War Trash

26. KILL!

All the prisoners in our compound were angry at Captain Larsen, believing he was responsible for Wenfu's death and for the injuries inflicted on the other four fellows. Every evening a duty sergeant would assemble us in the front yard to conduct the head count. Sometimes Larsen would do it personally. I don't know how this got started. One evening in early November, after Larsen's count, when he said, "You're dismissed," suddenly dozens of prisoners shouted in Chinese, "Kill!"

Perplexed, Larsen looked around, then grabbed hold of Shanmin, who couldn't make off fast enough, and asked him what they meant. The boy told him to his face, using the few English words I had taught him, "Kill that bad egg."

At once Larsen's face dilated with rage, his nostrils flaring. He stretched out both hands, flapping them toward his chest as though able to embrace the whole yard into his arms. He lifted his voice and ordered us, "Halt! You all come back and form up again!"

Reluctantly we reassembled in front of him. He told us, "We're going to do this one more time. I want you to leave without a peep, got it?"

I translated his order, but nobody responded. A lull set in as two dogs yapped from a straw shack on a hill slope in the southeast, followed by a pair of magpies that cried sleepily from the wild orange grove beyond the fences of barbed wire. In the south the half moon was hardly visible, obscured by billows of rusty clouds. Larsen jerked his neck and announced, "Now you're dismissed."

"Kill!" roared most of the men, then we all started for our living quarters.

"Damn it!" Larsen exploded, throwing up his big hands. "You all come back and line up again." He stamped his foot while the GIs behind him were grinning as if they had been bystanders.

Wordlessly we regrouped before him, but everyone seemed to have brightened up some. Larsen blustered, "I want you to disband quietly. Everybody keep your mouth shut when I let you go. If you don't follow my orders this time, I'll cut your rations for a week."

I told the crowd his warning, but they just stared at him without betraying any emotion. Then I saw a smirk cross Wanren's stubbly face; he seemed at ease, wanting to let this confrontation continue.

"Attention!" Larsen called.

Some of us clicked our heels. The captain coughed, then shouted, "Now you're dismissed."

"Kill!" all the prisoners thundered in one voice.

Larsen turned around and ordered the squad of GIs, "Take a few of them to my office."

His men rushed over, some brandishing pistols, grabbed three inmates, and dragged them away. We hadn't expected he would make arrests indiscriminately. Nor had we thought the GIs carried handguns underneath their jackets; if they had been unarmed, some of us might have charged at them to rescue the three men. Before we recovered from the shock, the GIs had taken the fellows out the front gate, shoving them and prodding their backs with handguns. All the other prisoners could do was call Larsen names, which he didn't understand anyway.

Without delay the heads of the companies gathered at our headquarters to discuss the situation and make plans of action. I was unsure whether it was wise to be so confrontational. No doubt the three detainees were going to suffer for us, so we shouldn't let the hostility escalate. In any event we must prevent Larsen from hurting them. Yet there seemed no way to make the enemy relent if we didn't resort to some kind of pressure or force. Words alone wouldn't be sufficient.

While the leaders were arguing, I sat on an upturned crate listening without expressing my view. The new orderly, Shanmin, was sitting next to me, but he just went on slapping at flies with a self-made swatter, a scrap of perforated leather affixed to the end of a bamboo stick. He had a theory about swatting flies, which, according to him, couldn't take off without shifting position first, so you should strike at them only when they were on the move or rubbing their legs. I saw a black mosquito on his neck working so hard that it looked as if it were standing on its head, so I swatted it. Shanmin was startled, then relaxed, seeing the bloodstain on my palm.

Soon the leaders reached a consensus: we would go on a hunger strike and demand to talk with Colonel Kelly in person. Since it was already too dark to contact the prison house and the other compounds, they decided that we should go ahead and act on our own the next day.

The kitchen was ordered not to make breakfast, so the cooks happily slept in the next morning. As soon as it was light we signaled our decision to the other compounds and then to Commissar Pei. The guards on the tower noticed that few inmates stirred, so they asked us why the compound was so quiet. Having learned about the hunger strike and our demand, they reported the situation to their superior without delay, but Captain Larsen ignored us.

For a whole morning our barracks lost its daily activity; most prisoners lounged in bed doing nothing. Nobody was allowed to leave his shed unless he had to go to the outhouse. Our leaders had told us not to make any noise, because they intended to affect the guards with our silence. After ten-thirty, the time for the cooks to prepare the midday meal, none of the chimneys in the ten compounds spat smoke, and all the kitchens remained locked. This unnerved Larsen, who hadn't expected that the entire camp would participate in the hunger strike. He came to our front gate and stood beside the three gunnysacks of barley and a huge hamper of turnip greens, delivered by a truck two hours ago but rejected by our cooks. From time to time Larsen beckoned to inmates passing by, probably meaning he'd like to talk with them, but they ignored him. He lit a cigarette and chatted with the guards for a while. Then a GI handed him a megaphone, through which the captain yelled at us, "I order you to eat lunch. The vegetable is rotting in the sun, and I won't tolerate this kind of waste."

His words amused some prisoners, who laughed, saying, "As though he owned our mouths."

This was the first time that all the compounds had gone on a hunger strike in Camp 8. When we were on Koje Island, this kind of protest had been commonplace and the prison authorities had known how to cope with it, but here Colonel Kelly, somewhat disturbed, readily agreed to meet with the chiefs of the battalions. We were encouraged by his agreement, though uncertain whether he really intended to resolve the crisis.

