War Trash

by Ha Jin

  Finally I gave way to my emotions, sobbing convulsively, and buried my face in my hands. Shanmin passed me a towel. Then Weiming straightened his neck and recited loudly an ancient couplet, “The wind howls while the river is about to churn; / Our warrior sets out, perhaps never to return.” He glowered, as though he were crazed, his round eyes blazing.

  This sobered me up some. I was surprised by the indignant edge in his voice, which seemed to convey his understanding that I was being treated as an expendable item. Manpu, our political instructor, interposed, saying that I shouldn’t lose hope so easily and that the reregistration might be just a routine thing, so I would come back for sure. If not, we’d meet again in our homeland. He told us, “How could the Americans tell Lu from Liu, or Chiang from Chang? For them, we’re all Chinese, so Feng Yan, don’t be upset ahead of time. As long as you keep your mind clear, you’ll know how to navigate through the process safely. You must take courage.”

  A man laughed at the back of the room. Manpu’s words had cooled us down, though I still believed that in the enemy’s eyes the four departing officers were not regular POWs but war criminals.

  The party ended at nine. Most of the men left after slipping a few sunflower seeds into their pockets. Together with my two friends I returned to our shed.

  That night I handed my work over to the new interpreter, a man who could speak some English but couldn’t read it, having not begun to learn the language until he was taken prisoner. After giving him the file of newspaper clippings, I lay down on my pallet and thought about my family. How I missed them. Heaven knew if I would ever see them again. I sat up and fished a pencil out of my pocket, tore a sheet of writing paper in half, and wrote a note on both pieces—one addressed to my mother and the other to my fiancée. In the one for Julan I said:

  February 27, 1953

  Dear Julan,

  It’s a pity I cannot go back and marry you, but my death is not meaningless. I have served the cause of our country and sacrificed my life for the peace of the world. Please forget me and go on with your life. May you have a happy family.

  Love,

  Yuan

  PS: Please visit my mother once in a while. I am her only child. She may feel lonely. Thank you.

  I put addresses on the backs of both notes and handed them to Shanmin. I said, “If you hear I’m dead, mail these letters for me when you’re back in China.”

  I also gave him all my belongings—a stack of Kraft paper, two pencil stubs, a pair of woolen gloves, an overcoat, two blankets, everything except for the jade barrette half tied around my neck. He said to me, “I’ll keep all these things for you so that you can use them again when you come back.”

  “Don’t be silly. I won’t need them when we meet again.”

  I slept well that night, whereas Shanmin spent several hours listening to me snoring. In this regard I was truly blessed—however hard I was hit emotionally, I could always get a good night’s sleep. I snored loudly too, and often woke up my shed mates. This habit of mine made them regard me more as a soldier than as a college graduate. They even remarked that I slept like a general.

  The next morning the four of us officers were taken onto a steam-boat. We were put into the cabin below the deck, so that we couldn’t see the outside except when we went up to the toilet, to which we could go only one at a time. Eleven GIs escorted us, led by a freckle-faced officer I had never met before. Their number unnerved me because it seemed to reflect our importance, but soon I discovered, through their chattering, that most of them were headed for Pusan to visit friends and to see a show given by a popular singer from the United States. During the trip they wouldn’t allow us to talk. Chaolin was sitting opposite me on a maroon leather seat. He was thinner than before, his face hairless and his teeth coated with tobacco tar. But his eyes were bright and intelligent, manifesting some ease and defiance. Whenever he grinned at me, I’d smile back. He seemed more sociable now, and I felt less jittery with him around, since he was a seasoned officer and could advise me if I ran into difficulties. On the other hand, I had to be on my guard when rubbing elbows with this small man who could be the Party’s eyes and ears among us. I thought of dropping into the ocean Ming’s ID tag, which had his fingerprints on it and could be used against me at Pusan. Without the fingerprints, the Americans might not easily detect my false identity. But I dared not get rid of the tag, for fear that Chaolin might notice its disappearance and report my misconduct to Commissar Pei.

  I knew the other two men only by sight. One had been a deputy battalion commander in the Thirty-ninth Army, and the other a staff officer in the Eighth Artillery Division. They both looked downcast. One of them was seasick and vomited continually, muttering that he might spew out his viscera, whereas the other man dozed away almost the whole time.

  31. AT THE REREGISTRATION

  The four of us were put in a small tent at the Pusan POW Collection Center. Now we could talk among ourselves. I was worried about the reregistration, but Chaolin said this might not be anything unusual, otherwise the enemy would have separated us and posted more guards at the entrance to the tent. Indeed, only one South Korean was standing there. The other two officers agreed with Chaolin, saying if the Americans had meant to kill us, they would have done it by themselves without involving the Koreans. So for the whole afternoon, they relaxed, chatting and wisecracking, though I was still nervous, unsure what to do if my false identity was discovered.

