ボスは迷文家シリーズ |
ジョージ F. ドレイク博士の略歴
ニュージャージー出身の貧乏なポーランド移民の子
高校卒業後三段スピードの自転車で、
ニュージャージーからカリフォルニアまでアメリカ斜断。
更にメキシコを通過しさらに南に向って自転車で進んだ。
グアテマラで道はなくなり、その後、ヒッチハイクでパナマまで。
パナマで米軍のトラックをヒッチハイク。
パナマのジャングルでの測量のアルバイトの仕事を米軍からもらった。
当時、測量の専門家たちはジャングル生活を嫌がった。
測量ができる人間にジャングル生活を強いることはできないが、ジャングル生活に耐える事ができる人間に測量を教えることはできる、そういう説明をされたという。パナマジャングル二年間のアルバイトで得た給料を使う場所がなかったのでその資金を元にカリフォルニア大学バークレー校に進学。測量の時に雇ったジャングル原住民たちと親しくなってジャングル原始社会共同体に興味をもったので、社会学を専攻した。バークレー校は社会学では世界のトップです、というか僕が社会学の学生の時代はバークレーが一番進んでいました。ラジカルな事でも知られていた。その後、彼は大学院まで進むのだが、朝鮮戦争に徴兵された。そこで戦争孤児救援活動をした。バークレーで修士号までとり、博士号はこれまたラジカルなウイスコンシン大学院。その後、コロンビアジャングルに入り込んで研究活動。ウエスタン・ワシントン州立大学で講師からはじめ社会学部教授、学部長まで勤めた。彼はコロンビアに事務所をもっていたが、彼が二軒先で食事をしていた時にダイナマイトで爆破されたので、運良く助かった。
ベリングハムの丘の上の大きな敷地に家があり庭には野生のレッド・フォックス、アライグマスカンクなどが棲んでいる。隣はベリングハムの彫刻の森だ。彼が寄付して公園を作らせた。彫刻の森の管理運営をジョージがやっている。何しろ忙しい人だ。
週末にはこの公園に知恵遅れの子供達を呼んで彼らに公園の掃除を含めて社会参加の機会をあたえている。
今回のシアトル訪問は、朝鮮戦争孤児の連絡会議だけでなく、明朝はオリンピアで開催される自転車レースに出場するので自転車持参だった。
彼は朝鮮戦争の間に米軍の中に孤児救援のグループを組織化し、終戦後も活動を続け、約10,000人の孤児たちにアメリカの家庭をあてがった。この時いっしょに里親探しをしたGI仲間がひとりひとり消えていっているので、敵を倒し味方を守るのではなく、彼らのように孤児たちを助ける米兵もいたということを歴史に残す為に現在のジョージは個戦奮闘中だ。ワシントン州知事をまきこんで記念碑つくりに尽力しているが、韓国総領事館や在米韓国人協会からの協力をえられないでいる。韓国側にいわせれば、米兵が娼婦との間で生まれたアイノ子に違いないと主張して全く受け付けないそうだ。ジョージに言わせるとそういう子供達も200人ほどいたが、大多数は韓国人の両親を失った子供達ということだ。
ジョージはカリフォルニアのモントレー半島のパシフィック・グローブ高校で教師をしていたことがある。その時の教え子に、モントレーを舞台として描かれた「エデンの東」そして「怒りの葡萄」の作者ジョン・スタインベックの息子がいた。この頃ステインベックは既に亡くなっていた。
結婚当初、ハーレムの黒人孤児を養子として迎えた。その子も今は４８歳になるが、まだ黒人差別や偏見が強かった頃に白人社会で育てられた為にアイデンティティー不安に見舞われて社会的にドロップアウトしてしまった。今でも立ち上がることができないでいる。ジョージのオンゴーイングな悩みの種である。他に弟として血を分けた次男がいる。ダウン症で社会参加ができない。社会参加ができない息子二人の親であるにもかかわらず、大学の学部長を勤め、ジャングルの研究を続け、彫刻の森を運営し、朝鮮戦争孤児の仕事を続け、毎日山道４８キロ自転車トレーニング。ひとつのことも充分にやることができないで、忙しくて時間がない、、、という人がいますけど、そんな言い訳はジョージのような人を周りに何人もみている僕には通用しません。
ジョージの父親は無学な肉体労働者。社会学的にも人種主義者はこのクラスに多い。彼もその例に漏れず人種主義者。ジョージのクチから何度も聞いたことだが、彼の父親の人種主義者ぶりの笑い話がある。ジョージ「養子をもらったよ」、父「ポーランド人だろうな？」、ジョージ「黒人だよ」、父「、、、、、、」ジョージ「問題ある？」、父「ユダヤ人でなくてよかった」
この文を読んでいただくと理解ができるのですが、ジョージは実践派の人です。観念論を嫌います。ナイキではありませんが、Shut up and just do it！、即、ツベコベ言ってばかりいないで行動に移せ！の人なのです。大学教授時代一番嫌だったことは図書館派の社会学者たちとの共同研究だったそうです。実際を知らずに観念論ばかりを言う教授のことを知的自慰者と呼んでいます。
おのざわショージ
07/28/01
Korean War Veteran - 326th CRC 1952 - 1953
Coordinator, Korean War Children's Memorial
What motivates a guy to spend thousands of hours of volunteer labor and his own money to
develop a national memorial for a cause that most people are totally unaware of? I'm not
really sure. Let me see if I can figure this out for myself.
