Ha Jin - War Trash

Wang Yabing caught up with me a moment later. He clutched my shoulder and gave me a shake. "What happened?"

"I don't know." My face was sweaty and my tongue wooden.

"You look as if you've been chased by a ghost."

I was still gasping for breath. He asked again, "Did you get it?"

"Yes." I showed him the pistol.

"Great!" He took the gun and waved it as though to fire into the sky. Together we headed back.

Our men were wrapping up the work when we returned. Chaolin was so elated to see the pistol that he wore it in his belt while listening to me report how I had stolen it. Although I admitted I had left behind the iron bar, nobody took it as a mishap, so I stopped worrying about it. Then a problem I hadn't anticipated arose: how could we smuggle the gun back into the compound? Having talked briefly with Wang Yabing, Chaolin decided to let me carry it through the gate, because I was familiar with most of the guards.

I unloaded the five bullets and gave them to other prisoners, one apiece, to take back. This was easy for them – they could put the bullets in their mouths before going through the gate. I used a long shoelace to tie the pistol to my good thigh; the ends of the string were attached to the waist of my underwear. Most of the time the guards wouldn't touch my thighs.

On our way back the gun chafed my groin badly, but I pretended everything was normal. Still, I couldn't help walking bowleggedly. Some prisoners laughed at my discomfort and even imitated the way I waddled. Chaolin stared at them, eye-signaling them not to attract the guards' attention. Thanks to my injured leg, which always gave me a limp, the GIs didn't notice anything unusual.

The front gate opened and two guards began frisking us. When my turn came I stepped forward with a forced yawn. The GI touched my front and back, from my neck to my ankles, but he didn't feel elsewhere. I passed the gate, then strode toward Chaolin, who was awaiting me inside the compound. The moment we got into the nearest tent, I untied the pistol and handed it to him.

My thigh and scrotum were chafed, but the medic was already in bed, so I had to wait until the next morning to have the sore treated. My muscles were strained too, owing to the awkward walk back from the wharf. Yet I was happy and went to bed without further delay. In a state of half sleep I saw myself in the American officers bedroom again, looking for his pistol but unable to find it. He yelled suddenly, "You can't have it!" I woke up, my heart palpitating and the front of my shirt damp with sweat. In spite of pain and fear, I was glad I had passed the test in the way a soldier should, though in my mind a shadow of doubt was thickening. I was unsure whether the test had just been improvised by Chaolin or whether there had been a decision within the Party to give me such an ordeal. Later I asked Ming, who said confidentially that a week ago the Party had indeed decided to test my loyalty should such an occasion arise.

The next morning, a company of GIs came into our compound and ordered all the prisoners to get out of our tents. With their bayonets thrust here and there, they rummaged through all the barracks, overturning our mats and knocking down our makeshift furniture, but they found nothing. In fact, they couldn't possibly have recovered the pistol, which had just been smuggled out of the compound by the night soil team, who had hidden it among rocks on the beach. The Americans were unsure who among us had worked the night before, though they grabbed hold of Chaolin, who claimed he couldn't remember all the faces and names. So they ordered some of our men at the front of the crowd to step out. Unprepared for such an order, the inmates obeyed. From the back of the crowd I watched them with a pounding heart. The men who had stepped forward were innocent and most of them hadn't gone out the night before. After inspecting them, the officer in charge, a tall man wearing two hand grenades on his chest, one on either breast pocket, picked four prisoners and had them taken away to a truck parked outside the gate. One of the four men turned colorless and hollered, "I didn't do anything wrong! What's this about?" The GIs couldn't understand him and just hauled him away.

I was frightened, unsure if any of the four inmates knew about the pistol. I wondered why the officer wouldn't have Chaolin dragged away too. Probably he was aware that Chaolin was a die-hard Communist from whom they couldn't extract any information. I was also worried that the Americans might be in possession of the iron bar I had dropped, which could be a piece of evidence and from which they might obtain my fingerprints. A sweat broke out on my neck and forehead, but I dared not lift my hand to wipe it for fear of drawing attention. I kept a low profile, remaining in the crowd, while Ming stood at the front serving as an interpreter.

In the meantime, frustrated and unable to focus on the search, the officer began cursing us and threatened to throw some of us into solitary confinement if we didn't tell him the names of the people involved in the theft. "I'll try the lot of you. D'you hear me?" he shouted. "You bunch of thieves! You don't dare to face me like a man!"

Ming didn't bother to translate those words. We all remained silent as though nobody had understood the officer. Many looked at him with genuine confusion. Half an hour later the Americans withdrew. But before leaving, the officer warned us that this was just the beginning of the investigation.

Toward midafternoon two squads of GIs came in again, carrying shovels and pickaxes, and they also delivered to us the inmates they had taken away. The four men were all battered, their noses stuffed with bloody cotton balls and their faces swollen like loaves of bread. One had a black eye with sealed lids. They were so fear-stricken that they could hardly speak, merely nodding or shaking their heads when others talked to them. I felt awful, though none of them looked trustworthy. If they had known I was the thief, they might have given me away.

While we were busy helping the returned men, the GIs went on digging and poking around. They called us all kinds of names for causing them such drudgery, but some prisoners whistled and waved their caps at them. This annoyed them more.

They didn't find any weapon, not even one of the five bullets, but they got hold of two pairs of pliers, which was a minor loss to us. That evening I was informed that the Party Committee here had cited me for brave service. The citation was of the third class. I was pleased, hoping that from now on my life would be easier and that they wouldn't test me again.

The pistol was never used in our later struggle. It was passed on to the North Korean prisoners, who already possessed some small firearms.

The Communists always tested the men they suspected. I knew a number of such cases in the camp. One man was instructed to burn a warehouse storing provisions for the POWs, and under cover of darkness he torched not only the main house but also two stacks of timber nearby. The flames sprang up fifty feet high, and four fire engines raced back and forth to get water from the seaside, but everybody could see that the fire was inextinguishable. The man was awarded a special merit citation by the Party Committee afterward. Luckily for him, the Americans, after questioning many of us, gave up searching for the arsonist. Another man was ordered to steal a crate of Spam from a storehouse at night. He didn't make it because a searchlight spotted him as he was crawling back through a hole in a fence, and he was shot dead. The guards must have thought he was either cutting the fence with pliers or attempting to blow it up with a box of explosives, which the crate of Spam might have resembled. Indeed, we had planned to breach the fence all along. In the compound there were about a dozen pairs of pliers and pincers, all smuggled in by the prisoners. The enemy knew that and often came to hunt for them. These tools would be indispensable if it came to the point where we had to break jail, so our leaders often ordered someone they meant to test to steal a pair.