When I came to a moment later, the water was still hitting me. I huddled into a ball by embracing my knees, with my back toward the men. The water struck my spine and lower back until my pants were ripped from behind. They laughed and wound up the session by giving me a few kicks in the buttocks.

"Get up, gook!" ordered one of them.

I was shivering, my chest and head aching. I managed to turn over but couldn't stand up.

They pulled me to my feet, dragged me out of the house, and left me in the small courtyard to dry my clothes for a while. I sat in the warm sun, still queasy, watching the seagulls sailing beneath the clouds. My face felt puffy and my eyes smarted. I wanted to weep but checked myself, aware that some eyes were observing me. Far away in the east, toward the beach, a bell was tolling, and a group of men were chanting a work song in Chinese. I turned my head to listen closely, then I caught sight of Mr. Park behind the grilled window of his cell. He was waving at me, raising his thumb and clasping his hands to congratulate me for having thwarted our enemy's attempt to extract information from me. A Korean officer in the next cell even saluted me. I waved back, trying hard to smile.

That evening the one-eyed Korean man doling out food handed a bowl of barley to me through the steel bars on the door of my cell. I forced myself to eat some. To my surprise, beneath the coarse grain were about a dozen small meatballs made of pork and onion. Hurriedly I turned away from the door so that the guards couldn't see the meatballs while I ate them. Evidently there were agents among the Korean workers here. Mr. Park may often have been given this kind of meal. Although grateful to him for having the meatballs smuggled in for me, I was bothered by the fact that even in this prison for "war criminals" he still enjoyed privileges like a top official. It was simply impossible for our captors to take full control.

One morning a tall American officer passed by my cell, and I recognized him – Lieutenant East, who had commanded the guards at Compound 602 when I was there. I had once relayed to him our demand for negotiating with General Bell in person. He seemed in charge of nothing here. As he returned from the other end of the corridor, I moved to the door of my cell. Dressed rather slovenly – half of his buttons undone and one of his shoes unlaced – he shuffled along the hallway as though deep in thought.

"Lieutenant East," I said.

"Yes." He stopped.

"Do you remember me?"

He shook his head, his gray eyes staring at my face. Then he recognized me. "Yes, you were the Red spokesman at Compound 602."

"No, I was just an interpreter. How come you're here?"

"None of your business. Damn you Reds, why did you help the motherfucking Koreans kidnap General Bell? You got me into trouble too."

"Like I said, I was just an interpreter, not involved in any decision making. As a soldier I didn't have a choice, I just obeyed orders."

"Let me tell you something," he said with sudden anger, jabbing his forefinger at my face. "General Bell is a good man. He played baseball with us. He's a powerful pitcher. Many guys here miss him. He treated you Reds well, didn't he? When you wanted to talk, he came to meet you. After you complained about barley and night blindness, the next day he called around to get more rice and vegetables for you. But what did you do in return? You conspired with the Koreans. You abducted him. You ruined him! That man is a husband and a father and had an honorable career. Now he's totally humiliated, busted to colonel. How come you Reds pulled such a dirty trick on him?"

I hadn't expected this lean-faced man would defend his superior so passionately, and I was a little bewildered by his judging the general on the basis that he was a good baseball player. What did Bell 's character have to do with sports? This fellow in front of me hadn't grown up, like a big boy. Still, somewhat touched by his words, I mumbled, "I'm sorry for him. Also for the hundreds of Koreans killed in Compound 76 and for the villagers whose homes were burned down."

He stared at me, as though amazed. For about half a minute we remained wordless, looking at each other. Then I averted my face and he walked away.

Lieutenant East's remarks upset me. What surprised me most was that he hadn't thought of the incident in the way an officer should. He took it personally, thinking of General Bell as a specific individual. That made East different, though he still regarded me as no more than a Red. His words had jolted me into a sudden realization. Before the conversation with him I had felt misgivings about the wisdom of confronting the vengeful enemy with force, but my thoughts had remained vague in the back of my mind. Now they had crystallized.

To be able to function in a war, an officer was expected to view his men as abstract figures so that he could utilize and sacrifice them without any hesitation or qualms. The same abstraction was supposed to take place among the rank and file too – to us every American serviceman must be a devil, whereas to them, every one of us must be a Red. Without such obliteration of human particularities, how could one fight mercilessly? When a general evaluates the outcome of a battle, he thinks in numbers – how many casualties the enemy has suffered in comparison with the losses of his own army. The larger a victory is, the more people have been turned into numerals. This is the crime of war: it reduces real human beings to abstract numbers. This was why, ever since I'd been treated by Dr. Greene, I had wished I could become a doctor like her, who dealt with individual patients in a war and didn't have to relish any victory other than the success of saving a limb or a life.

A few days later both Wu Gaochen and I were sent back to Compound 602. I felt lucky that we two returned on the same day. Had I left the top jail alone, my comrades might have suspected that I had worked out a deal with the enemy or had confessed to them. We both went back on June 26, and without prior agreement we told Commissar Pei the same story; that is, the enemy had let us out because we were not as important as the other "war criminals." Lieutenant East had said to me that they needed the solitary cells for real officers. After six weeks' separation, I was glad to rejoin my comrades.

19. THE APPREHENSION OF COMMISSAR PEI

The Chinese POWs in Compound 602 had been informed that we were going to move to Cheju Island, which is more than a hundred miles farther south in the Yellow Sea. This news unsettled the inmates, and I could feel the suspicion and fear among them. Rumor had it that some Nationalist troops from Taiwan had already gathered on Cheju Island, getting trained before they joined the U.N. forces on the Korean mainland. (This hearsay proved to be wrong.) So most of the men here were reluctant to leave for Cheju, fearful of falling into the Nationalists' hands.

I went to see Commissar Pei in the evening. He was pleased to have me back and asked about Chaolin and Ming, saying he felt crippled without them around. Then he told me his thoughts on the imminent move to Cheju Island. He believed the enemy's purpose was twofold: first, to separate us from the Korean prisoners, and second, to shake our determination to return to mainland China. "But we haven't planned for any resistance yet," he said. "The enemy just destroyed Compound 76 and they may turn on us at any moment, so we shouldn't give them any excuse for using force." He looked tired, though his rugged face still showed resolve. He had a sprinkling of gray hair now.

Encouraged by his discretion, I reported to him how the GIs had burned and flattened Compound 76. I got so carried away that I even said, "I don't know if it was really worth the sacrifice for the Koreans to kidnap Bell. Their entire shock brigade was wiped out by the Americans, at least four hundred casualties."