War Trash

by Ha Jin

  “No.”

  “No lice and nits in the seams of your underclothes?”

  “Of course not. We deloused everyone last week.”

  “I’m not a fool, you know.”

  “You can inspect our barracks right now, but on one condition. If you’re satisfied with our cleaning, you will give us a box of corned beef, twenty-four cans.”

  “I don’t cut deals with my prisoners.”

  “Look, we’re not requesting this for ourselves. You can go ask the wounded men in our barracks whether they ate sausages yesterday.”

  A doubtful smirk emerged on Larsen’s face. His glossy eyes blinked; his brown pupils contracted a little and then relaxed. I could see that he took us to be a bunch of corrupt officers, so I added, “On our word of honor, we didn’t take a single bite of the sausages. If you are fair, you’re obligated to come and ask the wounded men. Your doubts about our officers’ integrity are an insult to us.”

  I felt I couldn’t continue any longer, because I was just an interpreter and shouldn’t take over the role of the requester. Wanren meanwhile seemed content to let me do the persuasion and remained silent. To our relief, Larsen stood up, stubbed out his cigar in a stainless steel ashtray, and put the unused half into his breast pocket. Together we all left the office. But Larsen went in another direction, toward the PX, saying he’d arrive at our compound in an hour or so and personally question some wounded men.

  Without delay we returned, told some prisoners to begin cleaning the yard, and deployed the Security Platoon inside the shed where the wounded men lived. After midmorning Captain Larsen came, accompanied by a first lieutenant who carried one shoulder higher than the other. They sauntered through the gate, both in good spirits, chewing gum and bantering with each other. A few prisoners, as instructed, smiled and waved at them. Everything seemed normal, and some men lounged around, sunning themselves. I went up to the two officers and said, “Thank you for coming to inspect our barracks. Would you like to see the wounded men first?”

  They nodded and followed me to the shed beside whose door hung a Red Cross sign. The second they stepped in, the door was shut behind them. Larsen took alarm, but before he could say a word, our battalion chief shouted, “Hold them!” More than ten men sprang at them and twisted their arms behind their backs.

  “Hey, hey, what’s this about?” cried the spindly lieutenant.

  “Jesus!” Larsen hollered. “I’ll give you five crates of corned beef, all right? Just let us go!”

  Wanren went over, about to slap him, but I held the chief back, whispering, “This isn’t what we have them here for.” That cooled him off a little. I turned to the American officers and said, “We invited you here just for a serious talk. Yesterday morning, Captain Larsen, you misled our chief into signing his name on a piece of paper. It was dishonest of you to take advantage of his ignorance of English. Now we demand you return his signature. The moment we get it back, we’ll let you go.”

  “I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

  “Of course you know.”

  We took them into the inner room that served as our office. Both of them sat down, still sputtering. Calmly we began questioning Larsen. At first he dodged the issue, saying, “Officers, you’re too paranoid. Let Charlie and me go, okay?”

  “Not until you give us the signed page.” I pointed at him, trying to isolate him from Charlie, the lieutenant.

  “I already dumped it along with the trash,” said Larsen.

  “Then we have to keep you here.”

  “You’re too greedy. I shouldn’t have given you the sausages to begin with.”

  “This isn’t about the cans, Captain. We want the signature back.”

  “I’ve lost it, all right? It’s gone. You want me to plow through the entire trash dump outside the camp? You can go do it yourselves. You have my permission.”

  “In that case we’ll have to keep you here.”

  “Jeez, how can I make you understand? This is nuts!”

  By now the GIs at the front gate had sensed that something had gone awry. They called their central office, which sent over a platoon within twenty minutes. All of a sudden the situation turned more dangerous than we had anticipated. It was impossible to keep the inmates in the dark anymore, so I said to Wanren, “Please tell our comrades the truth and get them to help us.”

