circumstance they faced together as a family. One element that struck me as somewhat--- I don't want to say unrealistic, but perhaps overly idealistic-- is Trywell speechifying his political discontent and hitching a truck ride to another town for the explicit purpose of helping an opposition party candidate. I heard sometimes that the locals describe themselves as complaisant, compared to their neighbors in Mozambique and Tanzania. The flip side of it is that perhaps what looks to some outsiders as indifference to democratic agitation might be, for Malawians, an ingredient of political stability. Given the horrible political struggles taking place in another African nation such as Democratic Republic of Congo, maybe we should not be so quick to judge them for "not being politicized enough."

 

Q: The industrialized sector is represented by tobacco companies in the film. Near the end of the film, Trywell talks ruefully about how he could have been a tobacco farmer, producing tobacco that “looks like milk chocolate.”

H: Based on what I have seen, the critical positions in the tobacco companies were largely occupied by foreigners such as South Africans. Similar to the case of peanuts cultivated in Senegal, tobacco is a commercial crop that needs to be sold in the market in order to be exchanged for other necessities, including foodstuffs. There is always a concern whether the downturns in the international market for commercial crops such as peanut, coffee and tobacco would become burdens on the shoulders of African farmers. Actually, while I was staying there, I had a chance to meet the former President of the Koreans in Malawi Association, married to a tobacco company VIP.

Q: Wow!

H: There were about 200 Koreans living in Malawi at that time. The oldest generation among Korean residents included those who had settled there during '70s working for the national highway construction projects.

Q: What an amazing level of global reach. The '60s-'70s "national" history of Korea must be rewritten.

H: And the former President was very well-off.  Her husband was indeed a South African, with their children going to colleges in Cape Town.  

Q: Let's return our talk to William Kamkwamba, or more precisely, the resonance between his life and yours. I know there is no one correct answer to a question like this, but if we determine that, even if you are a beneficiary of Euro-American higher education, it is important that you still maintain a form of local connection, how would you reconcile the desire to help those who remain in your local areas to the yearning to reach out to the larger world?  I know this question could be taken as a very personal one [Laughter].

H: Yes, well, it sounds very clichéd but I think solidarity and fighting together is the answer. [Laughter] Solidarity, as I interpret it, starts from finding, organizing and joining in with the like-minded people. But these days I also think a lot about self-preservation, trying not to push myself to the point that, if I happen to buckle from the outside pressure, I would then lose sight of my ideals. I think those who have gained new knowledge and insights should take care to communicate these things in the ways that make sense to those around them.

Q: Do you think William Kamkwamba has managed to resolve this dilemma?

H: Not necessarily. I think he still has many obstacles in the future to face, many hurdles to overcome. As he matures as a social person and a community leader, the issues that he will have to tackle will become bigger and more complex. How would, for instance, ESCOM, the dominant electricity company in Malawi, legally and politically respond to his initiative for self-producing electricity?  In other words, we should be careful not to simply stop at the level of recognizing, wow, there is this very smart young person in Africa doing some great engineering work, and recognize that there are always more things to be done, more problems to be solved.   

Q: Any final comment?

H: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is a very inspiring and well-made film. I just wish that those who watch it, wherever they are, and whatever their backgrounds are, do not subscribe to the fantasy that the problems and the issues facing Kamkwamba, his community, Malawi and Africa were even partially resolved, when the movie ended. That is simply not true, as we have discussed above.  William's story is far from finished yet.  I sympathize with him, a brave and talented inventor-community-activist, but also see how tough his life could be from this point on.

Q: It will be a continued struggle with many issues, as your life is likely to be. So there is a feeling of solidarity in that sense between you two as well.

H: Yes!

Q: Thank you so much Hyewon, it was amazingly inspiring to talk to you.

H: Thank you, Professor Kim, for providing this wonderful opportunity to reflect on my experience in Malawi!  

