War Trash (44 page)

In the end, Dajian didn't have to work in the kitchen. I was grateful to Wang Yong for coming to my rescue, but I also realized that in the long run, if I went to Taiwan, my one year's stay in the pro-Communist camp would remain a hidden reef in my life. There would be no way to free myself from suspicion. Anyone could invoke this problematic period of my past against me.

33. CONFUSION

There were three enclosures at Mosulpo, numbered 1, 2, and 3, which formed Camp 13. Each consisted of ten compounds, held about forty-seven hundred Chinese nonrepatriates, and had the same layout as Camp 8, which was thirty miles away to the northeast. Each compound within an enclosure was now called a battalion instead of a company and contained fewer than five hundred prisoners. That was why Wang Yong had become a battalion chief, though he led the same number of men. However, the gates to the compounds within an enclosure were not strictly guarded, and sometimes an inmate could slip into another battalion, since the GIs couldn't remember everyone's face.

The Americans treated these POWs more leniently than those in Camp 8. They provided them with vegetable seeds and fertilizers, encouraging them to grow sweet potatoes, cabbages, eggplants, tomatoes. The inmates could also gather seaweed and shellfish from the beach. So, though barley and corn were still the basic staples, the food here was better than what I had gotten used to eating in the pro-Communist camp. Some of the prisoners seemed to have gained a little weight. Owing to the absence of the Communists, the enclosures were peaceful on the whole. Classes were offered to illiterate inmates, and over twenty clubs had been formed, such as fellow townsmen's fraternities, mah-jongg leagues, gymnastic teams, a Catholic brotherhood, a calligraphy and painting society, a drivers' association. We had no access to automobiles, but there were a number of former drivers who offered lessons in auto mechanics and in driving skills. For the Chinese, the ability to drive a car was a professional accomplishment. On the battlefield, one headache for our army had been that we couldn't get abandoned American trucks back to our base because few of our men knew how to drive. Very often we ordered the captured GIs to move the vehicles for us, but most of them would say they couldn't handle a truck either. The truth was that they didn't want to be strafed and bombed by their own airplanes on the road.

Sports were popular here. Every company had its basketball and volleyball teams, and every battalion had a gymnastic team. We could go swimming, which I often did after lunch when others were napping. The beach, covered with black sand, was just a few steps from our compound, so when bathing we remained within the guards' view and hearing.

Life was kept as normal as possible here. Each of the three enclosures had its own newspaper, a two-sheet thing folded in the middle, the size of a regular book. It was handwritten, mimeographed, and published once a week; each issue had only some twenty copies for distribution, carrying four or five short articles. Enclosure 1's paper was entitled Liberty Journal, Enclosure 2's, The Vanguard, and Enclosure 3's, Survival. I was invited to contribute to them, but I never wrote anything. Our enclosure also had a theater, which was just a large platform; it regularly staged various local operas and classical dramas. Most of the plays were conventional, though there were propaganda pieces as well. Compared with the prisoners in Camp 8, these men were less enthusiastic about artistic creation, though there was no difficulty in assembling the talents from all the battalions for one project.

There was a madman named Jiafu in Enclosure 1. I had known him in Compound 72 on Koje Island, but at that time he had been sane and docile. Now he would go to the barbed-wire fence every morning, wailing, "I miss my parents. Don't let me die here!" The prisoners used to joke about him, but nowadays few would mention him without sighing. In the summer of 1951 his infantry regiment had moved to the front to fight the Americans. He hadn't seen action before and was scared. One day, his platoon commander rebuked him for carelessly taking off his camouflage, a wreath of tall grass around his head. Then the leader assigned Jiafu to gather firewood in a valley, where he came across a leaflet dropped by an enemy plane. It read: "Friends and Brothers – Please come over to us. We promise to send you to our rear base, where you can rest as long as you wish. We guarantee your personal safety, wholesome food and warm clothing – you will be treated like a U.N. soldier. Please stop wasting your lives for the Soviet Union and Communism. Remember, your families are waiting anxiously to see you back safe and sound."

