Monthly Archives: June 2004

by | 8 June 2004 · 6:36 pm

The Venusian Space Race in Asia and the Pacific, 1760s

The Economist ran a feature on earlier attempts to view the “transit of Venus.” Such transits in 1761 and 1769 caused the transit of Mason, Dixon, Cook, Le Gentil, and others through remote sites in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Insignificant though it may seem, this rare celestial event, a “transit of Venus”, was once thought a key to understanding the universe. Two and a half centuries ago, countries dispatched astronomers on risky and expensive expeditions to observe transits from far-flung points across the globe. By doing this, they hoped to make a precise measurement of the distance to the sun and thus acquire an accurate yardstick by which the distance to everything else in the solar system could be measured….

What followed was the 18th-century equivalent of the space race. Wealthy nations took up the challenge and competed for scientific prestige. The rivalry was especially intense between Britain and France, which were engaged in the Seven Years War at the time of the transit of 1761.

Among the British expeditions was that of Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, who were sent to Sumatra (and who would later achieve immortality through the name of a line they surveyed between the northern and southern American colonies). Shortly after embarking from Plymouth, eleven of their shipmates were killed during an attack by the French. Mason and Dixon wanted to cancel the voyage, but in a famously nasty note, their Royal Society sponsors warned this would “bring an indelible Scandal upon their Character, and probably end in their utter Ruin”. Faced with this, they carried on. Unfortunately their destination was captured by the French before they arrived. They ended up observing the transit from Cape Town instead.

The French had their share of troubles, too. The most pathetic of these were suffered by Guillaume Joseph Hyacinthe Jean-Baptiste Le Gentil de la Galaisiere. He was aiming for Pondicherry, a French colony in India, but he learned before arriving that it had been captured by the British. When the transit occurred, he was stuck on a pitching ship in an imprecisely known location, rendering his observations worthless. Undeterred, he decided to wait for the 1769 transit. He spent eight years on various Indian Ocean islands before making his way to Pondicherry, which had by then been returned to the French. On the day of the transit, however, it was cloudy. He then contracted dysentery, was shipwrecked, and finally returned home to find his estate looted.

By contrast, the weather was splendid in Tahiti (not then a French territory), where Venus’s path in 1769 was timed by the party of James Cook. The transit had been the main impetus for Cook’s first voyage of discovery. Once this official mission was accomplished, Cook explored the south Pacific, achieving, among other things, the first accurate maps of New Zealand and the first European awareness of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef (this was obtained the hard way, by ramming into it and nearly getting wrecked).

via Oxblog, who may have found the site where the Economist reporters did some of their research.

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by | 7 June 2004 · 8:59 pm

Origin of the Name "Indonesia"

The term “Indonesia” was first used in 1850 by the British anthropologist J. R. Logan to designate islands called the “Indian Archipelago” by other Western writers. For Logan, “Indonesia” did not designate a political unit but a cultural zone that included the Philippines. The forebears of today’s Indonesians had no term for the region or concept of a single political unit linking communities across seas. From ancient times Java had been known by that single name, but most of Indonesia’s islands derive their names from European labeling. Early European traders at the port of Samudera named the entire island Sumatra, and visitors to the sultanate of Brunei called the whole island Borneo.

