21. COMMUNICATION AND STUDY

In mid-July a GI on a guard tower was struck in the head by "a message stone" hurled by an inmate from our compound. A gun was fired in response, but the fellow dashed into a shed nearby and was not hit. The stone, with a message tied to it, had been aimed at Compound 7, which was eighty yards away. Because of the long distance, such a stone could be hurled only with a string attached to it, whirling it first, and as a result it often flew astray. Yet since our arrival at Cheju Island, this sling-a-stone method had been the main channel of communication between most compounds.

Now that the enemy had a message of ours in their hands, our leaders were afraid that they might crack our self-made code. Fortunately, our code men, following the rule of changing the code monthly, had altered it a week ago by partly substituting three numerals with alphabetic letters, which made the code more irregular and harder to break. Unable to identify the slinger of the message stone, the guards took away Zhang Wanren, the chief of our compound, and interrogated him for a whole day, but Wanren played the fool and insisted he was unaware of any attempt to contact another compound. He kept wagging his head at the message they showed him and saying he didn't know what to make of it. In the end, the Americans told him that from now on they'd view stone hurling as an act of provocation and would react with gunfire. So we had to abandon the sling-a-stone method and rely more on signaling by semaphore.

Each compound had two or three signalmen who could perform the semaphore, so all the battalions could communicate with their neighbors. A system of hand signals had been invented recently, corresponding to numbers, which worked as follows: right hand on the chest meant 1, left hand on the chest – 2, both hands on the chest – 3, right arm akimbo – 4, left arm akimbo – 5, both arms akimbo – 6, right hand touching the ear – 7, left hand touching the ear – 8, both hands touching the ears – 9, and both hands covering the face – o. After a set of numerals was transmitted, both hands would fall down to mark a pause; if there was a mistake, the sender would shake his right foot to indicate a restart. Four numerals always formed a unit standing for a word, which could be deciphered through the code.

Though the semaphore was ingeniously designed, it was too slow, too arduous, to handle long messages. Besides, it couldn't be used between the compounds divided by the central field, the distance in between being too far for the signalmen to read the gestures. Soon another semaphore system was invented, called the Large Gesture Telegraph, which required more extended movement of the limbs and was used only between the east and the west sides of the field, though it tended to draw the guards' attention.

Whenever there was a long message to send, the night soil teams were employed. Those latrine men were allowed to go to the seaside only one group at a time, but they dumped the excrement at the same spot. On the way they'd take a breather at a patch of wattle bushes and could leave a message for another team under a rock or some other object there. The secret spot had been specified beforehand to the other barracks through the semaphore, so the message could be picked up smoothly most of the time.

Although there had always been communications among the compounds, we couldn't find an effective way to contact Commissar Pei. He wasn't far away, in the prison house on the beach, and we could see him whenever he was let out for exercise or was basking in the sun in the afternoon. He usually stayed in the open air for twenty minutes, walking by a long sandbar, against which nestled a shack that served as several Chinese men's living quarters. Those men were also POWs but willing to collaborate with the Americans, so they had been detailed there to maintain the prison house and keep watch on the special prisoners jailed in it. In addition to confining "the war criminal," the prison also took in "troublemakers." At times Commissar Pei and we waved at each other, but the long distance prevented him from hearing our voices. If only we could have communicated with him more.

This absence of communication with Pei also meant that there was no paramount leader in the camp. Zhao Teng, designated as Pei 's successor long ago, was now in the Fifth Battalion, at the southwestern corner of the camp, beyond the reach of the men in the compounds east of the field. Owing to the absence of the Party's central leadership and any rival pro-Nationalist force, for weeks the camp was peaceful, though many prisoners had grown restless, as if they'd lost their bearings.

Zhao Teng, who was a good warrior but a poor strategist, just ordered us to carry on the three tasks stipulated three months ago in Compound 602 on Koje Island: unite, struggle, and study. Now that we had been isolated into groups, the first task was out of the question. Nor had we any clue how to "struggle," since there was no pro-Nationalist force here. So the only feasible task was "study," to which the inmates devoted themselves earnestly. A slogan began circulating among the battalions: "We must make ourselves more useful for the revolution."

Somehow in early August both Hao Chaolin and Chang Ming were shipped to Camp 8 too. I was delighted to learn of their arrival. I didn't see Ming in person, but Chaolin went to Compound 7, adjacent to ours, so we waved at each other from time to time. He wrote a message in uncoded words and had it passed on to us by the night soil teams. From it I learned that Ming had been sent to the Fourth Battalion, west of the field. With both of them in the camp now, the leadership would become effective again. They were much more capable than the rest of us. Since it was difficult for Zhao Teng to communicate directly with every one of the six compounds east of the field, Chaolin assumed the leadership of this side of the camp while Zhao Teng was in charge of the four western compounds. The two leaders would communicate first, and then if necessary each would contact the other battalions on his side. Chaolin fully supported the study movement, knowing we might have to stay here for a long time.

More than half of the prisoners in my compound were illiterate, and several educated men, like myself, began teaching them how to read and write. There was no paper, but this problem was easy to solve. Some construction was still in progress outside the camp, so whenever we went out to work, we brought back scraps of cement bags, which we could use in class. Pens were hard to come by, but some men made nibs out of strips of tinplate cut from cans. For ink they used diluted tobacco tar or juice squeezed out of grass. Rain cloths were nailed to walls as blackboards, on which you could write with a toothbrush soaked with the solution of tooth powder. Without enough kraft paper, some men practiced their writing in a layer of sand spread in cardboard boxes. We, the instructors, set a basic goal: every one of the illiterate men should know at least five hundred written characters in three months. This seemed implausible at first, but to our amazement, most of these men were bright and eager to learn. Intuitively they understood literacy would improve their lives, so they applied themselves avidly. In our battalion there was a copy of James Yen's Thousand Character Lessons distributed by the U.N. Civil Information and Education Center on Koje Island. This Chinese primer, intelligently compiled, was very handy and served as the basis of the lessons we prepared for the illiterates. James Yen was a Yale graduate and a leading expert in mass education. He had taught Chinese coolies in Europe in the early 1920s and obtained funding from the United Nations for his education project. In fact, Mao Zedong once briefly attended his class in Changsha City, but Yen was barred from entering China after the Communists came to power. In addition to the literacy class, we also offered courses in arithmetic, geography, history, calligraphy, and general knowledge.