by Ha Jin
Together with over two hundred prisoners, I was herded into a U.S. landing ship, whose coverless interior reminded me of a railroad cargo wagon. Above our heads stretched many horizontal steel bars that would support canvas if it rained. The ship, designed for transporting vehicles and tanks, was too lightly loaded, and as it plowed through the ocean it shuddered without stopping. Some prisoners unbuttoned their jackets and even took off their shoes to sun themselves. The guards didn’t bother to interfere. I dozed all the way, leaning against a hot, sweating wall.
We arrived at the island in less than three hours. With a clank the front gate of the ship was let down, and an officer ordered us to disembark. Outside, the sun was glowing on the muddy shore fringed with a white ribbon of salt. A few black fishing boats, their masts tilted and their gray sails half folded, were moored in the silty shallows, and whorls of cooking smoke were rising from them. Under my feet the dark beach was studded with countless tiny holes. As I wondered what they were, a field of crabs, each just the size of a thumb, suddenly appeared at the mouths of the holes. But a moment later they all vanished from sight, retreating into their caves. I couldn’t help but marvel at the uniformity of their movement and involuntarily stopped in my tracks. “Get moving!” a tall GI shouted at me.
We started out for the camp in the east. I was tense, unsure how long the march would be. But luckily among us there were several men with injured legs, so we didn’t walk fast. Despite limping along, I soon forgot my anxiety, fascinated by the clear streams and the dwarf trees on both sides of the road. The distant hills looked lovely, with pines and cypresses crowded together like clusters of spires. Above a rocky summit a pair of white herons soared beneath the flossy clouds. All the way I said to myself, What a secluded place, ideal for a hermit.
The march took half an hour. On arrival, the Chinese and Korean prisoners were separated and then led toward the sprawling stockade that was the prison camp. There were approximately thirty compounds here. The Chinese went to Compounds 72 and 86 while the Koreans headed for other barracks.
The camp looked immense, divided into rectangular prison yards of various sizes, each surrounded by two rows of barbed wire supported by wooden posts. At every corner of the stockade stood a guard tower, over thirty feet tall. The big compounds were the size of a city block, whereas the small ones were as large as a soccer field. In between the enclosures stood many guard towers too. Wanlin and I were assigned to different compounds. Before we parted, I patted his shoulder and whispered, “Take care of yourself and make it home.”
He looked upset and mumbled, “I’ll often think of you.”
“We’ll remain friends.”
“Yes, always.”
He was led away in a group of more than twenty POWs. His head, half a foot taller than the others, was bobbing a little as he walked away with a swinging gait.
Three GIs frisked my group at the entrance to Compound 72. I had slipped the jade barrette half into my shoe and Julan’s snapshot into the envelope containing my medical records, mixing it with the x-rays. A wiry guard, a Hispanic man with a wispy mustache, found the black fountain pen in the envelope. “You don’t need this,” he said and stuck it into his own breast pocket.
“Please, it’s a present from a doctor,” I said.
“How can I believe you?” He took the pen out of his pocket and pointed at the tip of its cap. “See this? ‘Made in U.S.A.’ ”
“Give it back to me, please!”
“Why should I? You snatched it off of an American, didn’t you?”
“Come on, it’s a keepsake from Dr. Greene at Pusan. You can call the hospital and ask her.”
“Stop wasting my time. Move on!”
“This is robbery.”
“What did you say?” He punched me in the face and blood instantly filled my mouth; one of my front teeth had been knocked loose.
“I’m going to complain to your superiors.”
“Oh yeah? Tell them to jail me or shoot me, you Red gook. You stole stuff from our dead.”
Some POWs were gathering to watch from inside the compound, amazed that a prisoner dared to argue with a GI. I realized the pen was gone, so I walked away without another word. I wasn’t certain whether the guard really believed I had robbed an American soldier of the fountain pen. He might have. I had heard that a Chinese captive was once beaten half to death by some GIs who had found in his cap a wedding band with an American name engraved on it.