The Dutch named their colonial possessions Indië (the Indies). Initially the Indies meant Java and a few ports scattered across the archipelago. Between 1850 and 1914 Dutch power engulfed over three hundred separate sultanates and communities, and welded them into a single administrative unit called the “Netherlands Indies.” Subjects were called “Natives,” a legal category alongside “Europeans” and “Foreign Orientals” (local Chinese and Arabs), replacing the terms “Moor,” “Christian,” and “Heathen” used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Associations in the early years of the twentieth century identified themselves by geography and generation, such as “League of Sumatran Youth” and “Ambonese Youth.” As ideological identities developed, parties took the colonial unit as their geographic marker but opted for Logan’s “Indonesia” instead of the Dutch “Indies.” The first to do so was the Communist Party of Indonesia, founded in 1921. Opponents of the Dutch understood “Indonesia” as both a political and a cultural entity; they adopted as a common language a variant of Malay spoken in Sumatra, already widely used as a lingua franca, and called it the “Indonesian language” (Bahasa Indonesia). The political unit they eventually won was the Dutch colony stretching from Sabang Island off northern Sumatra to Merauke on the border with Papua New Guinea, but many wanted the cultural definition of “Indonesia”–Islamic and Malay-speaking–translated into a state that would include Malaya, southern Thailand, the southern Philippines, all of Borneo, and Portuguese East Timor.

Following independence Indonesian place-names were substituted for the Dutch. Batavia became Djakarta; Buitenzorg, Bogor; and Borneo, Kalimantan. Indonesian spelling was revised in 1972, making Djakarta Jakarta and Atjeh Aceh. In this book Indonesia designates the state established by Sukarno on 17 August 1945; for the period before 1945, it is used as a shorthand for the islands constituting today’s republic.

SOURCE: The Emergence of Modern Southeast Asia: A New History, edited by Norman G. Owen (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2005)

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by | 7 June 2004 · 7:34 pm

USINDO Presidential Election Countdown

Here’s the U.S.-Indonesia Society’s latest report on the upcoming presidential elections in Indonesia.

Five slates of candidates were formally approved by the National Election Commission (KPU) to compete in the July 5 Presidential Election. The slate of former President Abdurrahman Wahib (PKB) and Marwah Daud Ibrahim of Golkar was not certified, however, because of Gus Dur’s health; he is appealing his disqualification to the courts, although his reclama to the General Elections Supervisory Committee (Panwaslu) was denied on May 28.

The five contending presidential tickets are:

  • Megawati Sukarnoputri (PDI-P) and Hasyim Muzadi
  • Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (PD) and Jusuf Kalla
  • Wiranto (Golkar) and Solahuddin Wahid
  • Amien Rais (PAN) and Siswono Yudhohusodo
  • Hamzah Haz (PPP) and Agum Gumelar

Tracking Poll Favors SBY

A tracking survey issued by the International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES) on May 31 assessed the popularity of the main candidates, based on face-to-face interviews with 1250 respondents throughout the 32 provinces of Indonesia. Although this survey included potential candidates other than in the above approved slates, the top contenders scored as follows:

41.0% Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY)

11.2% Megawati Sukarnoputri

10.0% Wiranto

 4.4% Amien Rais

 3.0% Hamzah Haz

SBY emerged as the top choice in all regions of the country except for Sulawesi, where Wiranto obtained 35% support in contrast to 29% for Yudhoyono. SBY was also the top choice of both men and women, as well as all age groups. As IFES observes, only in the 55 and above age group is another candidate, Megawati, close to SBY with 19% support compared to 21% who support Yudhoyono. [Comment: Since other than the top candidates were included in this poll, and political party alignments have shifted since the survey was taken, we would caution that the above results are only relative and general indications of popular support.]

Relative Strengths and Weaknesses

As assessed by the Jakarta consulting firm of Van Zorge and Heffernan, the relative strengths of the presidential candidates can be summarized as follows:

  • Susilo Bambang Yudohyono: Strong momentum, clean image, attractive to secular voters, running mate Jusuf Kalla is an asset in eastern Indonesia, seemingly popular among armed forces dependents; the main debits is the lack of a strong campaign organization.
  • Megawati Sukarnoputri: Loyal PDI-P constituency, value of incumbency, running mate Hasyim Muzadi can attract NU-PKB voters; main weaknesses are lackluster performance as President and declining public image.
  • Wiranto: Golkar organizational support and financing, strong campaign team, former military and dependents’ support, media and public presence, running mate Solahuddin Wahid could pick up NU-PKB votes; principal debit is anti-militarism and allegations of past, mainly domestic, human rights abuses.
  • Amien Rais: Strong campaign team and media friendliness, loyal Muhammadiyah following, “clean” pro-reform image; minus factors are low drawing power of running mate Siswono and Rais’ erratic reputation.
  • Hamzah Haz: Loyal backing of traditional PPP voters; downsides: poor public image and running mate has no significant public following.