About 15 years ago I was sitting next to Paull Shin at a banquet in Seattle for a high ranking Chinese official hosted by the Governor of the State of Washington. While waiting for the meal to be served Paull was telling of his life on the streets of Seoul during the war as a war orphan. He stopped and looked at me and asked, "What's the matter?" Tears were streaming down my face. The "matter" was that his words took me back to my days in Korea where I spent a lot of time trying to help the orphans. His words unleashed emotions that I had buried for many years. A neighbor of mine who served with a MASH unit in Viet Nam recently commented that perhaps the American GIs spent so much energy to help the children of Korea during the war as a way to assure themselves that they were good, decent, upright American human beings and not killers. War is hell. War is the antithesis of all one is taught in the family, in the home, in school, in the community. War is death and destruction imposed on other human beings. Our soldiers had to be taught to point a gun at another human and shoot. They did not have to be taught to pick up a crying child and comfort him or share a bit of food with a little waif begging at the gate to the army camp. I hated Korea. I hated the destruction, the loss of life, the debasement of human values. I hated the smells, the abject poverty all about, the last bodies not yet picked up and buried from battles fought weeks or months ago, the mined fields you had better not enter for fear of being killed. And I hated the miserable winter cold. A tour of duty in Korea during the war period was not a pleasant experience. I was not in a combat unit but rather was assigned to the 326th Communications Reconnaissance Company which was an Army Security Agency radio intelligence company located a fairly safe distance from the front lines. I was one of the few fellows in our operations unit that had no college education but I did have a lot of experiences that they did not. When I was but 15 years old I put a knapsack on my back and took off on a three-month hitchhike trip around the U.S. and Canada. Later, when I finished high school, I bought a bicycle and with a hundred and eighty dollars and a letter of introduction from the Boy Scouts of America, I took off for South America aprendiendo mi espanol en las calles, cantinas y pulquerias (learning my Spanish in the streets, bars and gin mills) of all the countries from Mexico to Panama. I ended up in Panama with 13 dollars and no bike. In order to replenish my funds I took a job with the Inter-American Geodetic Survey as an engineer aide. It was a wonderful experience working deep in the jungles and on mountain tops throughout Panama and, later, Guatemala. By June of 1950 I had saved enough money to return to the 'States to begin college but the day I arrived in the U.S. the Korean War had began.
