Ha Jin - War Trash

"You mean to get rid of the rubber part?" asked a company leader.

"Yes." Wenfu narrowed his eyes and seemed to know how to do that.

The Americans had issued us each a piece of waterproof cloth, which we could put on as a rain poncho. It had white nylon fabric on one side and coated rubber on the other.

The next morning Wenfu heated an oil drum behind the kitchen and spread his rain cloth on it. Without much difficulty he peeled off the rubber. We were all impressed. Next, we needed to color the white cloth red. But where could we get the dye or paint? One man pierced his finger with a safety pin and smeared his blood on the white nylon, but soon the blood turned brownish, so this wouldn't do. Then we remembered Mercurochrome, and a man was dispatched to get some from the medic. The antiseptic worked much better, so we decided to use it as the primer for the flag. That resolved, we had to come by five stars. Somebody suggested cutting them out of tinplate. Without delay a few fellows got hold of a pair of pliers and went about making the stars. Meanwhile, the nylon fabric was cut into a rectangle and hemmed along the edges. Then the five stars – one twice as big as the rest – were sewn to the cloth. Many hands were busy helping with the sewing, which was done within an hour.

The finished flag looked quite impressive. Now the next problem was how to make a pole, which had to be about thirty feet long. This proved easy. There happened to be a pair of stretchers left in our compound, which the Americans had not collected after we had used them to carry two sick men, so we dismantled them and tied the poles to one another. We had enough rope, but we needed to fix a small pulley to the tip of the pole so that we could hoist the flag. Since it was impossible to come by such a device, we substituted a self-made iron ring for it. Amazingly, all the preparations took us just one day.

Although I participated in making the flag, from the outset I had a foreboding that something horrific would happen. I knew Commissar Pei well enough to see that besides shattering the enemy's claim that the Chinese POWs were unwilling to return to China, he might have something else on his mind. I couldn't guess his motives yet. Somehow my thoughts kept turning to the fact that our national flag was actually in its infancy, not even three years old. My comrades were unlikely to have developed a staunch attachment to it, not to mention devoted love. Then why had they all of a sudden become determined to fly it at any cost?

Most prisoners got carried away with the plan. Many applied for the shock team and the flag protection group; some even wrote pledges in their own blood; one of the hotheads was so worked up that he broke his little finger in front of others to show his passion to fight this battle for raising the flag. Meanwhile many of us were exchanging our home addresses back in China in case we got killed on October 1.

On the surface we appeared courageous, but in reality our resolve was mixed with desperation.

We all felt ashamed of becoming POWs because we should have died rather than submit to capture. Many even believed our captivity had impaired our country's image. I often heard some men say they had "smeared soot on Chairman Mao's face." The guilt weighed heavily on their consciences. That was why ever since our arrival at Cheju, the Party leaders in the camp had propagated this slogan as the principle of our action: "Through our struggle we shall remove our shame and win back our glory!" Those words struck a chord in most inmates' hearts. Now Commissar Pei 's order gave them a chance to vent their pent-up emotions, and many men couldn't wait to fight. Some even believed it would be better to fall in a heroic, if ill-fated, battle than to be jailed like animals. So all at once the compounds turned hectic – the prisoners were busy preparing to confront the enemy. They picked up stones and piled them in places, filled bottles with urine, gathered wooden sticks and cudgels, made knives out of the steel sheets torn from oil drums, forged and honed daggers. There was some kerosene used for cooking in the kitchen, so they poured the fuel into empty cans, inserted short pieces of shoestring into them, then sealed the tops with soap to create nine bombs. To use such a weapon, they'd light the string, then pitch it.

The inmates seemed suicidally blind to the resources the enemy had. I was agitated but dared not say anything, fearing the accusation of cowardice.

On September 27 Commissar Pei issued another message, ordering us to "strike at the enemy," specifically to kill one or two top American officers. After an exchange of views among the battalion leaders, it was decided that every compound prepare to murder Colonel Kelly, the commandant here, should such an opportunity arise, and that if possible, Major MacDonald, the camp's executive officer, should also be removed. Our neighbor, Compound 7, was much more active than we, and I could hear hammers hitting hot iron in their kitchen and makeshift smithy continually. In total, they forged more than a hundred daggers and machetes. They also drilled their men in different formations for a whole afternoon on September 28. But that night a traitor slipped out of their barracks and informed the Americans of their plan.

Early the next morning Major MacDonald, a colossal man with tawny hair, came with two companies of GIs and three light tanks. They forced all six hundred men in Compound 7 to assemble on the central field and one by one searched them. Whenever they found a dagger they would slap and punch the weapon carrier or butt him with rifles. Altogether they seized about twenty machetes and seventy daggers. Throughout the search Major MacDonald, holding his pistol, stood away from the prisoners to avoid being attacked.

The Seventh Battalion was thrown into disarray. Should we proceed with our original plan? Some of our leaders began wavering, afraid that the enemy would disarm the other compounds as well.

As we wondered about what to do, Commissar Pei issued the final instruction: "Go ahead and raise the flags tomorrow. Whoever disobeys this order will be dealt with as a deserter from battle." I was unsettled by this message, which seemed to reveal a note of desperation.

Without delay we transmitted the order to the other battalions, and that very evening all the prisoners were informed of it. People turned active, itching to have a go. The atmosphere in the camp grew intense. In our compound, besides the assault unit and the flag protection group, we also formed a rescue crew and a logistic platoon. The men in the Seventh Battalion seemed apprehensive, having just lost most of their weapons. They feared that the enemy might turn on them again, because they had become the weakest of the ten compounds. But they were still determined to fight a battle if need be. They organized a large shock team, over eighty men strong, and a flag protection group, composed of fifteen of their best soldiers, whose task was to prevent the enemy from getting hold of the flag. If their force couldn't stop the GIs, the fifteen men would take down the flag and burn it. Our battalions flag protection group was larger than theirs, consisting of forty people, but our assault unit comprised only thirty men. This implied that Wanren might not want a bloody battle for our battalion.

Under cover of darkness we rolled out three oil drums to the middle of the backyard, filled them with dirt, then planted the flagpole into the gap among the drums and stuffed the hole with gravel. After the preparation we returned to our sheds. I was anxious and fearful and couldn't stop trying to fathom Pei 's motives. Perhaps he wanted to draw the Party's attention to Cheju, a small island hundreds of miles away from China. Indeed, ever since we'd landed here, we had lost communication with the outside world. There were not many Korean servicemen in the camp, so we couldn't find the right contact with North Korean secret agents. Even Father Woodworth, who would visit prison camps in different places, had never come here to preach. Commissar Pei must have felt isolated and eager to create an incident so as to catch outside attention and remind his higher-ups of our existence. In fact, even the GIs here could hardly endure the isolation. Although they often saw movies in their mess hall and always had books, newspapers, and magazines to read, they got bored and frustrated. One night, returning from the hospital after taking a patient with acute appendicitis there, I had seen three American officers standing at the brink of a stream, firing pistols at the full moon. I asked the guard escorting me, "What are they doing?"