The next day Chaolin presented to the Americans a written protest on behalf of all the prisoners in the camp. In the letter we demanded that Colonel Kelly let us send a representative to the Panmunjom armistice talks. Kelly thought we were crazy, in his words "a bunch of loonies," and he dismissed our demand, saying this was beyond his power. Commissar Pei had a long cloth banner hung out from his window – a white sheet bearing these words in English: "Stop Butchering My Comrades!" A squad of GIs went there, ripped the sign away, and thrashed the three men in the cell with rifle butts.

Not until six days later were we allowed to gather in front of the barracks within each compound and hold a memorial service for the dead, who had all been buried on a hill slope used as a graveyard by the island natives. After some argument, the Americans let us choose five representatives from each battalion, who went to lay wreaths at the graves of the dead comrades. I remember that one of the wreaths was draped with two strips of white paper that bore two lines of ancient poetry:

Yearn not for native soil -

Your loyal bones can lie in any green hill.

25. ANOTHER SACRIFICED LIFE

Gradually I figured out why, despite the massacre, the leaders considered the flag-raising battle a victory. They ignored the casualties and cared only about the news value of the incident. The more people got killed, the more sensational the event, and the more reverberant the victory would be.

To Commissar Pei, the ideal aftermath of the massacre would be some strong response from the Chinese government and from our delegates at the Panmunjom talks. He must have believed China would take advantage of the incident to start another propaganda campaign to embarrass the United States. I too felt that some international repercussions would follow the sixty-three deaths.

Week after week we expected some news, but nothing happened. No reporter came, and no change could be noticed in the Americans, as if this island were a deserted corner forgotten by the world. The feeling of isolation must have become all the more unbearable to Commissar Pei. By contrast, most of the POWs didn't seem to feel isolated at all; they bore the monotony of prison life with vegetative patience. As long as the top leader was with them, they could set their minds at ease – he was their mental mainstay. They couldn't see that like themselves, Pei too was apprehensive, probably more so than they were, because he had no superior to rely on. On the other hand, he understood that to many of them he embodied the Party, so he had to appear resolute and full of certainty. In mid-October a GI shot a prisoner, a latrine man, who had accidentally tripped and splattered a bucket of night soil onto the jeep the GI was driving. The man bled to death before the ambulance came. Yet even such gratuitous violence didn't kindle any disturbance in the camp. Commissar Pei seemed to be sinking into deep lassitude.

This situation agitated me. In appearance I was calm, like an experienced officer, but at heart I was afraid that our country had forsaken us and that the commissar might wage another full-blown battle to create another newsworthy incident. Some time ago I had read in Stars and Stripes that the U.S. delegates at the Panmunjom negotiations had made the issue of POWs their top priority, whereas the Korean and Chinese generals had refused to consider the issue first – instead, they wanted to focus on the territorial dispute. I hadn't told the news to anyone, not even to our battalion chief, Wanren.

Later, some years after we returned to China, I came across an article that reported that the top Korean delegate at the cease-fire talks at Panmunjom, General Nam Il, had launched a protest about the massacre in our camp at General William Harrison on October 4, 1952, but the Chinese side had remained reticent. Clearly the POWs were not an urgent item on our generals' agenda, though as usual, our delegates demanded that all the Chinese prisoners be repatriated, including those who refused to go home.

Leaves began dropping from elms and oaks, and grass was turning yellow. In the morning the ground was often sprinkled with patches of hoarfrost, and in the south Mount Halla, over six thousand feet tall, which was said to be the highest in Korea, had lost its green cover; more rocks were visible on its rugged ridges now. Cheju Town was in the east, tucked away from the turbulence of the war. It had several two-story buildings and hundreds of houses that all had hip roofs and latticed windows covered with white paper instead of panes. From the distance they looked like a swarm of hayricks. I had passed that town once with a group of prisoners in a truck. Unlike the houses on the Korean mainland, the homes here were all built of volcanic rocks. Their thatched roofs were fastened with hemp ropes, evenly crisscrossed, to keep the rice straw from being blown away by sea winds.

Viewed from nearby, the roofs brought to mind turtle shells, convex and neatly checkered. As an interpreter I had the opportunity to leave the camp once in a while. One day, standing at the shoulder of the eastern knoll, I had gazed at that town, whose sun-drenched tranquillity moved me. The rice paddies beyond a thin brook reminded me of the countryside near the Yangtze River, where my paternal grandparents had lived. Though strewn with rocks, the land here was pretty and peaceful, dotted with clumps of daylilies and wild chrysanthemums. Pampas grass spread everywhere, its long flowers like fluffy rabbit tails rippling in the breeze. If not imprisoned, I wouldn't have minded living for a year or two in such a place, away from the turmoil of the world. If I had not been engaged to Julan or had my old mother at home, I could have imagined myself marrying a Korean woman and settling down here forever, just like many Chinese who had emigrated to Korea before the war. Women on the island were cheerful, hardworking, and tolerant of men; they made devoted wives, I was told. What else should a common man like me want besides a comfortable home filled with children and a good woman? What's more, the island climate was mild, with distinct seasons. Although it was often windy and rained in torrents, there were not the biting winds and the snowstorms of the northern winter.

I was surprised by thoughts of this kind, which I hadn't dared think before. I realized I was more capable of enduring loneliness now. Indeed, I was quiet and preferred to be solitary whenever it was possible.

We were positive that there were guerrillas on the island, because we had heard gunshots several times coming from a hill in the south, on which there were bunkers and tunnels left by the Japanese army garrisoned here during the Second World War. But no Korean comrades had ever contacted us. We were indeed like a batch of lost souls, whose fate the outside world seemed no longer to care about. "This is worse than Siberia, where at least some people would go visit," I often said to myself. If only we could know what was in store for us. If only there were a radio set with which we could hear news.

Ever since the October 1 incident, the Americans had stepped up security in the camp. They often came to search the compounds and made a shambles of our barracks. We knew they wanted to get hold of the self-made weapons we had hidden away. One afternoon in late October, a company of GIs suddenly arrived and ordered us to get out of our living quarters. Our battalion was gathered on the shriveled grass outside the barbed-wire fence. Every one of us was made to turn his pockets inside out and put all his personal belongings in front of him on the ground. While the guards looked through our stuff, we couldn't help but watch the GIs poking and digging around in our barracks with shovels, picks, and spreading forks. By regulations, they were not supposed to take guns into the compounds unless their lives were threatened, so only the guards searching us outside the fence were armed. Captain Larsen, the head of the guards at our compound, was leading the hunt, directing the GIs to rummage through our sheds and kitchen. He was a burly man, over six feet tall, slightly whiskered. He barked at a sergeant, "Hey, Walt, don't let them get smart with you."