At those words Jiafu sobbed and then went across to surrender to the Americans, having left behind his raincoat and burp gun. An interpreter came up to help interrogate him, but they couldn't extract much useful information from such a new recruit. He was honest with them, however, and admitted he had capitulated because he was afraid to die and longed for the comfort of their rear base. They said he had to work first. They wanted to send him to the front to broadcast to the Chinese position, but he wouldn't do it, insisting he was gun-shy. So they just shipped him directly to the Pusan POW Collection Center.

On arrival, at the sight of the prison, he blustered and made a scene, accusing the Americans of breaking their promise and not giving him freedom. Of course they wouldn't listen to him and just put him into the camp. Later, in Compound 72, again afraid of being killed, he agreed to go to Taiwan and had himself tattooed.

Never had I expected Jiafu would become such a wretch in this camp. He had gone insane the previous summer when all the pro-Nationalist prisoners arrived here and were ordered to construct enclosures and barracks for themselves. Apparently at that time the Americans treated them with little difference from the pro-Communists, so these nonrepatriates feared that they might never be able to reach Taiwan and even believed they could be delivered to Red China, which wasn't that far away – Tsingtao was just three hundred miles to the west. They even imagined that the Americans might mislead them onto ships and then send them back to the mainland. Their anxiety wasn't totally unjustified. Anything could happen at the Panmunjom talks, and the United States could hand them back to

China at any time if there was enough to gain from their repatriation. So all the fourteen thousand prisoners were terrified by the prospect; dreading the Communists' retaliation, some of them planned to drown themselves together in the ocean if they were forced to board ships. Some suggested that if worse came to worst, they would break prison and flee to Mount Halla, where they could live as guerrillas. Many began to make spears, knives, and cudgels. Indeed those first few months here were the nadir of their life in captivity. Several men attempted suicide – one of them plunged headlong into a latrine to drown himself, but he was saved by his fellow townsmen. They looked after him, and he recovered from his depression half a year later. It was during this time that Jiafu went crazy too, but unlike the others, he never regained his sanity.

Sometimes when I passed Enclosure 1, I would stop to speak to him. He had such a vacant face that he must surely have lost his memory, though he still remembered his birthplace and his family, calling to his parents as if they were somewhere nearby. On his forehead was a tattooed Nationalist emblem like a black sunflower. Whenever you asked him whether he wanted to go to Taiwan or the mainland, he would shake his head and croak, "Send me to Haicheng." That was his hometown in Manchuria.

I missed home terribly too. I had written to my fiancee only once since I'd been taken prisoner. Near the compound gate a metal mailbox hung on a pole; yet few men would drop letters into it because most POWs had adopted aliases and believed that both the American and the Chinese authorities would monitor our mail. We were afraid of implicating our families, who would be made to suffer for their sons' staying in the pro-Nationalist camp and refusing to return. It would be better if the government classified us as "missing in action," so that our families could benefit from our absence – by rule they would be treated as Revolutionary Martyrs' families. In the Communist-dominated camp, the prisoners didn't write home either, mainly because they feared that the Americans would open the mail and find out their true identities. Here, once in a while, an inmate did slip a letter into the mailbox, but often with a nicknamed sender on the envelope, such as Second Ox or Little Pillar or Mountain Boy, to reduce the risk of being identified. Naturally none of us had ever heard from home; nor did we know if our mail had ever reached our families. Through our contact with the Americans, we knew they received letters and parcels regularly. How we envied them!

Whenever I was alone, I would think about how to return to China. I didn't believe the Nationalist army could ever defeat the Communists and regain control of the mainland. I had seen how the People's Liberation Army had crushed them in the civil war. Although they were equipped with American weaponry and originally had more manpower, they were no match for the Communists, who had mustered the people's support. In all probability red flags would be flying over Taiwan in the near future.