It looked like college would not be in the works so, before the draft board called, I took off for a six-month hitchhike trip throughout Europe. Then I came home and enlisted in the army. I sought assignment with the Army Engineers but was soon sent to school to become a high-speed radio intercept operator. From there I went to Monterey, California, to the Army Language School to learn Chinese Mandarin and only then was I sent to Korea. My involvement with the company orphanage committee was intense. Somewhere I noted that in the first six months I was in Korea I had sent out over 1,000 letters soliciting help for the orphans. I was spending upwards of 20 hours each week on orphanage affairs, this after pulling my regular shifts in the operations tent or guard duty. Elsewhere in this web site you can read my letters to folks back in the 'States about the children. Suffice it to say the experience had a deep emotional impact on me. On returning to the 'States I enrolled at Monterey Peninsula College in Monterey, California. There I organized several campaigns to collect material for the orphans in Korea and was pleased to be able to send upwards of twenty tons of material aid to the orphanage the company was supporting. After earning the Associate in Arts I went to the University of California at Berkeley for the BA and MA in history and sociology, respectively. I continued my interest in China and, for one semester, was the only student studying the Tibetan language. Mainly, though, I focused on comparative social institutions. Three years of high school teaching followed after which I entered the U.S. Foreign Service. After training at the Foreign Service Institute in Washington, D.C. and Arlington, Virginia, I went with my wife and newborn Down syndrome son David to Colombia. For several years I served as the Director of the Centro Colombo-Americano, the USIA cultural center in the city of Manizales. While there I became very involved in community organizing. Saturdays and Sundays my wife Mary Ann and I (with David in a pack on my back) would visit the poor barrios of the city. After awhile we became familiar figures in the poorest sectors of the city of almost a quarter of a million inhabitants. Mary Ann worked two days a week as an R.N. and was one of five registered nurses in the four hundred-bed university hospital. We donated her entire salary to the local orphanage of over 200 children. It comprised over half of their monetary income for the time we were there. The children went begging "sobreitas" (leftovers) from house to house to supplement their diet. I really feel it was the exposure to the plight of the orphans and the battered civilian population in Korea that made me sensitive to the problems of survival of the poorest sector of this city in Colombia. I was not shocked at what I saw and could communicate with the humblest of the slum dwellers, treating them with dignity and respect knowing full well that they were not responsible for their plight. I was able to develop programs in the national prison, in the slums, in the industrial trade school for poor boys, in the mental asylum, and in the orphanage. The literacy program we developed in the US cultural center was one of the largest in the nation. When we left to return to the US to pursue the Ph.D. (and get David specialized help) we were named honorary citizens and given the keys of the city in gold, the first time such was ever given to a foreigner. We were also given many other awards for our service to the lower social classes of the city. For me it was a continuation of my work that had began with the orphans in Korea.
The Sociology Department of the University of Wisconsin at Madison offered me a grant to study there for the Ph.D. I took the concentration on social organization and focused on community systems analysis and voluntary action. (The Korean experience popping up again?) The doctoral minor was in Latin American Studies. Wanting to go back to the West Coast I took a position in the Sociology Dept. of Western Washington State College, now Western Washington University, where I remained until retirement in 1990. When we moved to Bellingham in 1967 our family included an adopted racially mixed son named Todd. The next twenty-two years had me involved in scores of community action projects at the local, regional and state level. Most of those involvements were with social causes addressing problems of poverty, racial discrimination, social justice and issues relating to mental or developmental disabilities. In 1974 I became the first Ph.D. teaching faculty at the university to be elected to the Bellingham City Council in its 74-year history in the town. On the City Council I continued to be an activist. The Korean War experience with the orphans taught me the lesson that the efforts of one person can make a difference and with the coordinated efforts of many the impact can be remarkable. At the university I was named Chair of the Center for East Asian Studies, Special Assistant to the President for International Programs and finally, until retirement, served as Director of the Office of International Programs. In about 1985 Mary Ann and I decided to open a small "mom, pop and handicapped kid" nursery to provide employment for mentally retarded, mentally ill and brain damaged youth, beginning with David. I built a solar greenhouse, Mary Ann quit nursing and together we cleared the woods near our house for a nursery specializing in rhododendrons, azaleas and Japanese Maples. We planted in the woods the plants we were selling so the visitors would eventually see what a mature plant would look like. The city park department eventually purchased our land for a city park and we put the entire amount of the sale in the local community foundation to be used to support programs for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled in the park. I now chair the city park department sculpture committee that is developing the park into a major sculpture garden. It is there that we will build the Korean War Children's Memorial. When not in my office working on the sculpture garden or issues relating to the Korean War Children's Memorial I am often out on my bike. I ride between four and five thousand miles a year and recently raced in the Ski-to-Sea race from Mt. Baker to the far edge of Bellingham Bay in a seven-sport relay race. I was the oldest cyclist (age 70) on the 400 teams. People ask how I can find time for cycling with all my other activities. I explain that they have it backwards. I can do all the other things because I keep myself fit on the bike. This is the shortened version of "The Story of George F. Drake". Some day I will write an autobiography but for now I am too busy creating more content for that story.