War Trash

20. ARRIVAL AT CHEJUISLAND

Although we had been shut into the cabins, the ships didn't weigh anchor until two hours later. The cabin I was in was swarming with about five hundred men, some sitting and some standing. Every bit of space in here was taken; it was impossible for anyone to lie down. A line of lamps behind glazed glass affixed along the walls shed dim light on the prisoners' faces and rendered them more sallow. Fortunately I was pushed against a wall, so I managed to settle down in a corner. The dust on the floor was at least half an inch thick. In the air there was a strong odor of dung – the ship must formerly have carried fertilizer or guano. Ten yards away from me, a man with a trampled leg was whimpering. There was no medic among us, so nobody could help him. Two men, exhausted from standing, even sat on the injured fellow's good leg, but they got up after others objected. I was angry at the way the Americans were transporting us. Why couldn't they use more ships or move us batch by batch?

Gradually the cabin began to stink with human stench. Curses went up here and there, even louder than the roaring of the engine. Those men who had to stand on their feet tired out, and grew clamorous and aggressive, jabbing their elbows at one another. Against the aft wall of the cabin stood a line of oil drums, all sawed in half, which we called "honey buckets" because they served as night pails in the camp. At the beginning of the trip some men vomited into them, but soon some began to use them to relieve themselves. Whenever the ship rocked, the half dozen oil drums would shift and even careen. Eventually two of them tipped over, the liquid stuff spilling on the floor; yet people had no choice but to remain where they were, some of their blanket rolls soaked with urine. Unless you were unable to hold it any longer, you wouldn't fight your way to reach one of those buckets to relieve yourself, not because of the shame of urinating or doing a BM in front of so many eyes but because you couldn't possibly regain your spot once you had left and would have to stand all the way afterward.

I rooted in my corner and closed my eyes to shut out this hellish sight. In a dazed state of mind I drifted off to sleep from time to time. I don't know how long I had been asleep before a metallic thud from above woke me up. The hatch on the deck was opened and a gust of air rushed in. Ah, fresh air! I inhaled it ravenously. Then an iron bucket tied to a hemp rope came down, overflowing with cold rice. All at once people near the opening began scrambling toward the food, and abuse was tossed out in all directions. As they were shoving and tussling, another few buckets of rice were lowered down, but it was impossible for most men to reach the food; as a result, only about a third of the prisoners actually had a bite. I was too far away from the rice buckets, so I gave up trying.

Following the food came five buckets of water, most of which spilled over the men below the opening. The rice and the water were our dinner. In fact, even if I could have reached a bucket I would have had second thoughts about taking in anything, for fear of having to relieve myself afterward.

I tried to block out the horrible scene by mulling over what had happened on the beach that day. Before we boarded the ships, two leaders, Zhao Teng and Zhang Wanren, had sidled up to me when the GIs had turned their eyes to a fight between two prisoners, staged to divert their attention. Both of them congratulated me on my "negotiation with Smart," calling it a great victory. Wary of the term they used, I told them what the general had said to Commissar Pei, "You can go to Cheju with them. But we'll keep you separate from the crowd from now on." They were both nonplussed. And for a good while we racked our brains to fathom the implications of Smarts words. He had seemed to say that Pei and we were all going to stay on Cheju. This was good news in a way, because it implied there might indeed be a prison camp on the island. General Smart's words might also suggest that the Americans were not going to finish us off somewhere in the middle of the ocean. So we felt somewhat relieved.

The ship lurched and a man nearby retched. I closed my eyes and let my mind continue to roam. I wondered why Pei had grabbed me to be photographed with him on the beach. I was sure he hadn't done that out of kindness or appreciation of my service, but I couldn't figure out his motive. Probably he had done it from habit, following his instinct for acting in such a situation. Then it dawned on me that my presence in the picture could at least provide a date and context for it, so that the enemy couldn't easily distort it for propaganda and thus Pei 's superiors could not suspect him of cooperating with the enemy. In other words, he had used me as a potential witness to his innocence. What a smart man. I was impressed, though I felt uneasy about being used like that.

Tired of thinking, I tried to doze away Now and then misgivings would rise in my mind about where we were headed. People around me talked about whether the Americans would make us work like coolies or send us to a battlefield, so I couldn't help but think about all the possibilities too. Luckier than many of the men who had to fight to keep their spots, I was safe in my corner niche and managed to sleep several hours before the engine finally stopped grinding.

Toward daybreak we dropped anchor at a wharf on the northern side of Cheju Island. We were let out of the cabins and then disembarked. Four men, seriously trampled, were left on our ship, accompanied only by an orderly. For the moment few of us gave a thought to them, because everyone was desperate to breathe fresh air and stretch his limbs. After we stayed long enough on the shore, some men were sent back to carry the injured off the ship. The beach here was sandy and the sea was much less yellow, almost aquamarine. One by one they laid the injured men on the sand. "Water, who has water?" a man shouted through his hands cupped around his mouth. Soon a half-filled canteen was passed on to the spot where the four fellows were lying and groaning.