What Jane Has Taught Us about the Primates... and Us-- A Special Interview with Professor Jae Choe, Distinguished Professor of EcoScience at Ewha Woman's University

In order to explore some of the issues touched upon in the documentary Jane and to improve our understanding of Jane Goodall's pioneering achievement as a primatologist, I have sought out a special interview with Professor Jae Choe (Choe Jae Chun), one of the best-known scientists currently working in South Korea and a powerful voice for environmental conservation, biodiversity and animal rights. 

Professor Choe received a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology at Harvard University under the supervision of Edward O. Wilson and Bert Hölldobler, and had taught at Harvard as well as University of Michigan before returning to Seoul National University in 1994 as a professor of biological sciences.  Since 2006 he has been in charge of the newly created EcoScience program at Ewha University as Distinguished Professor of EcoScience at Ewha Woman's University. 

Professor Choe has also been one of the most successful popular advocates of science in South Korea, having authored and translated more than fifty Korean-language books on the topics ranging from evolutionary biology, ecology, and life sciences, in addition to six academic books and countless articles in English, including The Evolution of Social Behavior in Insects and Arachnids (Cambridge University Press, 1997), The Secret Lives of Ants (Johns Hopkins Press, 2012) and Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior (Second Edition, Academic Press, forthcoming in 2019), for which he served as the Editor-in-Chief.

Finally, as the first director of the National Institute of Ecology, he has extended multiple invitations to Jane Goodall (the country is now one of the regular stop-overs for her global itinerary) for a series of highly successful conscious-raising programs of public lecture and forum.  

The interview was conducted in July 30, 2018, at the EcoScience Laboratory located in the Ewha Woman's University campus, Seoul, Korea. The version uploaded here has been edited for clarity and brevity, but the conversational, informal tone of the actual discussion is preserved. The contents of the interview herein are copyrighted to Kyu Hyun Kim and Jae Choe, and may not be reproduced without their explicit permission. 

 Professor Jae Choe (left) with the interviewer,
at his EcoScience Laboratory at Ewha.

 

Abbreviation: Q indicates the interviewer (Kyu Hyun Kim) and J refers to Professor Choe.

Q: I am honored to have you as the interviewee in discussing the National Geographic documentary Jane, Jane Goodall's life, and questions about primatology and animal sciences in general. Aside from Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey studied gorillas and Birute Galdikas worked on orangutans. Perhaps this is a politically insensitive question, but why were the acknowledged pioneers of primate studies all women? 

J: You are correct, we must be careful about answering this question, given we are in the Me Too era. Having cautioned you, though, Irven DeVore (1934-2014), one of the first American anthropologists appointed in Anthropology Department (at Harvard University) for studying primates (in his case, baboons), once claimed that male scientists in the field were actively constrained by the primate males.

Goodall's great achievement was that she studied the chimpanzees up close. As someone who had studied primates myself-- our team has been studying Javan gibbons in Indonesia for ten years now--, I can vouch for just how difficult and frustrating studying primates  could be. 

By the way, the documentary does not show in detail the process of Goodall struggling to obtain the Ph.D. degree, but she did receive much criticism for her "intimate" and "close" studies of chimpanzees, that her approach lacked objectivity and scholarly distance. This criticism might have made sense applied to studying insects or other animals, but for primates whose social behavior was so complex, without the kind of up-close approach that she employed, all we could learn would have been their basic behavioral patterns, what food they eat, under what circumstances they mate, and so on. And then based on those raw data, we would have had to speculate on the meaning of their behaviors anyway, and that would not have been in any way more "accurate" or "objective" than what she accomplished.

Q: I see.  It would have been like an alien ethnologist recording human behavioral patterns, like when we brush our teeth, how many minutes a day we make noises into our smartphones, and so on, and based on those observations trying to figure out what we "think." (Laughter)

J: Exactly. 

Q: So at that time, no one even thought of primates as the creatures who could be so much like us, with "minds" of their own?

J: That's right, no one did.  Anyway, going back to your initial question, and seriously answering it beyond Professor DeVore's initial suggestion, the consensus among us primatologists is that female researchers in these circumstances have patience-- knowing how to wait--, and commitment-- their capacity for paying less attention to matters other than the object of their observation. I was actually unhappy about the latter view, thinking that it was vaguely putting down female scholars. But, as you know, I was conducting fieldworks in Central American jungles, and I have never lasted longer than six months at any given point.  All of my female graduate students for primate studies at Ewha had lasted longer than eleven months.

