Ha Jin - War Trash

There was frequent contact between us and the compounds controlled by the Korean Communists. Commissar Pei wore a steel-strapped Swiss watch offered to him by our Korean comrades. On April 30 we received a secret message from them, which requested us to send two representatives to attend an important meeting. Pei let Chaolin and me go. Initially I was excited about this assignment, assuming the Party had begun to trust me now that I had stolen the pistol; but on second thought, I realized I'd become a sidekick to Chaolin in this mission mainly because I spoke English. Nobody among us knew Korean, and Pei wouldn't want the Koreans to think we were ignorant of any foreign language, so he sent me along to save face.

The Korean POWs had been here longer than we had and possessed more resources. They were better supplied than the civilians and in away fared even better than the South Korean troops, who didn't have enough medicine and often starved. Our North Korean comrades could always exchange clothing for kimchee and soybean paste with the villagers, and their underground channels kept them in touch with their national leaders.

As a rule, when a multicompound meeting was to be held, all the attendees from different compounds would feign illness so as to get permission to go to the Sixty-fourth Field Hospital, where a meeting would take place. Many Korean medical personnel worked there, and the Communists controlled a good part of the hospital. On May 1, Chaolin and I got permission from Dr. Wang of our compound, so the guards let us out. Chaolin knew the camp well because he often left our compound to meet with the prison authorities. He looked runty, like a starved chicken, but he had a steel will and often quarreled with the Americans, since as the vice chief of Compound 602 he spoke on behalf of six thousand men (Zhao Teng, the nominal chief, was slow of words). Chaolin was also good at giving speeches that could sway a large audience. I respected him for his eloquence and experience, though whenever I was with him I would feel tense, wary about what I'd say and do.

The hospital was within the camp and served the POWs only; it consisted of eight tents, two small houses, and three sheds. Behind a cottage we were received by two Korean men, both in their early thirties, one with a fleshy face, which was rare among the Koreans, whereas the other looked quite feminine, delicate and slender. We sat down in the backyard, where laundered sheets hung on iron wires stretched among drooping willows, obscuring the yard considerably. A swing swayed gently in the breeze as if there had been children living in the cottage. Chaolin had met the officers before and introduced them to me as Lee and Choi, saying they were both colonels in the Korean People's Army. Choi, the fleshy-faced man, happened to be a college graduate, had majored in history, and could speak some English and Russian. Lee was less educated, but he spoke Chinese beautifully, having lived in Manchuria as a guerrilla fighting the Japanese for over a decade. They looked healthier than regular prisoners and seemed at ease. On our way in I had noticed two young Korean nurses folding sterilized bandages in an office at the front of the house; in reality these women were keeping guard for us. Now and then they hummed a song; their laughter sounded carefree. Their pleasant voices distracted me from time to time.

The meeting was short; it wouldn't be safe to stay in the backyard too long. But we were shocked by what the officers told us: the Koreans planned to kidnap General Bell, the U.S. commandant on Koje Island. They wanted our compound to cooperate with them.

"How can we assist you in carrying out this bold plan?" asked Chaolin.

They said we should ease the general's vigilance by inviting him to our compound and talking with him without arousing his suspicion; after that, they would ask him to visit their barracks too. Chaolin suggested that we seize General Bell ourselves if he came to our compound, but Lee, the feminine man, said they had already made arrangements and had more "armed force" than we did. He explained, "We shouldn't let you bear the brunt again if the Americans retaliate. You've already sacrificed enough." He must have been referring to the fact that we had come all the way to Korea to fight our common enemy. Chaolin didn't insist and promised to participate in their plan.

Before we left, they took us into a side room in the cottage, where we were introduced to Mr. Park, who was the top leader of the Korean POWs. Sitting on the glossy floor, Mr. Park was a short but muscular man in a tweed coat. His face was pale and his eyes piercingly bright. Around him sat several officers. He shook hands with Chaolin and me and gave us each a cigarette, which we lit and smoked ravenously. I was amazed that he had Lucky Strikes, the American brand. He spoke to us while Lee was interpreting for him. He thanked us for letting them have the pistol I had stolen. Then he said, "From the bottom of our hearts we are grateful to the Chinese Communist Party and the Peoples Volunteers. You're our closest comrades-in-arms. You have made great sacrifice and suffered for us. We salute you."

Chaolin replied that we shared the same enemy, the U.S. imperialists, and that by coming to Korea we actually fought to protect our country as well. I was impressed by his ease in adopting an aggrandized role, as if he were equal to our host in rank. Then Mr. Park talked about the significance of capturing General Bell – this event would shock the world. He said that Marshal Kim Il Sung had ordered them to open "a second front" in the prison camp and that we must embarrass our captors and expose their lie that we were all treated humanely. Also, the success of this operation would help our negotiators at Panmunjom as well. Chaolin promised that he would brief our headquarters about their plan and that we would help them in any way we could. When we were leaving, Mr. Park embraced us and said we would definitely meet again, very soon.

Seeing us off, Colonel Choi told me in English that Mr. Park had studied in Moscow and had been the governor of the North Yellow Sea Province in Korea. Here in the camp he was their commander. We asked Choi how Mr. Park had been taken prisoner if he was such an important official. Choi wouldn't explain, just smiling mysteriously. I had the impression that Mr. Park still lived and functioned like a provincial governor here, well preserved and thoroughly protected. He had an air of serene confidence, as if he were the boss in this camp, not the Americans.

That evening our headquarters held a meeting, over which Commissar Pei presided. He sat at a "table" built of eight upturned cardboard cases covered with a blanket. Now and again he tapped the tip of his cigarette over a rusty enamel bowl. The veins on the back of his hand stood out; a healed scar marked the end of his thumb. He didn't seem enthusiastic about the Korean comrades' plan and looked thoughtful, his face a little wrinkled. Whenever his brown eyes gazed at me, I felt as if he could see through me. He didn't express his opinion, though before the meeting he had said about the Koreans to Chaolin and me, "They're so bold. I hope they know how to deal with the consequences." I was puzzled but dared not ask him what he meant exactly.

People got excited about our report on the Koreans' plan. The commissar instructed us to demonstrate the next day and then go on a hunger strike. Meanwhile, the Secretariat must gather evidence for the crimes committed by our captors so that we could charge General Bell when he fell into the Koreans' hands. After the meeting, Ming went about writing two letters, one addressed to our delegates at the Panmunjom talks and the other to the International Red Cross, exposing the maltreatment the POWs had suffered and demanding that the Americans return all the bodies of our comrades killed on the battleground, that they stop backing the pro-Nationalist force in the prison camp, and that they take measures to stamp out violence and bring the murderers to justice. The first of the demands surprised me, because I remembered the dead our former division had buried along our way to the front in the spring of 1951. Hundreds of men had been killed in air raids and left in the wilderness, and I was sure none of their bodies would ever be shipped back to our homeland.