[Note: For further analysis, please refer to the biweekly Van Zorge Report at www.vanzorgereport.com, or call (62-21) 3190-3939 in Jakarta.]

Campaign Nuggets:

  • Golkar and the National Awakening Party (PKB), affiliated with the NU, have signed an electoral compact to support General Wiranto and Solahuddin Wahid, brother of former President Abdurrahman Wahid (“Gus Dur”). Although the PKB’s institutional weight will be behind the Wiranto team, uniform support of NU and PKB followers cannot be assured because NU chair Hasyim Muzadi is running with President Megawati and some may support the SBY-Kalla ticket.

  • Five minor parties have wheeled in behind National Mandate Party (PAN) candidate Amien Rais. The Marhaenism National Party, Freedom Bull National Party (PNBK), United Indonesia Party (PSI), Socialist Democratic Labor Party (PBSD) and Reform Star Party (PBR) have declared their support for the Rais-Siswono ticket. The Reform Star Party won 13 seats in the April 5 legislative election and two other of the small parties garnered one seat each. Observers do not believe that their endorsement will translate into a significant number of votes.

This is the fifth year since Indonesia began implementing comprehensive political and economic reforms in response to the onset of the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and a leadership change that occurred in 1998. Indonesia is simultaneously addressing multiple crises – from terrorism and inter-ethnic, sectarian and separatist violence to endemic corruption and rising poverty.

For more information about Indonesia, the upcoming elections, and relations with the United States, please visit www.usindo.org; tel: 202 232-1400; fax: 202 232-7300; email: usindo@usindo.org

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by | 6 June 2004 · 8:32 pm

Japanese-speaking Chicano ‘Pied Piper’ on Saipan, 1944

In the 6 June 2004 Honolulu Star-Bulletin, reporter Gregg K. Kakesako profiles Guy Gabaldon, a Chicano kid raised by a Japanese family in East Los Angeles who single-handedly convinced 1,500 Japanese soldiers to surrender on Saipan in July 1944. Of course, being an American reporter in the 21st century, he emphasizes his subject’s victimhood more than his heroism.

Some say “The Pied Piper of Saipan” never got the proper credit for single-handedly capturing 1,500 Japanese prisoners in World War II….

He corralled more than 800 prisoners on July 8, 1944. Gabaldon was only an 18-year-old Marine Corps private first class who had learned the language while growing up with a Japanese family in East Los Angeles.

“The first night I was on Saipan, I went out on my own,” said Gabaldon, who now lives in Old Town, Fla. “I always worked on my own, and brought back two prisoners using my backstreet Japanese.

“My officers scolded me and threatened me with a court-martial for leaving my other duties, but I went out the next night and came back with 50 prisoners. After that I was given a free rein.”

His pitch simply was that the Japanese would be treated humanely….

“I came from such a large Latino family that no one objected when I moved in with a Japanese family. They were my extended family. It was there I learned Japanese, since I had to go language school with their children everyday.”

But when the war broke out his Japanese family was relocated to a detention camp in Arizona and he went to Alaska and worked in a fish cannery and as a laborer until he decided to enlist in the Marine Corps at the age of 17.

Gabaldon’s story inspired the 1960 motion picture “Hell to Eternity” starring no one that looked Chicano. (But at least the Japanese general was played by the prolific Sessue Hayakawa.)

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by | 6 June 2004 · 5:52 pm

The EU and Armenia’s Nuclear Power Plant

The Argus has a fascinating post on the EU’s efforts to shut down Armenia’s Chernobyl-style nuclear power plant. (In addition to reactor design problems, Armenia is in a region prone to major earthquakes.)

