Friday, May 9, 2014

Calling names - the Origin of Gook


Dehumanizing the enemy is part of many, if not most, conflicts throughout the history of mankind, and using derogatory names is part of such efforts. In some cases such names may not be seen as serious pejoratives, such as calling Germans "Fritz" or British fighting the Americans referring to the latter as "Cousin Jonathan", but when racial differences are added to the cultural differences, name-calling rapidly changes into full-forced slurs and bigotry. The term “gook” is indeed derogatory, but it has nevertheless been used quite a bit during the 20th century. It has become well-known outside military circles through both film and literature about the wars of the last century in general and the Vietnam War in particular.

As so often happens, it is difficult to determine exactly when this word came into use.  It has been claimed that the word was initially used by U.S. Marines fighting in the Moro Rebellion (1899-1913 and unconnected to the Philippine-American war of 1899-1902), and that the word was influenced by the word “gugu”, which in turn supposedly is derived from the bark of the “gu-gu” tree that was used by Filipino women to wash their hair. Another, perhaps more reasonable, explanation states that the term is derived from the attempts of American soldiers to mimic languages spoken by the Filipinos, languages that derisively described as “dog languages”. The languages were ridiculed and infantilized as being “goo-goo” or “gugu”, and this evolved into “gook” in a process not unlike ancient Greeks referring to non-Greek speech sounding like “bar-bar.” Claude F. Line, a young private in the Philippines at the time, wrote in a letter home not only of his love of home and family, but also his delight at terrifying two Filipino civilians: “They were the first goo-goos I ever saw turn white." It should be noted that the U.S. involvement in the Philippines also led to the Tagalog word “bundok” being assimilated into American English as the word “boondocks.”



A Moro tribesman during the turn of the previous century (<www.savageandsoldier.com/articles/asia/Moro.html>)

Filipinos were thus referred to as “gooks”, and the term traveled on with the Marines to Nicaragua in 1912, with the local Nicaraguans also being referred to as “gooks”.  When Marines deployed to Haiti in 1915, the word “gook” was once again used for local inhabitants.

However, in 1893, the word “gook” was already to be found in a dictionary, and it was described as a “low prostitute”, synonymous with “barrack hack” and “tart”, and since the Philippines were Spanish possessions up to 1898, the term predates any U.S. military involvement. Could it be that the term had traveled over to the United States via commercial links with the Philippines or some other region in Asia and that the term was already used by merchant mariners before the U.S. involvement in the Philippines to connect contempt for natives with contempt for "promiscuous" women?

The term “gook: was apparently used up to the Second World War in various, primarily Asian, theaters of war, but more specific ethnic slurs such as “nip” or “chink” seem to have been preferred by U.S. servicemen. Gook was also used as derogatory term for North African Arabs, and the term may have lived on in the French community during the Algerian War (1954-1962).

(waeguk.com)

The Korean War did however bring back “gook” with full force into the American military slang. The Korean the term for foreigner or alien is “waeguk-saram” or just “waegukin.” It has been claimed that when U.S. servicemen were addressed as “waegukin” this was interpreted as “we gooks”, and thus the word “gook” was re-discovered as a derogatory term early in the conflict. The use rapidly became so widespread that General Douglas MacArthur gave orders that term be discontinued since it “gave "aid and comfort to the enemy" by calling into question the U.S. commitment to democratic ideals. Official U.S. sources later stated that the term wasn’t used by U.S. soldiers later on in the war, but that is, of course, far from the truth.

With her brother on her back a war weary Korean girl tiredly trudges by a stalled M-26 tank, at Haengju, Korea., 06/09/1951
Item from Record Group 80: General Records of the Department of the Navy, 1804 - 1983

With many Korean War veterans still in service when the Vietnam War escalated, the word “gook” once again came into use as a derogatory term for Vietnamese. With the Vietnam War being part of mainstream media and popular culture, “gook” has been heard in any number of circumstances. In 2000, Senator John McCain referred to his wartime experience while attempting to apologize to the Vietnamese community at large by stating that “I hate the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live… I was referring to my prison guards and I will continue to refer to them in language that might offend.”



Sources:

Dirk deRoos. Lightning from the Clouds: The U.S. Army and the Moro Wars. <www.savageandsoldier.com/articles/asia/Moro.html>

               John S. Farmer and W. E. Henley. Slang and its analogues, past and present. A dictionary,
 historical and comparative, of the heterodox speech of all classes of society for more than three hundred
 years. With synonyms in English, French, German Italian etc
1893 <www.archive.org/stream/slangitsanalogue03farmuoft/slangitsanalogue03farmuoft_djvu.txt>
 

Robert G. Kaiser. Friend or Foe, He’s still A GOOK. St. Petersburg Times, October 20, 1969. <http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=9fwNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=-nsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7218,7089053&dq=gook>

 

Jason Ma. McCain Apologizes for ‘Gook’ Comment. Asiaweek, February 24, 2000

 

Jason Renshaw. The Korean notion of “waeguk-saram” (foreigner). October 1, 2009. <http://jasonrenshaw.typepad.com/jason_renshaws_web_log/2009/10/the-korean-notion-of-waeguksaram-foreigner.html>

 

David Roediger. Gook: The Short History of an Americanism. Monthly Review, 1992, Volume 43, Issue 10 (March) <http://www.davidroediger.org/articles/gook-the-short-history-of-americanism.html>

 

Raymond Leon Roker. How Come McCain’s “Gook” Slur Isn’t Bigger News? Huffington Post, October 20, 2008

Soldiers Revive ‘Gook’ as a Name for Korea Reds. Los Angeles Times, August 6, 1950.

 

Waeguk Blog. <waeguk.com>

 

 

 

 

 

 

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