Once I was inside the compound, my first impression was that I had returned to the Chinese Nationalist army: everywhere I turned, I saw people wearing the sun emblem of the Nationalist Party. My heart sagged. The Americans were only guarding the entrance and wouldn’t set foot in the compound. Everything in here was left in the hands of the prisoners, many of whom had served in Chiang Kai-shek’s army. With the help of the men still loyal to the old regime, the pro-Nationalist force had gained complete control. The elected officers among the POWs resembled those in the Nationalist army too, though they wore the same kind of fatigues as the other prisoners, with the same letters PW on their sleeves or breast pockets.
The eight thousand inmates had been organized into a regiment that consisted of four battalions, within each of which there were companies, then platoons, and then squads. In theory the leaders at all levels except the chief of the compound had been elected by the prisoners, but in reality most of them had been handpicked by Han Shu, the regimental chief, who had gone through an American training program in Tokyo and had been appointed the head of the compound by our captors. As was the practice elsewhere in the prison system, those who could speak some English usually served as interpreters and spokesmen for their units here.
I was assigned to the Third Company of the First Battalion. The company had about five hundred men and was led by Wang Yong, a former Nationalist army corporal. The First Battalion had a police force, composed of more than two hundred men, who were all POWs themselves. They were directly under the command of Liu Tai-an, the battalion chief. These policemen toted clubs wherever they went. I even saw some of them nap with the weapons held in the crooks of their arms. Whenever I ran into this mob of enforcers, my stomach would lurch.
Though crowded, Compound 72 on the whole was well equipped. It had three pools of water in the front area, a bathhouse, an education center, a large yard for laundry, a giant warehouse, a number of cottages serving as churches, a Buddhist temple, and a mosque. Most inmates were free to go anywhere within the compound, but someone like me who hadn’t become a pro-Nationalist yet wasn’t allowed to move around freely.
On my first evening in the camp, I ate my dinner, which was a bowl of barley mixed with pinto beans, and then lay down on a straw mat and covered myself with a blanket I’d just been issued. As I was dozing away, Wang Yong came into the tent, roused me, and ordered me to follow the others to the company’s office and sign up for going to Taiwan. This meant I must refuse to go home to mainland China. I was shocked, but dared not protest. On the way there, I sidled off to the privy and didn’t rejoin the others at the company headquarters afterward, so I avoided putting in my name for refusing repatriation.
At daybreak the next morning, Wang Yong came again and told me to pick up my bowl and belongings and follow him. Together he and I went out into the chilly air. My injured leg was still weak, and I couldn’t walk as fast as he did. He slackened his pace a little. He was a thick-boned man, of medium height with bulging eyes. He reminded me of a butcher. He said to me, smiling tightly, “Feng Yan, you look like a well-educated man. To be honest, I like learned fellows. I won’t force you to do anything against your heart. But if you’re determined to follow the Commies back to the mainland, I must let you suffer some.”
I remained silent. True, I had sided with the Communists, but this was only because I wanted to go home. Wang led me to the back of the compound and into the small tent that housed the Fifth Platoon. “All right, from now on you stay with them,” he said, then left without giving me
another look.
I realized that all the small shabby tents held only the inmates who wanted repatriation. We were obviously in the minority here. The pro-Nationalists, who were determined to go to Taiwan, believed that whoever intended to return to mainland China must be a Communist or a pro-Communist. In fact, most of us wanted to go home not for political reasons at all; our decision was personal. In the front part of the compound stood many rows of large tents with iron structures, all inhabited by the pro-Nationalists, each of whom had a mat for himself. By contrast, over seventy men lived in our small tent, crowded into a space of about nine hundred square feet. In the middle of the room a shallow ditch stretched across the dirt floor to drain out rainwater, and on both sides of the ditch every bit of space was occupied. Worse yet, every two men here had to share a mat made of cornstalk skins.