Q: In the jungle?!

J: Yup.  

Q: That's amazing.

J: As mentioned in the documentary, the paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey (1903-1972) was the one who had sent Goodall, Fossey and Galdikas to study primates. It is clear that he had an idea that studying primates would help us understand early humans.  Moreover, I think he knew that female researchers could get the works done, whether he openly acknowledged it or not.

When Goodall finally discovered the now-famous episode of chimps using hay straws to capture the ants, she sent the report to Leakey. His response to her findings was that "We now have to redefine what tools are, or what humans are, or accept chimpanzees as humans." So that was the breakthrough moment in her research.

Leakey was also instrumental in guiding her, who did not even have a bachelor's degree, to get the Ph.D. so that she could get her own research funds.  The grueling "vetting" process Goodall had to endure to qualify for the Ph.D. degree from Cambridge is, I suppose, less cinematic for the purpose of the documentary, but the fact that she successfully defended all of her research in an academic setting, despite the relentlessly denigrating and skeptical treatment it had received, is a stupendous feat in my opinion.

Q: Her evaluation committee members, I suppose, were sticklers for the proper protocol for research and so forth…

J: Right. And Goodall was told that nothing she had done was "right" by those standards. One of her advisers, the zoologist Robert Hinde (1923-2016), later visited Gombe and had the opportunity to observe Goodall's work firsthand, and he came around to acknowledge how little he and his generation of scholars knew about the chimps.  

Q: It is very moving to listen to this story, as it is indeed one of those moments in which science makes an advance, as the guardians of the old paradigm admits that it is time for new ideas to come to the fore.

J: Absolutely.

Q: We have already broached this subject above through discussing how Goodall came to receive Ph.D. degree, but what is your thought about the problem of anthropomorphism, of projecting human qualities to other species of animals?

J: Oh, it is a serious problem, no doubt. If you are a dog or cat owner, you are convinced that your dog or cat is a genius who perfectly understands everything you tell it. (Laughter) However, this problem is by no means confined to the lay people. Academic researchers must be careful about letting "wishful thinking" intervene in interpreting animal behavior.

At the same time, it is only in the astonishingly recent years-- a few decades ago, really-- that we have come to even consider that non-human animals are capable of thought. Robert Hinde was careful to tell Goodall to modulate her statements. For instance, Goodall was describing the behavior of a young chimp "Fifi" toward its infant sibling as "being jealous," and Hinde advised her to state, "Fifi behaved in such a way that if she had been a human child, we would say she was jealous."    

The field of studying animal behavior, ethology, gained much legitimacy since its pioneers, Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989), Nikolaas Tinbergen (1907-1988) and Karl von Frisch (1886-1982) won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine.

Q: When was this?

J: 1973.

Q: Holly Molly!  It was really recent. 

J: That's right.  Von Frisch is most famous for studying the "dance" communications of the bees, and his premier disciple was Martin Lindauer (1918-2008), whose student was in turn my adviser at Harvard, Bert Hölldobler. Lindauer was supposed to have met von Frisch as the latter was about to pass on, and the former supposedly asked his teacher, "Do you really believe that animals think?" And von Frisch's response was, allegedly, "You know as well as I know that animals think. Our mission is to find the ways to tell the rest of the world that  they do."  

   

Q: Wow…

J:  Since then our technologies and methods have progressed so much that this type of once-challenging way of thinking has become more widely accepted.  I must also point out that the students these days are very sensitive about anthropomorphism.  I certainly have been subject to accusations of "excessive anthropomorphism" in my Korean-language books, especially popular books for the general readers. Yet, I am fully convinced that the readers for these books do not take my "metaphoric" uses of human terms for the ants at face value.  Regrettably, some of these criticisms tend to be just showing off that they know the score, rather than thoughtful responses to the contents or approaches of my books.

