Suddenly a voice boomed in Chinese, "We won't board the ships!" That was Zhao Teng.
Most of the six thousand men followed him to shout in unison. The GIs were stunned by the sheer volume of the voices; so was I. I realized that my comrades were frightened and desperately needed Commissar Pei as their protector. To their minds, he was the only man capable of leading and organizing them, and without him they'd be lost. He embodied the Party to them.
"Return Commissar Pei to us!" a voice shouted. Again they roared together.
General Smart smirked, but he too realized the seriousness of the demand. Although unarmed, we outnumbered the GIs by fifteen to one. If a fight broke out, for sure there would be a disaster for both sides. Smart summoned a photographer over to take a picture of Pei. He then turned to talk with an officer who seemed to be his aide-decamp. Meanwhile, the prisoners went on shouting our demand.
When the photographer arrived, Pei motioned for me to come over. He wanted to take the photo with me. General Smart frowned, but didn't interfere. So I went up to Pei and stood beside him for the picture.
That done, Smart straightened up and said to Pei, "All right, we never meant to harm you, and you can go to Cheju with them. But we'll keep you separate from the crowd from now on."
I translated his words to the commissar, who nodded, apparently pleased.
So he was taken away to the second ship, and I rejoined the crowd. We all saw him go down into a cabin near the stern ramp. To us this was a victory, though I doubted if the Americans had ever intended to keep Pei on Koje Island. Zhao Teng patted my shoulder and said, "Great job, Yuan!"
Then we began boarding the ships.
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.