We arrived at the island in less than three hours. With a clank the front gate of the ship was let down, and an officer ordered us to disembark. Outside, the sun was glowing on the muddy shore fringed with a white ribbon of salt. A few black fishing boats, their masts tilted and their gray sails half folded, were moored in the silty shallows, and whorls of cooking smoke were rising from them. Under my feet the dark beach was studded with countless tiny holes. As I wondered what they were, a field of crabs, each just the size of a thumb, suddenly appeared at the mouths of the holes. But a moment later they all vanished from sight, retreating into their caves. I couldn't help but marvel at the uniformity of their movement and involuntarily stopped in my tracks. "Get moving!" a tall GI shouted at me.

We started out for the camp in the east. I was tense, unsure how long the march would be. But luckily among us there were several men with injured legs, so we didn't walk fast. Despite limping along, I soon forgot my anxiety, fascinated by the clear streams and the dwarf trees on both sides of the road. The distant hills looked lovely, with pines and cypresses crowded together like clusters of spires. Above a rocky summit a pair of white herons soared beneath the flossy clouds. All the way I said to myself, What a secluded place, ideal for a hermit.

The march took half an hour. On arrival, the Chinese and Korean prisoners were separated and then led toward the sprawling stockade that was the prison camp. There were approximately thirty compounds here. The Chinese went to Compounds 72 and 86 while the Koreans headed for other barracks.

The camp looked immense, divided into rectangular prison yards of various sizes, each surrounded by two rows of barbed wire supported by wooden posts. At every corner of the stockade stood a guard tower, over thirty feet tall. The big compounds were the size of a city block, whereas the small ones were as large as a soccer field. In between the enclosures stood many guard towers too. Wanlin and I were assigned to different compounds. Before we parted, I patted his shoulder and whispered, "Take care of yourself and make it home."

He looked upset and mumbled, "I'll often think of you."

"We'll remain friends."

"Yes, always."

He was led away in a group of more than twenty POWs. His head, half a foot taller than the others, was bobbing a little as he walked away with a swinging gait.

Three GIs frisked my group at the entrance to Compound 72. I had slipped the jade barrette half into my shoe and Julan's snapshot into the envelope containing my medical records, mixing it with the x-rays. A wiry guard, a Hispanic man with a wispy mustache, found the black fountain pen in the envelope. "You don't need this," he said and stuck it into his own breast pocket.

"Please, it's a present from a doctor," I said.

"How can I believe you?" He took the pen out of his pocket and pointed at the tip of its cap. "See this? 'Made in U.S.A. '"

"Give it back to me, please!"

"Why should I? You snatched it off of an American, didn't you?"

"Come on, it's a keepsake from Dr. Greene at Pusan. You can call the hospital and ask her."

"Stop wasting my time. Move on!"

"This is robbery."

"What did you say?" He punched me in the face and blood instantly filled my mouth; one of my front teeth had been knocked loose.

"I'm going to complain to your superiors."

"Oh yeah? Tell them to jail me or shoot me, you Red gook. You stole stuff from our dead."

Some POWs were gathering to watch from inside the compound, amazed that a prisoner dared to argue with a GI. I realized the pen was gone, so I walked away without another word. I wasn't certain whether the guard really believed I had robbed an American soldier of the fountain pen. He might have. I had heard that a Chinese captive was once beaten half to death by some GIs who had found in his cap a wedding band with an American name engraved on it.

Once I was inside the compound, my first impression was that I had returned to the Chinese Nationalist army: everywhere I turned, I saw people wearing the sun emblem of the Nationalist Party. My heart sagged. The Americans were only guarding the entrance and wouldn't set foot in the compound. Everything in here was left in the hands of the prisoners, many of whom had served in Chiang Kai-shek's army. With the help of the men still loyal to the old regime, the pro-Nationalist force had gained complete control. The elected officers among the POWs resembled those in the Nationalist army too, though they wore the same kind of fatigues as the other prisoners, with the same letters PW on their sleeves or breast pockets.

The eight thousand inmates had been organized into a regiment that consisted of four battalions, within each of which there were companies, then platoons, and then squads. In theory the leaders at all levels except the chief of the compound had been elected by the prisoners, but in reality most of them had been handpicked by Han Shu, the regimental chief, who had gone through an American training program in Tokyo and had been appointed the head of the compound by our captors. As was the practice elsewhere in the prison system, those who could speak some English usually served as interpreters and spokesmen for their units here.

I was assigned to the Third Company of the First Battalion. The company had about five hundred men and was led by Wang Yong, a former Nationalist army corporal. The First Battalion had a police force, composed of more than two hundred men, who were all POWs themselves. They were directly under the command of Liu Tai-an, the battalion chief. These policemen toted clubs wherever they went. I even saw some of them nap with the weapons held in the crooks of their arms. Whenever I ran into this mob of enforcers, my stomach would lurch.

Though crowded, Compound 72 on the whole was well equipped. It had three pools of water in the front area, a bathhouse, an education center, a large yard for laundry, a giant warehouse, a number of cottages serving as churches, a Buddhist temple, and a mosque. Most inmates were free to go anywhere within the compound, but someone like me who hadn't become a pro-Nationalist yet wasn't allowed to move around freely.

On my first evening in the camp, I ate my dinner, which was a bowl of barley mixed with pinto beans, and then lay down on a straw mat and covered myself with a blanket I'd just been issued. As I was dozing away, Wang Yong came into the tent, roused me, and ordered me to follow the others to the company's office and sign up for going to Taiwan. This meant I must refuse to go home to mainland China. I was shocked, but dared not protest. On the way there, I sidled off to the privy and didn't rejoin the others at the company headquarters afterward, so I avoided putting in my name for refusing repatriation.

At daybreak the next morning, Wang Yong came again and told me to pick up my bowl and belongings and follow him. Together he and I went out into the chilly air. My injured leg was still weak, and I couldn't walk as fast as he did. He slackened his pace a little. He was a thick-boned man, of medium height with bulging eyes. He reminded me of a butcher. He said to me, smiling tightly, "Feng Yan, you look like a well-educated man. To be honest, I like learned fellows. I won't force you to do anything against your heart. But if you're determined to follow the Commies back to the mainland, I must let you suffer some."

I remained silent. True, I had sided with the Communists, but this was only because I wanted to go home. Wang led me to the back of the compound and into the small tent that housed the Fifth Platoon. "All right, from now on you stay with them," he said, then left without giving me another look.

I realized that all the small shabby tents held only the inmates who wanted repatriation. We were obviously in the minority here. The pro-Nationalists, who were determined to go to Taiwan, believed that whoever intended to return to mainland China must be a Communist or a pro-Communist. In fact, most of us wanted to go home not for political reasons at all; our decision was personal. In the front part of the compound stood many rows of large tents with iron structures, all inhabited by the pro-Nationalists, each of whom had a mat for himself. By contrast, over seventy men lived in our small tent, crowded into a space of about nine hundred square feet. In the middle of the room a shallow ditch stretched across the dirt floor to drain out rainwater, and on both sides of the ditch every bit of space was occupied. Worse yet, every two men here had to share a mat made of cornstalk skins.