Ha Jin - War Trash

All of the twenty-seven Chinese POWs went directly to Enclosure 3 of Camp 13. I was struck by the enclosure's front entrance. It resembled a grand memorial archway, on top of which rose a pole like the apex of a spire. A Nationalist flag was flying high at the tip of the pole. All the four gate pillars, built of bricks and painted white, bore giant black words. The inner two declared STAMP OUT COMMUNISM and RECONSTRUCT OUR CHINA. Atop each of the pillars perched a weather vane, whose bar was spinning a pair of balls lazily. It turned out that the ten compounds in Enclosure 3 were ready to receive us. A few POW leaders stood at the front gate to meet the new arrivals. The American guards frisked us perfunctorily. I felt lucky that they didn't find the Bible in my satchel, though I knew they wouldn't necessarily confiscate such a book.

"Well, well, well, look who's here," said Wang Yong at the sight of me. He came over and held out his hand, smiling in a rather friendly way, his eyes half shut. Two beefy bodyguards stood behind him.

"How are you, Chief Wang?" I asked after shaking his hand.

"I'm good. Welcome back, Feng Yan."

The thought came to me that he must have requested his superiors to return me to his company. This realization unsettled me because he could be ruthless if offended. I had better take care to get along with him, or else he would make me suffer. I pulled Timothy Wright's letter out of my breast pocket and handed it to him, saying, "Here's my recommendation from the Pusan POW Collection Center."

He glanced through the letter and said, "I don't understand the foreign words. Tell me what it says."

"It's from Lieutenant Wright, who is in charge of registration at the Pusan center. He notifies you that I left the Communist camp because I want to go to Taiwan. He also asks you to take care of me." I forced a smile that tightened my jaw.

"Good. Keep this letter and don't lose it."

His bodyguards called him battalion chief now, so I congratulated him on his promotion, which he said was just in name. Later I found out that he led the same number of men as before and his battalion was basically the former company. Together we entered Compound 8, all of which was under Wang Yong's charge.

He didn't send me to one of his three companies but instead kept me at the battalion headquarters. I stayed with his orderlies, bodyguards, the secretary, and the mess officer. The compound was in good order. The yard, the barracks, and the outhouse were all clean, and there was no garbage anywhere in sight; apparently the prisoners here spent a lot of time improving their living conditions. Also, they ate better than the year before. I wondered if the Nationalists in Taiwan had subsidized their board, but this turned out not to be the case. The prisoners had grown some crops on their own. I felt it rather eerie to rub shoulders with these men, many of whom donned self-made uniforms and peaked caps similar to those worn by the Nationalist soldiers. On each cap was a large insignia of the raying sun.

That evening I ran into my friend Bai Dajian, who had by mistake remained here. He was a little sturdier than before but had bloodshot eyes. We shook hands and I even shed a few tears, but he didn't seem overjoyed to see me, though his eyes were also wet with emotion. He said, "I heard you were coming this morning. How have you been since you left?"

"I'm all right." I meant to tell him how the Communists had sent me to Pusan in place of their own man, but I held my tongue, unsure how much he had changed. "Have they treated you well here?" I asked instead.

"Yes, they've been good to me."

There was some coldness in his manner. I couldn't tell whether it stemmed from his resentment at my leaving him behind at the screening the year before, or from our long separation, or from his association with these pro-Nationalists whose cause he might have adopted now. He seemed to have grown mentally and become more reserved, more independent, more sure of himself. Later I came to know he had often served as the interpreter of the battalion. His English was functional now; he had hardly been able to speak a coherent sentence when we parted. I was surprised that Wang Yong hadn't found a better English speaker. Perhaps Bai Dajian feared that my presence here might jeopardize his position.

I still dreaded Liu Tai-an, the vice chief of Compound 72 on Koje Island who had cut out Lin Wushen's heart. My fear was eased when I heard that he had left the prison the previous summer, having fulfilled his task of fighting the Communists in the camp. Ironically, he was in the Communists' hands now. The Americans had sent him on a special mission. After three months' training in Tokyo, he was airdropped into North Korea as an agent in the disguise of a Chinese officer, but no sooner had he landed there than the militia caught him. They handed him over to the headquarters of the Chinese People's Volunteer Army, where the interrogators identified him easily because they had kept a file on him. He was taken back to China and imprisoned in a suburb of Fushun City. Five years later, on June 24, 1958, he was executed publicly for murder, treason, and espionage for the United States. Some inmates in Enclosure 3 believed that it had been Han Shu, the chief here, who'd had Liu sent on the suicidal mission, because the two leaders hadn't gotten along and Han Shu had no longer needed Liu Tai-an's help after the pro-Communists were removed. Now with Liu's absence from the camp, I felt less frightened. As long as I stayed on good terms with Wang Yong, I should be safe.

Life here was simpler than in the pro-Communist camp. From time to time a fight would break out among the prisoners, but it was usually over trifles, such as a lost towel, a missing cigarette holder, a magazine torn accidentally. Not staying with the regular inmates, I didn't have to consort with them every day. Wang Yong gave me a desk and a chair made by the carpentry house in the enclosure, which were as good as those you could buy from a regular furniture store. He also issued me a washbasin, a crude iron bowl painted beige. it had been manufactured in the camp too, but it was handy and made me feel privileged. I was allowed to use the radio set in the battalion headquarters. Most prisoners would listen to the Voice of Free China in the evening, when it often commented on the situation in Korea. Several times it addressed us POWs directly, admonishing us to cooperate with our captors and remain loyal to the Nationalist cause. Once I heard Chiang Kai-shek speak on the radio and call on people in mainland China to rebel against the government.

Most prisoners here spent their days gambling, playing chess, cards, and mah-jongg. Some read booklets distributed by the Civil Information and Education Center and the Red Cross. Unlike the Communist-controlled camp, here you could read anything except books about Marxism and the Communist revolution. I spent more time reading the English part of the Bible, and the Chinese translation printed in the left-hand column on each page enabled me to figure out the meaning of any new word. The reading improved my English rapidly. I was glad I didn't have to peruse any newspaper in its entirety to glean information anymore. Newspapers were in regular supply here, mainly back issues of Stars and Stripes, and we had several Chinese magazines. Sometimes I came across a copy of the New York Times, always five or six weeks old. The prisoners were very fond of the Chinese magazine entitled America, which circulated widely in the enclosure. However, the most popular reading materials were the Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck catalogues. Besides the fancy merchandise advertised in them showing how Americans lived, there were also photos of women and girls in various outfits and postures. I guessed that this must account for the popularity of the catalogues. Every week a movie was shown in our battalion, and it was always enthusiastically received. I saw Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Gone With the Wind, King Kong, The Good Earth, and others.