A Korean “hooch,” c. 1952
3 January 2024
Hooch is American military slang from the Korean and Vietnam War eras meaning a hut or rude dwelling. It is a borrowing from the Japanese 家 (uchi, house). In early use it appears as hoochie, later clipped to simply hooch. The word is unrelated to hooch, meaning booze or liquor, or hoochie-koochie.
The earliest use that I’m aware of appears in Oklahoma’s Tulsa World on 9 March 1952 in an article about a unit fighting in Korea:
We were set up in the Easy company command post, on the same hill with the battalion OP but in a different hoochie.
We see the clipped form by the end of the decade. The following exchange is from a Buz Sawyer comic strip published on 19 January 1859:
“Here’s where we’re billeted, Buz.
“Looks like what they call a ‘hooch-shack’ in Korea.”
And within a few years we see hooch in Vietnam. From the Pacific Stars and Stripes of 13 November 1963:
Capt. David C. Smith calls his isolated combat patrol center “Paradise.” Others call it the loneliest post in Vietnam.
Smith has been the lone American adviser to the Vietnamese infantry battalion here for nearly six months.
[…]
Smith, 32 and a bachelor, lives in what he calls his “hooch”—a log-walled, tin-roofed shed. Inside, it’s pretty simple with a parachute for the ceiling, a small table, two chairs and a cot. Hanging from nails on the wall are a steel helmet, a carbine, a shotgun and a Swedish “K” burn-gun which somebody gave him.
Sources:
Clayton, John. “45th Learns First Hand How Valuable Communications Are to Modern War.” Tulsa World (Oklahoma), 9 March 1952, Section 1—Part 2, 21/4. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Crane, Roy. “Buz Sawyer.” Pacific Stars and Stripes, 19 January 1959, 12. NewspaperArchive.com.
Green’s Dictionary of Slang, n.d., s.v. hootch, n.1.
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. hoochie, n.2.
Stibbens, Steve. “No Strangers Get in This ‘Paradise.’” Pacific Stars and Stripes, 13 November 1963, 16/1. NewspaperArchive.com.
Image credit: Korean hooch: Roy E. Olund, c. 1952. Wikimedia Commons. US Defense Department photo. Public domain image; Buz Sawyer: Roy Crane, 1959. King Features Syndicate. Fair use of a low resolution copy to illustrate the topic under discussion.