The EU, true to form, dealt with the problem in the only way it knows how – it threw money at it. It agreed an aid package for which, in return, the Armenian government had to work to close the plant before the end of its lifespan in 2016. An alternative source of energy is available – the EU money was meant to go towards funding a gas pipeline from Iran. The trouble is, Armenia doesn’t seem to want to/doesn’t seem able to set a date.

So why isn’t Armenia playing ball? Why won’t it set a date and relieve the EU of its money? Basically, because the Iranians are not a particularly reliable partner for a country that has massive energy security issues. Armenia is a primarily Christian country; Iran isn’t. Although Iran supported Armenia in its war with Islamic Azerbaijan, the Armenian government remains suspicious that Iran’s friendship is one of convenience, and may not last into the long term. What if Iran were to shift its allegiance in any future conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan? What if a future conflict in Iran were to cut off supplies? With no nuclear power, Armenia would find itself in dire straits. Already fearing that Azerbaijani oil-wealth will embolden it in Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia must secure its future energy supplies. Without them, its position relative to Azerbaijan will only get weaker.

The EU thinks that by withdrawing the aid money it is going to be able to effectively bully Armenia into making a decision. Once it realizes that 100 million Euros are slipping out of its grasp, Armenia will back down. After all, it will have to close the Metsamor plant sometime – it might as well get paid for doing so. But I think it underestimates how important this issue is to Armenia. It simply cannot do without a reliable energy supply and is so desperate it may well consider extending the plant’s lifespan to ensure it….

Already 25% of Armenia’s electricity comes from hydro power, and there is plenty of scope for expanding that – in fact new plants are already being built. The EU itself is over-reliant on imported energy and taking steps to diversify its supply. It would be a shame if it didn’t apply the lessons it has learnt to other countries in a similar position.

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by | 5 June 2004 · 12:20 pm

Leigh S. J. Hunt (1854-1933), Adventuresome Capitalist

Iowa State University Library houses a collection of papers from its third president, whose biographical sketch is more than a little intriguing.

Leigh S. J. Hunt was born in Indiana in 1855. He obtained his undergraduate degree through Middlebury College in Vermont via correspondence course. Hunt studied law independently and passed the bar in Indiana. He then taught at public schools in Indiana before moving to Iowa and becoming superintendent of schools at Mt. Pleasant, Iowa (1880) and East Des Moines Independent School District, Des Moines, Iowa (1882). Hunt became the third president (1885) of Iowa State Agricultural College (Iowa State University). His lack of experience and aggressive style of leadership led to conflicts with the students and faculty and he resigned in 1886 after only one year.

Hunt moved to Seattle, Washington, and over the course of his lifetime participated in a wide variety of successful business ventures. He became a newspaper publisher (1886), real estate developer, and president of a bank while in Seattle. Hunt also would operate a gold mine in Korea (1893), grow cotton in Sudan (1904-1910), and eventually pursue mining, agriculture, and land development in Las Vegas, Nevada (1923-1933).

In 1885, Hunt married Jessie Noble (attended Iowa State, 1882) of Des Moines and had two children: Helen and Henry. Leigh Hunt died on October 5, 1933, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Mr. Hunt made a lasting impression on Seattle.

[In 1887,] while Leigh Hunt, editor and publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, was trailblazing along the ridge of what would be called Capitol Hill, he, by his own description, “fell into a deep communion with nature and under the enchanted spell of her visible forms.” Under the influence of this reverie, Hunt next came across the few marked graves at Washelli. Perhaps dreaming of good copy, the editor claimed that a voice came to him demanding “Dispose of the dead elsewhere; this ground is reserved for the enjoyment of the living.”

Promptly the city obeyed the influential publisher. The graves were moved next door to the Lake View Cemetery and the fresh and free acres were held as a reserve for more “deep communion with nature.” The site was eventually named City Park and in 1901, Volunteer Park, to commemorate the patriotic gang of locals who volunteered to fight in the Spanish-American War of 1898-99.