  “That’s a good idea.” He went out immediately. In a hoarse voice he summoned all the men in view and ordered them to stop the GIs from coming in to rescue the two officers in custody. He told them that Larsen had stolen our document, which we must get back. At once about two hundred men swarmed to the front gate, confronting the armed troops.

  Inside the shed I said to Larsen, “If your men open up on us, we can’t guarantee your safety.”

  He and the lieutenant looked at each other, both faces misshapen. I said to Larsen again, referring to his fellow officer, “Let him go tell your men to retreat so that we can resolve this peacefully.”

  “I can see that you’re scared, Officer Feng,” he said to me. “Our men can storm in and level the whole place.”

  “Keep in mind that I’m just a spokesman, not a real officer. But frankly, if your men attack us, we can’t guarantee your life. You don’t want to get killed first, do you?”

  He hung his head. I went on, “Captain, we don’t need any bloodshed for such a trifle. Just let Charlie go tell them to withdraw so that we can talk this out.”

  He thought for a moment, then told the lieutenant to deliver the message to the GIs outside. Meanwhile, some officers of our battalion came into the shed. They had no idea what had happened, so Wanren explained. He kept saying, pointing at the captain, “That bastard roped me in!”

  I said to Larsen again, “At all costs we must head off bloodshed. It’s unfair that you played a trick on our chief. Please return the signature to us. The sooner you do that, the better it will be for both sides and for your own safety as well.”

  Wanren banged his fist on a desk and yelled at him, “I’m running out of patience. If you don’t cooperate, we can’t let you leave unharmed.”

  Larsen sensed the volatility of the situation and seemed lost in thought. A moment later he said to us, “Okay, I’ll give it to you. But you must promise to release both of us once you get that piece of paper.”

  “You have our word.”

  The moment the lieutenant came back, Captain Larsen handed him a bunch of keys. Holding a small brass one between his thumb and forefinger, he said to him, “Go to my office and unlock the left drawer of my desk. There’s a writing pad in it. Rip off the top page with a Chinese signature on it and bring it back immediately.”

  “Yes, sir.” Charlie turned and went out again.

  While we were waiting, I explained to the leaders of the three companies why we had chosen such a drastic course of action. I insisted that we were still unsure what Larsen had done and that we had just taken preemptive measures. Maybe it was nothing serious at all, so there was no need to let everybody know of this beforehand. Most of the men looked suspicious and some complained that they should have been notified nonetheless. Wanren, red-faced and wordless, was smoking in a corner. He shot sullen glances at me time and again. I too felt embarrassed about this operation that seemed to be getting out of hand. We should have taken into account all the possibilities and made some backup plans.

  Ten minutes later the lieutenant returned with the page. I looked through it and was glad it indeed bore a false statement, which said: “On November 22, the Chinese prisoners in my compound attacked the guards and bit Captain Larsen without any provocation. As a consequence, we suffered several casualties, including one death. I, as the chief of Compound 6, am responsible for the incident.” Then came Wanren’s squarish signature. Several men asked me to translate the words, which I had no choice but to do. Listening to me, some of them gasped. A few went up to Larsen, intending to teach him an indelible lesson. I stopped them, then turned to Wanren and the
company leaders, saying, “We promised to let both of them go unharmed the moment we got this page back. We should make good on our word.”

  They nodded. So the two American officers were taken to the front gate and released. That afternoon we received messages from the other compounds, inquiring about what had happened. We were obligated to inform them truthfully. After dinner the battalion headquarters held a meeting, at which Wanren was mildly criticized by the other officers. But we all felt lucky that we had forestalled the potential trouble peacefully by ourselves. Because the secret operation had been exposed to the whole compound, Wanren seemed mortified and a bit ornery. Probably he feared that he had revealed his incompetence to his men, or that I had stood out as a more capable officer in handling this case. Afterward he was reluctant to talk with me as casually as before.