Q: I believe I am not wrong to believe that the proportion of the South Korean population who accept and love animals has greatly increased in the last decade and a half or so. In your view, has this development helped or hindered the growth of various fields studying animals?

J: Talking about South Korea, we are not quite there yet in terms of this newfound sensitivity and awareness actually helping the scientific research on animals. But there is no question that the general awareness has been greatly expanded.  My student's generation might benefit from this. 

As you probably have heard about it, we have successfully returned to the sea five dolphins then confined in major entertainment facilities [in 2013], Seoul Mayor Park Won Soon getting actively involved, despite political criticisms. From the viewpoint of the environmental and animal-rights activism, it was a stunning success. Jedol and other four dolphins are still alive and well in the sea near the Jeju Island, and tourists flock to the island to see them.  I think Korean people, especially those of younger generation, increasingly refuse to consider it their "rights" to keep these beautiful, intelligent animals in miserable conditions, only so that the latter could serve as a small component of their family entertainment. 

Q: It is an incredibly heartening development.

J: Yes indeed.

Q: As the documentary shows, chimpanzees are in many ways "like us" but not necessarily in a benevolent, idealized way.  Goodall had to protect her son, Grub, from other chimps because they were known to grab the young of other families and eat them.  And yet "Flo" could be such a patient, loving and devoted mother to her own children.  So the messages that these primates send us are in fact much more complex than we initially might think.

J: Yes, Goodall herself went through a period of agonizing re-thinking once she had encountered the evidence of a vicious intra-species warfare.

Ultimately, it is difficult to underestimate the significance of Goodall's innovation to the way we scientifically think of animals and human beings by implication.  Let me branch off a bit into the territory of "what would it have been like without her contribution?"  

Japan is one of the five major nations dominating the field of primate studies-- U.S.A., Germany, United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Japan-- and their team began studying chimpanzees in East Africa only a year or so later than Goodall. They have a long tradition of studying apes because Japan is the only nation among the five that has native species they could study within their own territories. Yet, it has taken longer for them to adapt their research to evolutionary sciences and other global trends. Psychological approach to the animal behavior was predominant in the early phases of ethology, and this tradition survived much stronger in Japan, until recently.  

Seen in this context , Goodall's innovation becomes apparent.  She did not approach the chimps as "just like other animals," or try to study them confined in a lab.  What Japan did not have then was a fresh perspective provided by someone like Goodall. Of course, we must not forget that Japanese researches, especially those based on decades of patient, meticulous observation and data accumulation, have since made enormous contributions to the primate studies. 

Q: Can you tell us some of the most interesting directions in ethology/animal sciences?

J: This might surprise you, but many among the primate studies are turning toward studying… dogs.

Q: Dogs?!

J: Yes. If you point a finger toward a certain direction, a dog gets that we are pointing toward that direction, right?

Q: Yes!

J: Well, chimpanzees don't. They just look at the tip of your finger.

Q: Really?! (Laughter)

J: The interesting thing about the dogs is not their IQ, or their brain capacity, but they understand us. The latest theories about the human-canine relationship suggest that, instead of humans domesticating dogs, dogs approached us on their own. We still do not know that how our inherently "obscure" communications make sense to dogs but not to other supposedly more intelligent animals. This line of inquiry has new implications about the way we understand "intelligence," helping us move away from the simplistic approach that tries to assign, for instance, the equivalence of human age to animals in terms of intelligence, as in, say, "a chimpanzee has the equivalent IQ of a six year old human."

Q: The last question I would like to ask you is, what is your new book project? (Laughter)

J: Well, I have an excellent title (Laughter). It's called They Know. "They" here refer to animals, of course. The book is about the animal-human relations, focusing on my argument that animals are aware of human beings, and our behavior. When we purposefully hurt them, when they know their lives are in jeopardy due to human action, animals do show awareness of that fact, sometimes in startlingly direct, and heartbreaking ways.  

Q: God, I will be so looking forward to reading it.

J: We shall see how it turns out.

Q: Thank you for a mind-bogglingly educational interview!