Jung-myung Lee - The Investigation

‘Dear Suna, the spring I’ve been waiting for isn’t coming to this prison, which I so want to leave. They say spring has come, but damn it, the cell floor is like ice and the guards run wild. People are dying all around me and it doesn’t even make me flinch.’ The old man shouted out expressions that went well beyond the danger zone, as though determined to be caught.

Hiranuma’s pencil raced across the postcard transcribing the old man’s sardonic voice. The prisoners crowded around, curious as to whether the pale writer could repackage the old man’s complaints. When he finished writing, Hiranuma read out in Korean what he’d written. The old man’s intent and feelings were intact, but his overt complaints had been restrained. The courier collected the postcard. The prisoners were tense. Each cell whispered and bet about the fate of the missive. Two days later the postcard was sent off, but the old man wasn’t called to the interrogation room. Silent cheers spread through the cells. The prisoners finally understood who 645 was: someone who would help spirit their souls to the outside.

One by one, prisoners came looking for him. Before Hiranuma wrote their postcard, he asked them who they were sending it to, what their relationship was, what memories they shared. He carefully observed the way they talked and the words they liked to use. He wasn’t simply writing down what was dictated. He constructed a cover that would camouflage the true meaning of what they wanted to convey. When he read back what he had written, the men shed tears, as they heard their true feelings put into words. Hiranuma shaped the desperate sentiments of the prisoners while avoiding the blade of censorship, a perilous high-wire act. A fortnight after the postcards were sent out, answers began arriving, slashed intermittently with black ink, only traces left of undesirable words that didn’t pass Sugiyama’s censorship. The letters sparkled with hope and love. Hiranuma read them out; even if Sugiyama blacked out all of the lines he could resurrect the words, read what was hidden and what couldn’t be said, revealing unshed tears and undreamt dreams. Hiranuma felt alive again. More and more prisoners rushed to secure his services; the old man fashioned ledgers out of scraps of wood and kept records written with a lump of coal. Hiranuma grew busier, the old man’s books grew fatter and Man-gyo busily scurried off to the Japanese wards to supply labour.

‘It’s a hit, Dong-ju,’ the old man said, grinning. ‘People are lining up. If they’ve done it once, they’ll naturally come again. If you reduce the silly interview time, then the poor saps won’t have to wait so long.’

Hiranuma was editing a postcard he’d just written. ‘But if we get caught it’ll all be over,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t you want to keep doing business?’

‘You’re right! Just keep doing what you’re doing. We’re doing pretty good.’ The old man shook his head and looked at his log. ‘Forty-five prisoners wrote postcards in a fortnight. So that’s 180 sen , and your share is ninety sen .’

Man-gyo came up to them. ‘You need anything? Cigarettes? Rice? Sugar cubes or red-bean jelly? I can get you anything.’

‘I could use some labour. How much for a day?’

‘We get four sen from the Japs, but I can’t charge the full price for a business partner, can I? How about half? Two sen a day!’

Hiranuma smiled. ‘Okay. I’ll use the people I write postcards for.’

The old man’s face fell. ‘Look at this boy! A real wolf. You’re trying to take the meat meant for someone else’s belly.’

Man-gyo looked from one man to the other in confusion.

Pitying him, the old man explained what Hiranuma was proposing to do. ‘If Dong-ju writes a postcard, we get four sen . That’s the cost of the labour of the man who sends the postcard. We get four sen from the Japs and send the postcard-writers to them. We take half and this boy gets the other half. But now he’s going to repurchase the manpower of the man who asked for the postcard. And for two sen a day!’

Man-gyo grew concerned. ‘Then we don’t have a worker to send to the Japs, and our business. ’

‘Is over.’

Man-gyo looked alarmed.

Hiranuma jumped in to reassure him. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll have the man work for the Jap, and then you can give him the two sen you would have given me. Then everyone wins. You and the old man can keep earning your cut, the Koreans will make money for their labour, and the Japs can find a Korean to do their work for them. Of course, the guards will keep getting a nice bribe, too.’

‘Then you don’t get anything,’ Man-gyo said. ‘Shouldn’t you get something out of it? You’re doing the writing, after all.’

‘I do get something out of it.’

‘What?’

‘I can use a pencil and paper every day. As long as I can write something, I don’t care what it is.’

It was an ideal arrangement, but the old man and Man-gyo didn’t realize how good they had it.

Sugiyama opened the outgoing post box after his afternoon rounds and found four postcards inside. He settled into his chair. One was by a Korean prisoner sending a postcard to his wife. The neat handwriting succinctly relayed what he wanted to say. He spoke of the prison, but he didn’t complain, and while he wrote about pain, he seemed relieved. Sugiyama was a little suspicious, but he couldn’t pick out exactly what was unsanctioned. The second postcard was to a prisoner’s mother. It was in the same hand as the first one, but its writing style and expression were different, as though a completely different person had written it. He couldn’t find anything problematic about this one, either. This phenomenon repeated itself again and again. The writer knew which words to avoid. Sugiyama suppressed his scepticism and stamped the blue Censorship Completed mark in the middle of the postcards. He leaned back and rubbed his dry eyes. He suddenly sat up as he picked up the last postcard:

More than anything, you should know about the censor officer’s generosity. If I had known that he was this gracious, I would have sent a postcard earlier on. I didn’t send word because I was afraid it would be censored. But thanks to his magnanimity I could read your postcard without a single word being deleted.

A thought struck him: the author of the postcards was writing all of this with Sugiyama in mind. He could tell there was something fishy going on. He would show this brash prisoner what would happen to someone who played pranks on him.

Prisoner 645 sat ramrod-straight on the hard chair, much like his neat handwriting. Sugiyama lowered his voice. ‘The postcards you wrote were for me. You knew I would read them.’

Hiranuma’s brain whirred. One wrong step would cripple him and the prisoners who had asked him to write the postcards.

‘I know you’re crafty. But it doesn’t work with me. I know you’re the one who’s behind all this!’ Sugiyama shouted. He avoided meeting Hiranuma’s eyes, afraid that doing so would change his mind.

‘Yes, you caught me. But it was worth it. I learned a lot about you.’

Sugiyama’s heart sank — had 645 been conducting a secret investigation of his life? He could guess how it happened: 645 would have written his first postcard very carefully, suppressing any emotion and avoiding any expression that might become a problem. After that first postcard passed review, he would have gradually got bolder. One day he would have slipped in a suspicious word, and on another he would have cleverly inserted a phrase with dual meanings. He would have figured out how Sugiyama took the meanings of the words, inferring from the blacked-out letters the prisoners received which expressions Sugiyama disliked. Sugiyama had been fooled into thinking that he was in complete control. He hadn’t been watching Hiranuma; in fact, Hiranuma had been looking straight into Sugiyama’s heart.