Donald C. Clark’s Living Dangerously in Korea (Eastbridge, 2003) picks up Hunt’s story from there.

After having left Seattle a pauper in 1894, in 1901 he went back and gave a dinner for his creditors, a party that was described in a local newspaper [Seattle Argus, 8 January 1934]: “At the end of what was probably the finest dinner ever served in this city up to that time, Mr. Hunt made a little speech and delivered to each of his guests an envelope containing a check for the amount of his debt, with interest added.”

Korea is where he made all that money. He happened to be in Shanghai when James Morse of the American Trading Company in Yokohama was there looking for investors in a large-scale gold mining project that Korea’s King Kojong was trying to get underway near Unsan, north of Pyongyang. Although Hunt was broke, he had rich friends, one of whom, New York financier J. Sloat Fassett, was willing to commit $100,000. By the summer of 1897, Hunt and Fassett has bought out Morse’s share for $70,000, and Fassett returned to raise more capital and incorporate their venture as the Oriental Consolidated Mining Company, Inc., of West Virginia.

In 1899, they bought out the King’s share for a combination of cash and annual royalties that came to less than $250,000, in return for which they ended up with “a 40-year, tax-free gold mining concession, complete with its own supplies of labor, timber, and water” (p. 226). By 1901, the newly reorganized OCMC was worth $5 million, and included investors in California (William Randolph Hearst, among others), New York, and London. Hunt and Fassett turned profits of about $2 million each. That’s when Hunt decided he could afford to repay his Seattle creditors.

By the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, Hunt was investing in cotton ventures in the Sudan. A report in 2001 by the general director of the Sudan Cotton Co. on “stickiness problems in Sudanese cotton” briefly mentions the same Mr. Hunt in its introductory paragraph.

Cotton production in the Sudan has its roots as early as 1839 when it was introduced by Mumtaz Basha, a Turkish governor of Tokar district during the Turkish colonial rule in Sudan. In 1904 an American investor (Leigh Hunt) was granted a concession at Zeidab area – subsequently the Sudan plantation syndicate, a private company, was authorized to begin experiment with cotton production in 1911 in Tayba which was to become a nucleus for the prospective Gezira scheme. The construction of Sennar Dam in 1925 signaled the real take off for commercial cotton production in Sudan and in that year 80,000 feddans (virtually acres) were irrigated and expansion of area since then progressed in steady rates in Gezira and alongside Blue Nile and White Nile Banks.

Finally, the University of Nevada at Reno’s Walter Hunsaker Collection adds more detail about Mr. Hunt’s contribution to economic development in Nevada:

Hunt was an educator, president of Ames College in Iowa (1885), publisher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, head of a Seattle Bank, gold mine operator in Korea, developer of Egypt’s long staple cotton industry, personal advisor to President Theodore Roosevelt during the Russo-Japanese War, and mining developer in the Eldorado Canyon District in Clark County, Nevada. Hunt made and lost several fortunes but always recovered after each loss.

Hunt came to Las Vegas in 1923 in search of health [sic]. He became the largest single land-holder in the Las Vegas area and had plans for extensive development of those holdings stimulated by the growth made possible by the cheap power from the nearby Boulder Dam project. His holdings included both land for housing subdivisions and property along the downtown Las Vegas “strip.” In 1929 he hired Walter S. Hunsaker as his confidential secretary and business agent….

NOTE: Leigh S. J. Hunt is not to be confused with J. H. Leigh Hunt (1774–1859), the English Romantic poet, author of this metrically jarring yet delicately indescribable Rondeau (said to be about Thomas Carlyle’s wife Jane).

Jenny kissed me when we met,

   Jumping from the chair she sat in;

Time, you thief, who love to get

   Sweets into your list, put that in:

Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,

   Say that health and wealth have missed me,

Say I’m growing old, but add,

   Jenny kissed me.