At night we lined up on the ground like packed fish—every pair of mat mates slept with their heads at opposite ends of their mat so that they wouldn’t breathe in each other’s faces. Even so, you had to place one of your legs on your mat mate’s belly or shoulder; otherwise it would have been impossible for both of you to lie on the mat. During the night the air was so putrid and dense that the door had to remain ajar. As for food, we also got less. At every meal the officers at company headquarters would eat their fill, and the prisoners living in the larger tents could have a full bowl of boiled barley, whereas we each got only half a bowl. At first, although forbidden to get close to the front part of the compound, we could move around our tent. We could chat when basking in the sun; we could visit the other small tents, where we could play cards and chess with the men who wanted to return home. But soon Wang Yong revoked this limited freedom. We were not allowed to visit the other small tents anymore and were even prohibited from leaving our own area. When you wanted to relieve yourself, you had to report to your squad leader first, and sometimes you had to wait until you could go with a group. This kind of maltreatment gradually made some men change their minds and sign up as nonrepatriates so that they could move to the larger, more comfortable tents.
I always slept with my left knee raised at night. My leg hadn’t fully healed yet and I was afraid someone might step on it in the dark. On the opposite side of the ditch, there was one man who was a pinwheel sleeper, often pushing and kicking others, who would then shout curses at him. Before I went to sleep I would massage my injured leg and caress the scar.
Once in a while I could still feel the touch of Dr. Greene’s fingers on my thigh, the cool, soothing touch that had left a kind of sensation on my skin and muscles. I even fantasized that I would become a doctor someday so that I could operate on patients too. If only I had gone to a medical school instead of a military academy. But that was pure fantasy, just as I used to dream of being an architect who would put up grand buildings in our hometown. My parents hadn’t been able to afford to send me to a regular college, so I had attended the military school for free. What made Dr. Greene different from others was that she had treated me with genuine kindness, which must have stemmed not just from her professional training but from real humanity. Whenever I was with her, I had felt her goodness flowing out like water from a fountain, constant and effortless.
In contrast, most of the time when I was with others, including my comrades, I couldn’t help but grow vigilant, because there was always some ulterior motive behind every activity and every statement, and I had to take care not to be victimized. Here among my fellow countrymen I felt lonesome and often sat outside the tent alone. If only I could have had a book to read. With nothing to do and without friends, I had become more gloomy. Soon the inmates nicknamed me Stargazer, because I watched the sky a lot and could identify some stars by name.
Depressed and bored, many men in our tent gambled every day. They had no money, so they used cheap cigarettes as stakes. The Americans issued each of us one pack a week, at times two packs a week, which was generous. By comparison, on average an enlisted man in the People’s Volunteer Army had barely gotten one pack of cigarettes a month. It was during the first days in Compound 72 that I started to smoke. Initially, after a few puffs I felt woozy, but two packs later I began to enjoy smoking, though it aggravated my coughing. In the daytime our small tent was full of hubbub, so I sat outside whenever it was possible. These men unnerved me and I grew more withdrawn. How I wished Wanlin were here.
The men in the large tents were no better. They too gambled, with even more clamor and fierce squabbles. Some of them had lost everything they had, even their caps, shoes, and underwear. I wasn’t sure who had provided them with mah-jongg, perhaps the prison authorities, or perhaps Father Hu, who preached here on Sundays. The gamblers had made card tables themselves, which were just slapdash pieces of carpentry. Without work and with too much free time, the prisoners simply had no other outlet for their energy and distress. The gambling had reduced some of them to insolent louts. Fights broke out time and again. How idleness could foster vices and bring out the worst in a man! If only they had been put to hard labor. Then at least they would have been too tired to behave aggressively.