  A week later Captain Larsen was demoted and transferred to a different prison camp. By order of Commissar Pei, a meeting was held among the leaders of our compound, presided over by our political instructor, Manpu. Wanren made self-criticism at the meeting and admitted that his vigilance had slackened. He said he was grateful to all the comrades who had helped him get the signed sheet back, otherwise the enemy would definitely have utilized it to sabotage our victory in defending our flag. But he didn’t mention me, because Commissar Pei had awarded me another citation, second class this time, which I didn’t really care about anymore. By contrast, Wanren got a disciplinary warning, though he remained in charge of our battalion.

  After the detainment of Captain Larsen, Wanren and I could no longer get along. But now and then we still played chess together, with pieces we made out of cement, each bearing a handwritten name on its face, such as Horse, Elephant, Cannon, and Carriage. He was highly skilled at the game, and I was among the few who didn’t have to receive the handicap of a carriage or a cannon as his opponent. Although I was still indispensable to him when he had to deal with the Americans, he wouldn’t come to me for advice anymore. He was an honest man, probably above small maneuvers; still, I took care not to give him any handle against me.

  28. ENTERTAINMENT AND WORK

  Unlike Compound 602 on Koje Island, in this camp any large-scale cultural project, such as a full-length play or an art show, was out of the question. The singers, actors, painters, composers, and calligraphers had been scattered among the battalions, and there was no way to assemble them. At first this state of isolation caused us some difficulties, but soon every compound formed its own cultural staff. As a result, there were ten groups of “artists” in the camp, around whom many prisoners gathered.

  Among the ten groups, the one in Compound 9 had more talents than the others and was most active. Meng Feihan, the composer and stage director who had lost a foot, was there. Besides him, the chief of that battalion had a fondness for cultural work, having once led a song-and-dance ensemble in an artillery division. Every evening you could hear music and songs rising from their barracks. Throughout the camp many inmates took part in musical activities of this kind. I participated too, though briefly. I tried to teach others how to read music, but my voice was so tuneless that whenever I sang to illustrate musical notes, some men would chuckle or cackle. So I gave up.

  The POWs also contrived several kinds of instruments, including drums, flutes, violins, and horns. The first bugle was fashioned out of tinplate. A bugler by chance had brought into the camp his mouthpiece, which later served as a casting model for the lead mouthpieces on all the wind instruments here. Drums were relatively easy to produce, and there were several sizes of them; all were made out of sawed oil drums, water pails, and gas cans, covered with rain cloth fastened by rope. My friend Weiming, the short Cantonese man who was very protective of Shanmin, was an expert in making stringed instruments, which were more difficult to create than the wind ones. He was tone-deaf, however, and couldn’t read musical notes or play any instrument; but he was more inventive than others. He turned a tin can into the resonator for an erhu, a two-stringed Chinese violin; he also used wooden boards, bamboo pipes, rat skins, and other materials. Ignorant of music, he had to have helpers and testers, of whom he had many, since others had lined up to join him. In fact, every instrument the prisoners made was a result of teamwork. There were dozens of instrument-making groups in the camp. They even produced several guitars that had three or four strings. They also created various kinds of violins: resin was obtained from steeped pine chips; the bows were mostly thin iron rods bent on both ends; as for the hair, they unraveled pieces of rope, soaked the hemp in warm water, combed it straight, then picked the sturdy strands to be tied to the sticks. Most “silk strings” came from the jackets and boots they wore, whereas all the metal strings had one source—electric wires, which could be found at the construction sites. By far the Western violin was the hardest to make, because it had four different metal strings that were difficult to come by. Nevertheless, one group managed to come up with a kind of strings, which were entwined with threads to make them sound close to the standard G, D, A, and E strings. It took a great deal of experimentation to create a Western violin.