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by | 4 June 2004 · 9:08 pm

World’s Largest Oil Producers: Russian, Saudi Arabia, U.S.

SiberianLight cites a Times (of London) report that

Russia is now the world’s largest producer of oil. Which is certainly nice for Russia, which is turning a tidy profit on the back of oil prices in excess of $40 per barrel.

Russia currently has a 10% market share – it produced just over 9 million barrels per day in April, wheras Saudia Arabia produced only (!) 8.96 million bpd. (The US, in case you are interested, was the third largest producer, with 7.9 million bpd).

According to the Times

China is the fastest-growing user of crude oil, increasing its thirst at about 13 per cent this year, as it burns more fuel in the power stations that drive its economic growth.

According to ABCNews, China’s growth is contributing in a big way not only to rising oil prices, but also to worldwide demand for industrial materials.

China has become the world’s largest consumer of many industrial materials, including steel, iron ore, copper, tin, zinc, platinum and cement. China now uses so much cement that some homebuilders in Florida told ABC News they must wait months to pour a foundation….

The Chinese government is trying to slow this torrid pace of growth — so far, with little success. But don’t wish too hard for a sharp slowdown in China. It might bring down the price of oil and other commodities, but economies everywhere that trade with China would suffer, including the United States.

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by | 4 June 2004 · 7:33 pm

Santepheap, the Cambodia Weblog

Here’s a sample post from Santepheap (Peace), a promising new blog on all things Cambodian.

Leaving the House of Ghosts by Sarah Streed chronicles the lives of three Cambodian refugees who were sponsored by an American family in the early 1980s.

Jack and Joan Streed from Excelsior, Minnesota, took three teen-age refugees into their home to live with them and their four children. Having survived the traumas of auto genocide in their homeland by escaping to refugee camps in Thailand, these boys had major hurdles to overcome in living through the nightmares of their past horrors, becoming a part of their new family, attending high school and learning the ways of the American culture.

Sarah Streed, the oldest child of the family, was amazed at the stories told by her foster brothers. She decided to record their stories and the stories of many other survival victims of the Pol Pot slaughter. Her extensive research on Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge regime provide the beginning of the history of Cambodian immigration to the mid-western United States.

The strength of character and determination is well illustrated by both the host family and their newly adopted boys. This is a must read book for anyone interested in the cause of assisting Cambodians to rebuild their country.

Leaving the House of Ghosts is available on Amazon.com.

KNOWING CAMBODIA is a weekly feature on the Santepheap Weblog that highlights organizations, people and other things that give insight into Cambodia and overseas Cambodians. It appears every Thursday.

via Instapundit

And here’s a plug for another new book on Cambodians: In the Shadows of Angkor, edited by Sharon May, featuring photographs by Richard Murai (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2004).

Every year, when my family finds reason to gather–for a holiday, birthday, graduation, and sometimes just because–when the coconut curry is cooked and smoke swirls heaven-bound from burning incense, the ghosts come home to feed.

Before any guests are allowed to eat, my mother prepares a tray of food, her best dishes–sticky rice, glass noodles fried with banana buds, steamed pork buns–and my father lights a handful of incense sticks. Setting these on an altar, we pray to the spirits of our dead relatives and invite them to the feast.

These spirits are the ghosts of my uncle, Sao Kim Yan, a math professor; my grandfather, Khan Reang, a rice farmer; my aunt, Koh Kenor, a housewife who was married to a businessman; and so many others who died during the war in our homeland. They are the restless ones who cross oceans and continents to find my family, now safe and comfortable in America. They are the ones who did not make it while they were living.

–From “The Dinner Guests” by Putsata Reang

See also earlier excerpts from Music in the Dark, about Daran Kravanh.