About half an hour later an ambulance came to carry them to the hospital. The shore was still wrapped in fog. A macadam road stretched along the whitish beach and faded into the milky clouds. Through the haze we could see a few bulldozers parked at a construction site nearby, motionless and dark like miniature reefs. By now Commissar Pei had gotten off the other ship too, but two GIs were guarding him. After we all assembled on the beach, the sun finally came out, dissipating the fog in the southeast, where a few miles away rose some rugged hills. In front of us the contour of the prison, Camp 8, was growing clear on a gentle incline. It was an immense enclosure, encircled by three rows of barbed wire. We were told that this place had been specially built for us, the would-be repatriates. Within the camp numerous barbed-wire fences surrounded clusters of sheds that were the barracks for the prisoners. Along the exterior fence of the camp stood some guard towers on wooden pillars braced by slanting battens as thick as beams, a pair of searchlights mounted on the handrails of each tower. At the middle of the other end of the camp, near the main entrance, sat a brick house, which was the guards' office. Unlike on Koje Island, here such a house was within the enclosure. The Americans seemed to have a different way of running this place.

The frail boy Richard had saved hadn't stayed in the same cabin with me, but he caught sight of me on the beach. Wordlessly he came over as if to claim a special relationship. His long-lashed eyes were still intense, fastened on me. I patted his shoulder and asked, "What's your name?"

"Shanmin," came his clear voice.

"Have they put you into a squad yet?"

He shook his head. I said, "Then stay with me."

He nodded eagerly.

Our procession walked a long distance around the fence to reach the front gate. When we had entered the camp, I saw why there were so many barbed-wire fences in here. Within the enclosure were ten compounds, each containing about ten sheds and surrounded by barbed wire almost fifteen feet high. These compounds, arranged in two unequal rows and guarded individually by GIs at the gates, were divided by a large open field, to the west of which were four compounds, about one hundred yards apart from one another, and to the east of which lay six compounds, a shorter distance separating them, about eighty yards. This layout made it impossible for any barracks to have direct contact with its neighbors. In addition, there was a small prison, a stone house at the edge of the sea, over a thousand feet from the northern fence of the camp. The enemy seemed to have learned from the abduction of General Bell the importance of dispersing the POW leaders, so they meant to keep us in smaller groups from now on.

We were divided into ten units, each having about six hundred men. Shanmin and I were put into Compound 6, whose conditions were not as bad as I had feared, its facilities new and adequate on the whole. The compound was at the northeastern end of the camp. In it, eight long sheds stood in parallel, all built of dark volcanic rocks with asphalt-felt roofs. At its southeastern corner stood the kitchen, with a dwarf chimney, and at the southwestern end was the latrine, similar to the residential sheds in shape, though smaller in size. What made the privy unusual was that its urinal had been installed outside, a long concrete trough slanting alongside the fence at an angle of fifteen degrees. In between the kitchen and the outhouse was the recreation area, a small playing field as large as four basketball courts placed together. All the other nine compounds basically had the same layout.

Although each shed here held more than seventy men, it was much less crowded than the tents in the camp on Koje Island. In it two long plank beds had been installed along the walls; on either bed forty people could sleep. This was not bad at all. Shanmin and I were assigned to the first shed, near the kitchen. The moment I unpacked my bedroll, a commotion rose from outside. I went out to take a look. Oddly enough, Commissar Pei strolled into our barracks, smiling and waving at the men around. At once people broke out shouting, "Long live Chairman Mao!," "Long live the Communist Party!," "Fight the American imperialists to death!" Those slogans were their way of expressing their joy. About two thousand men were still waiting in the field to be assigned to their compounds; they saw our top leader and began shouting too. Immediately the commissar gestured for them to hush for fear of attracting the enemy's attention. The guards must have forgotten General Smarts instructions that Pei must be kept separate from us. How else could they have let him come back like this? A GI walked over and handed two cans of Spam through the barbed wire to a prisoner in our compound, saying, "Those guys over there asked me to give you these for the brass." He was referring to

Pei and the inmates outside Compound 7 waiting to be led into their quarters. Evidently Commissar Pei 's appearance had boosted the prisoners' morale. Some men even shed tears, as though a god, or a guardian angel, had suddenly appeared among us. They regarded Pei as the embodiment of the Communist Party here. These men had no gods to worship, so they could only project their religious feelings on a leader, a human being, whose return to us might have been a fluke. And even Commissar Pei himself said to me, "I don't know why the Americans let me come back."

When he had settled in, he sat down beside me, and putting his large hand on my knee, praised me for speaking to General Smart on his behalf. "You're a brave man, Yuan," he said, and slapped at a horsefly landing on his face. "If you hadn't intervened yesterday, they would've kept me on Koje Island for sure. Then heaven knows what would have happened to me."

"It was Zhao Teng who told me to deliver the message," I admitted.

"But you spoke well to Smart. I was impressed by your composure. You made me realize our Party needs many more intellectuals like you. Don't you think you're a tough soldier now?" He tossed his head back and laughed heartily.

"Maybe. I feel I've developed a little."

"More than a little. It's remarkable that adversities have toughened you so much. To be honest, I used to consider intellectuals unreliable, but you've made me think differently."

I was pleased by his praise, but didn't know how to respond. He then told me that the Party had awarded me another merit citation, first class this time, in addition to the one I had earned for stealing the pistol. I felt proud of myself. Actually I could see that people respected me more than before. By now I had been imprisoned for almost a year and had indeed become a stronger man, though sometimes I still felt isolated and lonely.

Toward midafternoon, a squad of GIs came in and took Commissar Pei away to the prison house on the beach, into which the camp authorities had originally intended to put him. That was the top jail on Cheju Island, where Pei was to be confined from now on.