I was frightened, unsure if any of the four inmates knew about the pistol. I wondered why the officer wouldn't have Chaolin dragged away too. Probably he was aware that Chaolin was a die-hard Communist from whom they couldn't extract any information. I was also worried that the Americans might be in possession of the iron bar I had dropped, which could be a piece of evidence and from which they might obtain my fingerprints. A sweat broke out on my neck and forehead, but I dared not lift my hand to wipe it for fear of drawing attention. I kept a low profile, remaining in the crowd, while Ming stood at the front serving as an interpreter.
In the meantime, frustrated and unable to focus on the search, the officer began cursing us and threatened to throw some of us into solitary confinement if we didn't tell him the names of the people involved in the theft. "I'll try the lot of you. D'you hear me?" he shouted. "You bunch of thieves! You don't dare to face me like a man!"
Ming didn't bother to translate those words. We all remained silent as though nobody had understood the officer. Many looked at him with genuine confusion. Half an hour later the Americans withdrew. But before leaving, the officer warned us that this was just the beginning of the investigation.
Toward midafternoon two squads of GIs came in again, carrying shovels and pickaxes, and they also delivered to us the inmates they had taken away. The four men were all battered, their noses stuffed with bloody cotton balls and their faces swollen like loaves of bread. One had a black eye with sealed lids. They were so fear-stricken that they could hardly speak, merely nodding or shaking their heads when others talked to them. I felt awful, though none of them looked trustworthy. If they had known I was the thief, they might have given me away.
While we were busy helping the returned men, the GIs went on digging and poking around. They called us all kinds of names for causing them such drudgery, but some prisoners whistled and waved their caps at them. This annoyed them more.
They didn't find any weapon, not even one of the five bullets, but they got hold of two pairs of pliers, which was a minor loss to us. That evening I was informed that the Party Committee here had cited me for brave service. The citation was of the third class. I was pleased, hoping that from now on my life would be easier and that they wouldn't test me again.
The pistol was never used in our later struggle. It was passed on to the North Korean prisoners, who already possessed some small firearms.
The Communists always tested the men they suspected. I knew a number of such cases in the camp. One man was instructed to burn a warehouse storing provisions for the POWs, and under cover of darkness he torched not only the main house but also two stacks of timber nearby. The flames sprang up fifty feet high, and four fire engines raced back and forth to get water from the seaside, but everybody could see that the fire was inextinguishable. The man was awarded a special merit citation by the Party Committee afterward. Luckily for him, the Americans, after questioning many of us, gave up searching for the arsonist. Another man was ordered to steal a crate of Spam from a storehouse at night. He didn't make it because a searchlight spotted him as he was crawling back through a hole in a fence, and he was shot dead. The guards must have thought he was either cutting the fence with pliers or attempting to blow it up with a box of explosives, which the crate of Spam might have resembled. Indeed, we had planned to breach the fence all along. In the compound there were about a dozen pairs of pliers and pincers, all smuggled in by the prisoners. The enemy knew that and often came to hunt for them. These tools would be indispensable if it came to the point where we had to break jail, so our leaders often ordered someone they meant to test to steal a pair.
15. MEETING WITH MR. PARK
There was frequent contact between us and the compounds controlled by the Korean Communists. Commissar Pei wore a steel-strapped Swiss watch offered to him by our Korean comrades. On April 30 we received a secret message from them, which requested us to send two representatives to attend an important meeting. Pei let Chaolin and me go. Initially I was excited about this assignment, assuming the Party had begun to trust me now that I had stolen the pistol; but on second thought, I realized I'd become a sidekick to Chaolin in this mission mainly because I spoke English. Nobody among us knew Korean, and Pei wouldn't want the Koreans to think we were ignorant of any foreign language, so he sent me along to save face.
The Korean POWs had been here longer than we had and possessed more resources. They were better supplied than the civilians and in away fared even better than the South Korean troops, who didn't have enough medicine and often starved. Our North Korean comrades could always exchange clothing for kimchee and soybean paste with the villagers, and their underground channels kept them in touch with their national leaders.
As a rule, when a multicompound meeting was to be held, all the attendees from different compounds would feign illness so as to get permission to go to the Sixty-fourth Field Hospital, where a meeting would take place. Many Korean medical personnel worked there, and the Communists controlled a good part of the hospital. On May 1, Chaolin and I got permission from Dr. Wang of our compound, so the guards let us out. Chaolin knew the camp well because he often left our compound to meet with the prison authorities. He looked runty, like a starved chicken, but he had a steel will and often quarreled with the Americans, since as the vice chief of Compound 602 he spoke on behalf of six thousand men (Zhao Teng, the nominal chief, was slow of words). Chaolin was also good at giving speeches that could sway a large audience. I respected him for his eloquence and experience, though whenever I was with him I would feel tense, wary about what I'd say and do.
The hospital was within the camp and served the POWs only; it consisted of eight tents, two small houses, and three sheds. Behind a cottage we were received by two Korean men, both in their early thirties, one with a fleshy face, which was rare among the Koreans, whereas the other looked quite feminine, delicate and slender. We sat down in the backyard, where laundered sheets hung on iron wires stretched among drooping willows, obscuring the yard considerably. A swing swayed gently in the breeze as if there had been children living in the cottage. Chaolin had met the officers before and introduced them to me as Lee and Choi, saying they were both colonels in the Korean People's Army. Choi, the fleshy-faced man, happened to be a college graduate, had majored in history, and could speak some English and Russian. Lee was less educated, but he spoke Chinese beautifully, having lived in Manchuria as a guerrilla fighting the Japanese for over a decade. They looked healthier than regular prisoners and seemed at ease. On our way in I had noticed two young Korean nurses folding sterilized bandages in an office at the front of the house; in reality these women were keeping guard for us. Now and then they hummed a song; their laughter sounded carefree. Their pleasant voices distracted me from time to time.
The meeting was short; it wouldn't be safe to stay in the backyard too long. But we were shocked by what the officers told us: the Koreans planned to kidnap General Bell, the U.S. commandant on Koje Island. They wanted our compound to cooperate with them.
"How can we assist you in carrying out this bold plan?" asked Chaolin.
They said we should ease the general's vigilance by inviting him to our compound and talking with him without arousing his suspicion; after that, they would ask him to visit their barracks too. Chaolin suggested that we seize General Bell ourselves if he came to our compound, but Lee, the feminine man, said they had already made arrangements and had more "armed force" than we did. He explained, "We shouldn't let you bear the brunt again if the Americans retaliate. You've already sacrificed enough." He must have been referring to the fact that we had come all the way to Korea to fight our common enemy. Chaolin didn't insist and promised to participate in their plan.