Toward midafternoon Wanren and I, representing our compound, went to the guards' headquarters. In the lounge outside Kelly's office, more than a dozen prisoners were already seated on folding chairs, but the colonel himself was not in. Chaolin nodded at me and I waved back. I went over and sat down behind him. Yet we couldn't chat freely because Interpreter Peng, an officer from Taiwan working for the camp administration, was within hearing, his rear end resting on the windowsill. Chaolin turned around and said to me, "I've heard you did a great job in helping others." He was alluding to my assistance to Wanren.

I replied, "In a hellhole like this we ought to help each other." I noticed that Interpreter Peng was all ears, so I switched the topic and asked Chaolin, "Are you ready to spend the winter here?"

"Sure, we each just got another blanket."

That was news to me; our compound hadn't received additional clothing for the coming winter yet. A surge of sadness gripped my heart, but I managed to ask him again, referring to the dry socket on his upper gum, "What happened to your tooth?"

"A GI knocked it out of me last month."

"Does it still hurt?"

"It's all right now."

So he had lost an incisor in the battle for raising the flag, and the loss didn't seem to bother him.

Captain Larsen went to the front and clapped loudly to cut short our chattering. He said, "When Colonel Kelly comes in, everybody must get up, okay?"

There was no response. I sat next to Wanren, fascinated by the rhythmic clatter of a typewriter in a room down the hall. In the opposite corner of the lounge stood a cluster of dwarf bamboos set in an earthen pot. Beside the plant was a coffeemaker on a metal desk, gurgling staccato. The door opened and Colonel Kelly stepped in, but none of us stood up, whereas Captain Larsen and Interpreter Peng both sprang to their feet. Anger distorted Larsen's face.

The colonel stopped in front of us, a pistol on his brass-studded belt over which hung his beer belly. He bunched up his lips and said to us, "I have only twenty minutes, so just tell me why you started the hunger strike."

We had figured out our demands beforehand, which Chaolin began to present to him. As Chaoli's interpreter, I wondered if I should stand up, but decided not to, seeing that he remained seated. Then Colonel Kelly motioned for me to stop because he wanted Peng to do the translation. This was all the better for me.

Chaolin told Kelly that we had two demands: first, Captain Larsen must release our comrades; second, the camp authorities must investigate the death of Wenfu and punish the murderers. To our surprise, Kelly smiled and said, "The three prisoners will be sent back. There's no reason for us to keep them. Actually they may be already on their way back to the compound." He fixed a stare on Larsen as though annoyed by his inability to handle us by himself. Then he resumed, "But the investigation of the death will take time, and we cannot reach any conclusion before the process is complete, so I can't promise you what I'm going to do."

"Do you agree to investigate or not?" challenged Chaolin.

"Of course I do. I'll have to write a report to my higher-ups on this case as well, so I'm going to look into it."

"Will you let us know the result of the investigation?"

"That's something we can talk about."

"We want the murderers punished."

"Let's not jump the gun, all right? What you should do now is call off the hunger strike."

"But we want you to promise you'll investigate the murder case and punish the guilty party."

"Like I said, I'm going to look into it and if somebody's guilty, we'll handle him accordingly. Now, you must stop starving yourselves."

"Are you going to share the result of the investigation with us or not?"

"I shall do that only if you end the hunger strike."

"Is this a promise?"

"Yes."

"In that case our kitchens will cook again."

"When?"

"Today."

"Good, I'm pleased to hear that."

I didn't expect the dialogue to be so reasonable. Somehow Chaolin and the other chiefs didn't raise more questions. They should have asked the colonel approximately how long it would take him to finish the investigation and when we would hear from him, just as Kelly had pressed Chaolin for the exact time the hunger strike would be called off. I didn't remind them of this negligence because I wanted the crisis to end as soon as possible.

Before we left, the colonel even shook Chaolin's hand as though they had known each other for years. I was surprised by his cordiality, which made Chaolin so uncomfortable that he grinned at us tightly.

The three detained men had been returned while Wanren and I were away at the guards' headquarters. One had suffered a smashed hand and the other two had swollen faces. Although we agreed to eat dinner that day, that same evening we again shouted "Kill!" when Larsen dismissed us at the end of the head count. Crimson-faced, he got hold of Wanren and said, "Will you please stop this silly trick?" I translated the question.

Our chief answered, "You beat up my men and we must get even."

Larsen put on an innocent look and said, "I didn't touch them, I swear. It was those guys at the central office who mishandled them. I protested to them already and said they just made my job more difficult. Will you stop your men from shouting that silly word?"

His explanation seemed convincing to Wanren, who had heard from the three injured fellows that some strange Americans had whacked them. Slow of words, Wanren didn't counter with the fact that it had been Larsen who ordered their arrest. Instead, he argued, "We have freedom of speech, don't we? We've done nothing wrong."

I translated this a little differently, saying, "Captain, you shouldn't get annoyed. In our army we often use the word 'kill' as an exclamation, like 'hurray' or 'whoopee.' You wouldn't make us give up our language, would you?"

"That's not what I meant."

"You respect freedom of speech, don't you?"

"Sure we do."

"So no hard feelings."

He sighed, shaking his lumpy chin. From then on we would continue to shout "Kill!" whenever Larsen conducted the head count, and he would turn a deaf ear to it.

Colonel Kelly didn't keep his promise. We never heard from him about the result of the investigation, which perhaps hadn't taken place, and we knew for a fact that nobody was punished for the death of Wenfu. Wenfu hadn't had any close friend among the prisoners, so nobody mentioned him again.