Jung-myung Lee - The Investigation

‘And how will you find him?’ Hasegawa grabbed his military sword in fury.

Maeda shot me a panicked look. ‘This one’s young, but very determined. He’s the one who discovered the tunnel in the first place.’

Hasegawa glared at me, waiting for me to explain.

‘During my investigation of the murder I began to observe Prisoner 331, who’d been severely beaten by Sugiyama. I thought that might be motive enough for murder. I saw that his gang wore uniforms that had unusually worn and baggy knees. I thought maybe they frequently kneeled before him, but 331’s trousers were like that too. When I checked the solitary-wing log, I found that they were often sent there. They were practically volunteering to go. Because it’s quiet there and they were left alone, it’s the best place to plot something. And surveillance over there is lax, because the wing is remote and has thick double-layer walls.’

Hasegawa raised his eyebrows. ‘How did you know they dug a tunnel?’

‘The solitary wing is in the path of a strong mountain wind. The guard there said the wind carries dirt and piles it under the walls. In each solitary cell there’s a small barred window. Each time the wind blew they’d toss the dirt they dug out through it to get rid of the evidence. The piles of dirt and sand weren’t really from the mountain. The prisoners had dug it up.’

‘And how did you know that the tunnel was under the latrine?’

‘It’s the only place we don’t inspect. Even if the cell was searched, nobody would look there. A filthy place is safe from prying eyes.’

By now, Maeda had regained his confidence. ‘Sir, the murder of the guard and the escape attempt are not separate incidents. We will catch these barbarians and punish them accordingly.’ He turned to me, encouraging me to explain.

I continued in a louder voice to chase away my fears: ‘The prisoners harboured deep animosity towards Sugiyama’s excessive violence. He had focused his surveillance on a few people. Prisoner 331 was one of them. Sugiyama discovered his escape plot, so 331 got rid of him.’

‘So this 331 is the murderer?’ Hasegawa asked.

‘That’s still only a hypothesis. We’ll have to interrogate him and get him to confess.’

Hasegawa gripped the hilt of his sword. ‘Well, what are you waiting for? Hurry up! Get him to spill!’

The floor of the interrogation room was soaked through. One side of the room was filled with pincers large and small, bars, chains and sharp tools. On the other side were a cement tub filled with water, a rack and a wooden stool. The smell of rusted metal and blood permeated the stale air. Prisoner 331 was naked, tied to the crossbeam with his arms outstretched. Blood trickled down from his swelling eye, and his ankles were scabbed, rubbed raw by his shackles. A guard, wearing rubber gloves up to his elbows, repeatedly threw water on him. The guard smiled, flashing his yellow teeth. But the guard was no different from the man he had broken. He must be a father who embraced his young son when he returned home, a gentle husband who fixed a broken shelf in the kitchen, a friendly neighbour who was now beating a helpless man to a bloody pulp.

‘Good luck,’ he said to me as he fastened the buttons on his coat. ‘I loosened him up, so he should start talking soon.’ He went up the stairs to leave.

It was a common manoeuvre: the prisoner would be relieved at the departure of the brutal guard and would tell his replacement everything. My role was to appear at the appropriate time and write the report. After the other guard left, I undid the pulley block attached to the crossbeam and Prisoner 331 collapsed on the floor like a pile of sand. I dragged him to a chair and seated him, and he squinted, slowly focusing his swollen eyes on me. I draped his uniform on his shoulders. His eyes betrayed complicated feelings.

I opened the report file and sharpened my stubby pencil. ‘331! How long have you been digging that underground tunnel?’ I knew I wouldn’t get an answer. He had withstood twenty-four hours of beatings so far. I got up, shovelled some peat into the furnace and lit it. The light from the weak fire danced on his blood-soaked face.

‘It’s all over,’ 331 moaned, his voice hoarse. ‘All that’s left for me is death. I guess all I can do is confess. I might as well tell you.’

‘And why would you tell me, when you didn’t open your mouth while you were being beaten to a pulp?’

‘You figured it out. You read the solitary-wing log and found out that I’m a regular in solitary. Nobody even imagined what was going on, but you deduced what I was doing in there. I think you’ll accept my terms.’

‘What terms? I’m only a guard. If you want to negotiate, do it with the head guard or the warden.’

‘No. They just want to kill me. You — you’re interested in the stories. About me. About the prison.’

‘I don’t have the power to let you live.’

‘I don’t expect that. Just write down what I tell you. Don’t remove a single word and don’t add anything. Of course, you may not believe me. You might think I’m pulling your leg. But you can’t edit it. You have to record what I say, word for word.’

‘And why would I do that?’

‘Somebody needs to record what is going on in here. So people will know what happened, when the war ends.’

‘The regulations are to destroy documents after a certain time. No record exists forever.’

Prisoner 331 threw me a confident smile and pointed at my head. ‘At least what’s recorded in there won’t disappear. The walls of this terrible place will crumble and documents will burn, but the memories in your head will remain. So don’t you die until the war’s over!’ His eyes flashed.

I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know what he wanted out of this. I doubted he’d tell me the truth. Even if he did, I was sure it would be bait for some scheme.

‘Seven years,’ he blurted out, disregarding my confusion. ‘It’s been almost seven years since I came to this hellhole.’

I picked up my pencil. The recycled paper waited hungrily to record his story.

‘From the day I got here I dreamed of escaping,’ he said. ‘I dug the tunnel to escape from death, but it turns out what I dug was the road to death.’

Choi arrived at Fukuoka Prison in July 1938 for the attempted assassination of a prominent figure and the instigation of rebellion. He had spent half his life being hounded and the other half in prison. As a teenager he was pursued by the police for setting fire to several public buildings. The year he turned twenty he crossed the Tumen River. Manchuria was an ideal place for Koreans; they weren’t oppressed by the Japanese Government-General of Korea or the vicious Special Higher Police, and they weren’t subject to the violence of Japanese merchants. He settled in a Korean neighbourhood in Mukden. He frequented gambling dens and bars, shouting and cursing. He honed his fighting skills. Soon he was earning bundles of cash from the barwoman who pleaded with him to collect overdue bar tabs on her behalf, from the rice dealer who asked him to find the employee who’d stolen from him, and from the business magnate who tasked him with killing his cheating wife’s lover.

One day he was hanging around a gambling den when a man with small rat-like eyes approached him. Choi drank with the man for a couple of hours, then packed his bags and followed him out of town. They walked for two days until they arrived at a cave in the mountains, where twenty bearded men in animal pelts were hiding, exhausted from anxiety and hunger. These men had lost everything to the Japanese. Their rice paddies and houses had been expropriated; their food, belongings and wives had been taken through allocated collection; their home towns and language obliterated. They were willing to do anything just to kill some Japs. The problem was that nobody had ever killed a single one. A man with a thick beard introduced himself as the commander of an autonomous anti-Japanese guerrilla unit; in reality, they were merely a gang of thieves who swung their fists at Korean merchants under the guise of building a war chest. The commander was a drunk and welcomed Choi’s fists and big ideas, thinking that they would help the unit grow into the most feared in Mukden, but he soon kicked himself for his stupidity — Choi was not an obedient dog, he was a wolf. Choi became the leader of a subset gang that threatened the commander’s position. The commander, unable to wrest control, leaked false information to a Japanese spy: that a man named Choi Chi-su was planning to lead an attack on the Kwantung Army’s Mukden headquarters.