  Our tent wasn’t far away from the Operating Section of the hospital, which I couldn’t help but gaze at when it was still light. I wondered if Dr. Greene still worked there. A few female medical personnel passed the door of the white building, but none of them resembled her. If she could see the way I walked now, she’d be pleased, proud of the miraculous job she had done. After watching for about an hour without recognizing anyone, I went up to the Korean guard and asked him about Dr. Greene, but he couldn’t understand English and kept shaking his long face.

  The next morning we were taken to the administration center one by one. Chaolin went first, while the rest of us lay on straw sacks, smoking, chatting, and waiting for our turns. We talked about Korean women, most of whom we believed were not as good-looking as women in Manchuria, because they didn’t wear makeup. “So many of them have sun-bitten faces,” the staff officer said, crinkling his flat nose as though sniffing at something. On his neck was a large purple mark left by a cupping jar.

  “Their faces are fine for me, some are pretty,” said the deputy battalion commander, who was about forty. “But they have bowlegs, that bothers me.”

  “How come you know what their legs look like? Don’t they always wear long dresses or slacks?”

  “We stayed near a village two years ago and I often saw them in the river.”

  “Bathing?”

  “Yes.” The older officer laughed with a bubbling sound in his throat and waggled his half-grizzled mustache. “Actually you can imagine what their legs are like by looking at Korean men, who mostly have bowlegs.”

  “Maybe they sit too much,” I put in. “They don’t have furniture in their homes and sit on the floors all the time. That may have deformed their legs.”

  “Probably true,” agreed the staff officer.

  I went on, “Also, Korean women carry manure baskets and water jars on their heads, so their spines must be compressed.”

  “Right,” said the older officer.

  But we all felt that by and large Korean women were good-natured and would make better wives than most Chinese women. We guessed that the majority of them were short because they worked too hard, which had stunted their growth. Few Korean men seemed involved in farming. You often saw old men drive oxcarts, watch over orchards, burn charcoal, cure tobacco, grow ginseng in the mountains, but rarely could you find them planting rice shoots or weeding vegetable gardens. Besides, most young men had been conscripted, so the fields had been left to the care of women, who started to do farmwork in their early teens. But with few exc
eptions Koreans had strong white teeth, which I had noticed because I was often bothered by my inflamed gums. A Korean doctor had once assured me that kimchee was accountable for their healthy teeth.

  Chaolin returned an hour later. He was in good spirits, saying that he was allowed to go back to Cheju and that the reregistration was indeed just a routine thing. He believed the Americans must have lost some files and wanted to reestablish the records. Besides us, there were dozens of POWs who had come from other camps for the reregistration too. I didn’t have time to ask him more about the process before the guard took me away.

  I stuffed Ming’s ID tag into my pants pocket and set off. Passing the central latrine on the way, I told the guard I needed to pee, and he let me enter the roofless privy, where I ripped the ID tag to pieces and dropped it into one of the four hundred pits.

  Before I went into the registration office, a clerk, a black man whose neck was as thick as his face, asked me to show him my ID tag. I said, “I don’t have one.”

  “How come?” He looked puzzled.

  “I lost it in the camp on Cheju Island. I was ill for some time and couldn’t take care of my stuff.”

  “All right, let me get your fingerprints.”

  I held out my left hand, and one by one he pressed my fingertips into an ink container and printed them on a card that had five marked squares, one for each digit. He did the same with my right hand. After giving me a piece of straw paper to wipe my hand with, he led me into an office, an inner room in a large tent. Here sat an American lieutenant and a Chinese interpreter, who was apparently an officer from Taiwan, though he wore civvies and tortoiseshell glasses. I was told to sit on a padded chair in front of them. This office looked cozy; a white bookcase stood in a corner, loaded with dozens of books, which I observed for a good while. Among the volumes were novels, manuals, and some brand-new copies of the Bible. The lieutenant must have been involved with the prisoners’ education program.

  “Your name?” the American officer asked. He was about my age, but with a balding crown. I pretended I didn’t know English and waited for the interpreter to translate so that I could think before answering.

  “Feng Wen,” I said, my heart fluttering.

  “Age?”

  “Twenty-six.” Ming was one year older than me.

  “Education?”

  “College.”

  “What school?”

  “Beijing University.”

  Suddenly the black clerk stepped in and put the card of my fingerprints on the officer’s desk. He said, “Lieutenant Wright, this doesn’t match the one in our file.”

  Heavens, they’d kept a record of Ming’s ID! My head was swimming and my heart pounding while both the interrogators fastened their eyes on me. Except for his baldish head, Lieutenant Wright was quite handsome, with a straight nose, a sensuous mouth, and a chin covered with a curly beard. He said, “Now, you must be honest with me. Evidently you’re not Feng Wen.”

  “I am Feng Wen,” I replied in English, having forgotten to wait for the interpreter to translate.

  They looked at each other. The lieutenant said sternly, “Then you must explain why your fingerprints don’t match our record.”

  “I have no idea. This must be a mistake. I was told to come and get registered again.”

  “You speak good English,” commented the interpreter.

  “I took some English classes at college.”