Another thing upset me: the prisoners often fought over food in the mess lines. The men living in the large tents would eat before those of us from the small tents. The rule was that the daily ration for every prisoner should be 1.15 pounds of grain, but the leaders at all levels in the compound would take the lion’s share first. For example, the regimental chief, Han Shu, a fluent English speaker who had been a platoon leader in the Communist army and had capitulated to the Americans without firing a single shot, would eat four dishes and soup at every meal, prepared by his personal cook, who had been seized from a fishing boat on the Yellow Sea. All the company and battalion leaders enjoyed special mess too. As a result, the prisoners who wanted to be repatriated to China could have, at most, half rations. Many men would hurl abuse randomly at the mess lines and wouldn’t think twice about using brute force on others. I noticed that the illiterate ones among us were particularly quick-tempered at mealtimes. For a bowl of boiled barley, some of them wouldn’t hesitate to knock a tooth out of another man’s mouth or to give him a bloody nose. Every day there were at least two fights; sometimes half a dozen. Once the North Korean prisoners in the compound across the front road went on a hunger strike; the Americans left barrels of food at their front gate, but nobody would come out to pick up the rice and stewed radish. Then the camp’s executive officer, Captain Lennon, came to ask us to show the Koreans how good this meal tasted. Shamelessly, two hundred Chinese POWs flocked there, gorging themselves on the lunch, grinning and grunting like animals. I often wondered if some of these men would kill their siblings just for a ladle of boiled soybeans.
I still remember a fight I witnessed one day. At dinner, two men before me in the waiting line suddenly started yelling at each other. “You’re behind me!” said a squat man with a Cantonese accent, baring his broad teeth.
“No, I’m in front of you,” countered a tall fellow.
“Don’t butt in again!”
“Damn it, when did I do that?”
“Right now!”
“Fuck off, okay?” The tall man poked the other in the chest with his fist.
“If you touch me again I’ll kill you!”
“So.” He poked him once more.
The short fellow lunged forward with his bowl raised in the air to hit the other man’s skull. A few men stepped out of the line, restrained him, and pulled him away.
The scene saddened me. Why had they been so pugnacious? There was enough barley for everyone to have half a bowl, and they were not busy and had time to wait. Why did they act like such hoodlums? In private I shared my dismay with a fellow in my platoon, Bai Dajian, and he explained that they had feared the battalion chief, Liu Tai-an, would show up and ruin the meal, so they had wanted to reach the food barrels as quickly as possible.
Bai Dajian told me more about Liu Tai-an. Liu had once been a sergeant in the Nationalist army, but the Communists had captured hi
m in a battle and put him into a logistic unit after a month’s reindoctrination. Because he could drive, they gave him a truck. After his division crossed the Yalu River, at the first opportunity he drove three tons of salt fish to the American position and surrendered. Rumor had it that he was sent to Guam for two months’ training and then returned to Korea. That was why he was appointed a battalion commander as well as the vice chief of the regiment—to help Han Shu keep order in the compound, since Han was a man of mild disposition and seemed indecisive. Liu Tai-an hated the Communists so much that he often publicly flogged men who wanted to return to Red China. The Americans had adopted a let-alone policy and didn’t care what happened in the compounds as long as the POWs remained behind the barbed wire, so Liu ruled this regiment like a police state. Even some GIs called him Little Caesar. Sometimes he would show up at the kitchen at mealtimes with a batch of bodyguards and throw a fistful of sand into a barrel of boiled barley, then snarl at the men in the waiting line, “You’re not even worth the food you eat!” Once he even peed into a cauldron of turnip soup in front of everybody. With Liu Tai-an looming in their minds, the inmates here would struggle to get their meals as soon as possible.
Whatever their reasons, the men’s fighting upset me. They had once been comrades-in-arms, and many of them would again be comrades after they returned to our homeland. Why should they behave like brutes? When led by the Communists, they had been good soldiers and seemed high-minded and their lives had possessed a purpose, but now they were on the verge of becoming animals. How easily could humanity deteriorate in wretched conditions? How low could an ordinary man fall when he didn’t serve a goal larger than himself? Unorganized for honest work or for a meaningful cause, these men were just a mob ruled by the instinct for survival. Sometimes I wondered if there was a Communist cell among us, because I was positive that some of the prisoners were Party members and supposed to lead these desperate men. Yet all the Communists here kept a low profile, hardly distinguishable from others.