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by | 3 June 2004 · 5:42 pm

Etymology of Korean nodaji ‘gold, bonanza’

Korea, like the Yukon, Australia, Papua New Guinea, South Africa, and many other parts of the world, experienced a gold rush in the early late 1800s and early 1900s.

The Oriental Consolidated Mining Company’s headquarters camp at Pukchin evolved from “primitive” to “comfortable” by 1930. In the beginning, when the American engineers lived in mud-walled dwellings with furniture made of old crates and cut-up kerosene drums, the winters seemed especially harsh. But year by year the quality of life improved. A motor vehicle road connected Pukchin with the outside world. A narrow-gauge railroad system connected the mining valley with the surrounding timberland and eventually linked the company to the standard-gauge Korean railroad system. Wood-fired steam power ran the company’s equipment at first; then came kerosene; and then, when operations expanded and the mines went deeper underground, a hydroelectric power network: nearly a million dollars’ worth of reservoirs, dams, generators, and lines, supplemented by a diesel backup system, making for the most reliable power supply in the country at the time.

Since Unsan [in northwest Korea] was gold country, there was always plenty of money around. The Koreans used their copper cash in the beginning, little coins with holes for making cash “strings,” multiples of which were required for even the cheapest purchases and carloads of which were required to meet the payroll. After 1905 it was silver yen and Mexican dollars, the common currency of the China Coast. And there was the gold itself. Bullion boxes bore the words “No touch”; and in fact, the frequently shouted words “No touchee!” were so well known at Unsan that soon they became part of the language. Even today, “nodaji” is a Korean word meaning gold (or any bonanza).

SOURCE: Living Dangerously in Korea: The Western Experience 1900-1950, by Donald N. Clark (Eastbridge, 2003), p. 231

According to Gari Ledyard of Columbia University,

The name may have been coined by a Japanese–many of whom were hired as foremen and middle level employees by the O.C.M.C. In Japanese, “No Touch” was kana-ized as “No-ta-chi,” and in the colonial period that phrase came to be synonymous with “bonanza.” Of course, No-ta-chi in Korean will come out “Nodaji.” I have heard it used many times in my time in Korea.

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by | 2 June 2004 · 10:10 pm

Beriberi, White Rice, and Vitamin B

Danny Yee has posted an interesting review of Beriberi, White Rice, and Vitamin B by Kenneth Carpenter (U. California Press, 2000).

As we now know, beriberi is caused by nutritional deficiency of thiamin (vitamin B1), most commonly associated with reliance on polished white rice. But establishing this, isolating the “vitamin” responsible, and implementing appropriate public health measures was a long and complex process. In Beriberi, White Rice, and Vitamin B Kenneth Carpenter makes of it a fine “medical detective story”….

Regimented groups such as soldiers, sailors, and prisoners were common sufferers; with standardised diets and centralised records, these were also the target of most studies. The Japanese Navy largely eliminated beriberi (kakk&eacute) around 1895; naval doctor Kanehiro Takaki thought protein deficiency was the problem, but the measures he implemented worked anyway. The army, however, was convinced beriberi was an infectious disease and suffered over 90,000 cases in the 1905 war against Russia.

The name “beriberi” originated in Southeast Asia, where it had become widespread with the colonial introduction of machine milling of rice. Work on the disease was done by the Dutch in Java, most notably by Christiaan Eijkman, who shared the 1929 Nobel prize for studies using chickens, and by the British in Malaysia and the Americans in the Philippines. Some kind of consensus was reached at the first meetings of the Far Eastern Association of Tropical Medicine in 1910 and 1912….

There were disagreements over how much thiamin is needed, whether extra amounts had any beneficial effect, and what public health measures should be implemented. There were various modifications to the production and preparation of rice in Japan and Southeast Asia, while the United States and Britain made addition of thiamin to white bread compulsory during WWII. Australia mandated enrichment of bread and flour in 1991, but in 1998 was still considering the compulsory addition of thiamin to beer, to reduce the incidence in alcoholics of Korsakoff’s syndrome.

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