I hadn't changed my mind about going home, but I just couldn't figure out a way. For a whole spring and summer the men in my compound talked about Taiwan, a place none of them had ever been to but had learned about through reading magazines. They imagined the restaurants and theaters they would patronize once they got there. Now the end of the war was imminent, and we all could feel it. Since April, groups of crippled POWs, as reported in the newspapers, had been returned to North Korea and mainland China. This might herald the final departure of all the prisoners.

In late June we heard that the South Korean guards at the camps in the Pusan area had set free twenty-seven thousand Korean nonrepatriates. In just one night all those POWs had vanished among the civilians. Enraged, the Chinese and the North Korean armies launched a major attack on the positions held by the South Korean army and devastated their lines. The release of those prisoners, however, inspired the inmates here, who began to demand to be freed in the same way so that they wouldn't have to face repatriation. The prison authorities ignored the demand, so the prisoners went on a hunger strike, which didn't last long because Father Hu, who often came to the camps to preach, mediated for the United Nations and assured us that we would never be delivered into the Communists' hands. He said this was a matter of principle for the Americans, who respected human rights. Still, three inmates in Enclosure 2 were so depressed and so tired of the long wait that they hanged themselves. I could see that these men dreaded the reprisals in store for them and would do anything to avoid going home.

Toward the end of July, word came that the armistice had been signed at Panmunjom. The war was finally over; this meant our imprisonment would end soon. Again the inmates were tossed into a great tumult, terrified by the possibility of repatriation. But I was on edge for a different reason: if I couldn't find a way back to China, I might have to depart for Taiwan with these men.

Then it was said that all the POWs would be sent to the Korean mainland again to go through the final screening called "the persuasion." This frightened the prisoners, who would do anything to avoid reentering the Iron Curtain. Many of them began talking about a massive demonstration. A few even offered to kill themselves, since they'd be killed anyway if they were returned to Red China. Some planned to jump into the ocean if they were forced to board ships heading that way.

But before any drastic action took place, there came Chiang Kai-shek's letter, read by himself on the radio and broadcast through amplifiers all over the camp. In an elderly voice the generalissimo urged us to trust the United Nations' arrangements, and he promised to bring us to Taiwan safely. The next day we were each given a Nationalist flag, on whose back was printed Chiang's letter in its entirety. He instructed us:

In order to realize your freedom, you must endure the next few months and must cooperate with the U.N. authorities. In the meantime, your compatriots in Free China will join forces with you to bring about your final liberation. I shall personally see to this matter and ascertain that the United Nations will abide by its principle of respecting the POWs' choice for freedom. In addition, I shall make the United Nations adhere to its promise that it will not send you anywhere against your will, so that you can come to Taiwan, the true China…

This letter pacified the prisoners, though it made me all the more anxious because I wanted to go home. Yet home seemed ominous now – I was unsure what would happen to me if I went back. If only there were a third choice so that I could disentangle myself from the fracas between the Communists and the Nationalists.

In mid-August we heard that many POWs in Camp 8 had left Cheju for China. This meant we might have to depart soon. A recent issue of News World, a weekly published in Hong Kong, showed some pictures of Korean women prisoners burning their mats and blankets before they started out for the North. Here the prison authorities informed us that we, the nonrepatriates, would be sent to a place near Kaesong called the Neutral Zone, where we would stay for three months to go through the final persuasion. The Communists insisted that many of us had been coerced into choosing Taiwan, so they wanted us to listen to their representatives explain their policy regarding the returned captives.

Although the Neutral Zone would be guarded by troops from India, a nonaligned country, this news caused a stir here. The prisoners all knew that the Communists were skilled in psychological attacks. Just showing your face to them would give rise to a good deal of consternation, because they could identify you and make your family and relatives back in China suffer. So unrest again spread among the prisoners. What's worse, the Neutral Zone was so close to the Communist army's position, just two miles away, that their forces might storm the camp and wipe us out. Actually they wouldn't have to enter the zone; just an artillery barrage could do the job.