  Throughout the summer, our compound was like an instrument factory, and some sort of manufacturing was under way in most of the sheds. The prisoners took the work as seriously as if it were their livelihood. In addition, many men had begun to learn how to play the instruments and formed small bands. I often wondered why they were so earnest about such activities. I guessed they were probably bored and just meant to have some fun, frittering away the time that hung heavy on their hands. But I was mistaken. I soon realized that for them this was serious business, a matter of survival. Usually four or five men worked together at one instrument, so the product embodied a kind of collective will and effort. Likewise, a band always belonged to a platoon or company as “a special weapon in fighting the enemy.” That was the language the leaders used. I wondered why they applied such hyperbole to a mere band. Perhaps they believed music could bolster the comrades’ courage and kindle their hatred and thus turn them into better fighting machines.

  On occasion, a skit or a comic talk accompanied by bamboo clappers was enacted in our compound, though none of the pieces was exceptional. Some prisoners tried to write short scripts for the stage and some composed songs, but few of these efforts resulted in passable work. Once in a while they would draw cartoons to ridicule the Americans, who would be given cucumber noses or bloated midriffs. The blackboards in our compound always carried jokes, drawings, and poems. Yet by far the most popular form of entertainment was the songfest.

  Whenever a satisfactory song was composed, it began circulating briskly among the inmates, and within two weeks all the ten battalions could sing it. Meng Feihan in Compound 9 was the major composer; in general his music was solemn, strenuous, and high-minded. Two of his disciples were good at singing folk songs, so they blended light melodies into some satirical airs, which became immensely popular, such as “The Loudspeaker Always Lies, Don’t Listen to It,” “God, I’m Scared,” and “Truman Is Done For.” The prisoners enjoyed these erratic, uncanny tunes so much that they would croon them even when they were alone, whereas they would sing the serious songs only in groups. The leaders made good use of the musical talents. Whenever something important happened, they would have a song composed to mark the occasion. For instance, to commemorate the fight for raising our national flag, a song was made a week after the massacre. It went as follows:

  Red flags fly high on October 1.

  Our comrades’ blood bears out

  The American imperialists’ crimes.

  However brutal the enemies are,

  We shall be more resolute.

  Our hands can stop their bayonets

  And stones can block their bullets.

  Shoulder to shoulder we form a bastion

  To defend our national flag

  And fight the savage foe.

  Our hatred is redoubled—

  The debt of blood must be paid in blood.

  The evil Ame
rican imperialists

  Cannot escape the hands of justice.

  We sons of the new China

  Shall make our deeds known to the world

  And keep our flags flying for good.

  Rest in peace, our brave martyrs.

  You will always live in our hearts.

  Despite its simpleminded boastfulness, this song became quite popular and served as a fighting anthem for some POWs. I disliked it and never learned to sing it. Yet I was amazed by my comrades’ great zeal for songs. Every day there was so much singing in the camp that even some GIs picked up the tunes. One of them, a skinny fellow with red sideburns, would chant at us the line “March, march, follow Mao Zedong” as a kind of greeting.

  Gradually I came to understand that singing was a cathartic experience for the prisoners. A song’s contents didn’t really matter; as long as the men could sing something together, they felt better. Many of them were depressed and cantankerous, so a songfest was an expedient for releasing their grief and anguish and for restoring their emotional balance. We missed home and our former ways of life terribly. This mental state disposed many of us to be sentimental. I saw men weep all of a sudden for no apparent reason, perhaps just touched by a happy thought or by a surge of self-pity. Without question, singing together assuaged their misery and cheered their hearts. More importantly, songfests enabled them to identify with one another emotionally so as to increase their feeling of solidarity, though the affection they felt for their fellow inmates could be momentary.

  The singing also eased the prisoners’ tremendous dread of loneliness. The inmates were very gregarious, as most Chinese are. Some of them feared loneliness more than incarceration. As long as they stayed together and organized, they felt they had a better chance of survival. Singing provided them with a kind of socialization that not only soothed their aching hearts but also suspended their individual isolation. Frankly, sometimes I wished I were more like them, capable of chanting whatever came to mind with total abandon.