  Lieutenant Wright said, “Mr. Feng, or whoever you are, if you can’t explain the discrepancy, we’re going to keep you in custody until this gets clarified.”

  “That wouldn’t make much difference, I’m already in custody.”

  “I don’t think this is an error, though. What we have here is subterfuge, so we must get to the bottom of it.”

  I was impressed by his manner of speech. Obviously he was a well-educated man, probably a college graduate. Despite my effort to be articulate, I got rattled, sweat oozing from my face. I lifted my hand and wiped it away.

  Wright flicked his fingers and ordered the guard, “Put him into Cell 4.”

  I wanted to say something, but words failed me. Silently I followed the guard out.

  Once slammed into a solitary cell whose window was blocked by an iron grille, I began thinking about what to do. The crucial question was whether I should admit my true identity. Such a confession would amount to treason in the Communists’ eyes, but if I refused to own up, the interrogators would not let me go. What step should I take then? Should I tell them something but not the whole truth? Maybe I should do that, but how much information should I give them? That would depend on how much they knew about me. If they found out that I had withheld information, I’d be done for.

  Hard as I tried, I couldn’t make up my mind. The more I thought about my predicament, the more I resented Commissar Pei for sending me here. If Ming had come himself, the whole thing would have ended well without costing him a single hair. The Party just wouldn’t risk losing one of its own men.

  Unsure what to do, I decided that from now on I’d act according to the situation. In any event I must not get myself hurt. As long as I stayed alive, there would be a way to get back to China.

  Early the next morning I was taken to Lieutenant Wright’s office again. This time a bulky tape recorder was on his desk. I told myself I must speak carefully. The moment I sat down, Wright handed me a photograph that showed Commissar Pei and me on the beach. Dumbfounded, I couldn’t face him.

  “Well,” he said with a grin, “we know who you are, Feng Yan. Now you must tell us why you came here in Feng Wen’s place.”

  “They told me to come, but I’m not sure why,” I said.

  “Who are they?”

  “The Communist leaders.”

  “What’s your mission here?” demanded the interpreter.

  “None, just to sacrifice myself, I guess.”

  “How do you mean?” asked the lieutenant.

  I was so angry about Pei’s scheme that I said, “Feng Wen is Pei Shan’s interpreter, indispensable to him. That’s why Pei sent me here, to be trashed.”

  “You must speak English better than Feng Wen, don’t you?” asked the Chinese man.

  “But I’m not a Party member.”

  “I see.”

  Lieutenant Wright said, “Let me ask you another question, which you must answer honestly. Then we’ll decide how to handle your case. My question is: are you disgusted with the Communists?”

  I glanced at the tape recorder, which wasn’t on. “Yes,” I managed to say.

  “You don’t sound convincing.”

  At the spur of the moment I pulled up my shirt to show them my tattoo—FUCK COMMUNISM. “Look at this. Don’t you think this is convincing?”

  They both laughed. Lieutenant Wright flung up his hand and said, “I don’t know. I can’t read your Oriental mind, which is full of duplicity. If you hate the Communists as much as your tattoo indicates, then why did you follow them all the way to Camp 8?”

  “I was a soldier and had to obey orders.”

  “Whose orders?”

  Before I could answer, the Chinese officer stepped in with a shrewd smile, “I doubt if you told us the truth.”

  “Why don’t you believe me?”

  “That tattoo must’ve been put on your tummy by the Communists themselves.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “To make you an effective agent working for them.”

  “Yes, that’s it.” Wright’s hazel eyes gleamed.

  “That’s preposterous,” I said. “The two words were marked on me by some men in Compound 72 on Koje Island. It has nothing do with the Communists. You can call that compound on Koje, check with the chief of the Third Company by the name of Wang Yong, and ask him whether his men tattooed me last spring.”

  That held them in check. The lieutenant said, “Okay, we’ll contact Cheju Island. Let’s stop here for today.”

  “Why don’t you call Koje?” I was surprised.


  “They moved to Cheju too.”

  That was news to me. I had never heard there was a camp for the pro-Nationalist prisoners on the island.

  Before I left, I again looked at the bookcase. Wright caught my envious eyes, but said nothing. Back in the cell, I wondered if I had done a wise thing to mention Compound 72. Many of those pro-Nationalists must still hate my guts, and they might tip off the Americans to destroy me. If only I hadn’t mentioned Wang Yong. But if I had not, there would have been no way to get myself cleared. I was anxious about what would happen at the next interrogation. To some degree I liked Lieutenant Wright, who seemed decent and unassuming, careful with his choice of words. It was his interpreter who unnerved me. Americans were usually forthcoming, poor at concealing their feelings, so you knew where you stood when dealing with them, whereas some Chinese were hard to assess, rarely showing what was on their minds. I feared the interpreter might plot to hurt me.

  My premonition proved right. The moment I sat down in front of the interrogators the next morning, Wright told me, “We have checked with Wang Yong. He remembered that his men had tattooed you.”

  “So you can let me go back to Camp 8?”