Every Man Is an IslandFew American readers know much about the Korean War, despite the many American soldiers who were killed fighting in it and despite the large numbers of American military still stationed in S. Korea, because technically the war has not ended--only a truce has been declared. Still fewer Americans know much about the conflict between the Communist and Nationalist Chinese that pre-dated the Korean War and extended into that conflict. And even fewer know anything about the Chinese POWs of the Korean conflict and what they endured, especially when they had to decide between going to Taiwan with the Nationalists or repatriating to Communist China. So Ha has provided a kind of testimony, researched from historical records and then fictionalized, of what happened with these combatants, many unwilling warriors, whose lives were irrevocably changed by their participation. Ha’s main character, Yu Yuan, is just such a hapless soldier. Coming from an impoverished family, his only choice for education is a military academy, then a stronghold for Chaing Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces, but soon turned into a Red Chinese academy. And thus begins Yu’s tightrope act, trying to protect himself from retribution by both sides because he belongs to neither. The book, purportedly Yu’s memoir, is written “in a documentary manner, so as to preserve historical accuracy” (5). The simplistic style suits a Chinese narrator, who is writing in English, and is appropriate for the unrefined speech of the characters, many of whom are illiterate peasants. It is also reflective of the literary style often used by Marxist or Communist writers, who studiously avoid melodramatic and romantic styles common to Western writers. Thus Ha provides no melodramatic accentuation of the crimes and degradations within the camps as the hostile Chinese groups attack each other and provoke their American captors--events are simply narrated, sometimes with Yu interjecting his own muted emotional response. The brutality of the pro-Nationalists is clear, especially in the character of Liu Tai-an who “would kill you without blinking an eye if you decided against his will” (106). Liu actually disembowels a Communist who refuses to agree to go to Taiwan, which terrifies those who want repatriation and convinces Yu that “we should act according to circumstances” (109) rather than take firm positions that could cost one’s life. In fact, Yu succinctly remarks that “In contrast to the pro-Nationalists, the communists were less creative and more blunt. If you were in their way, they either beat you half to death to teach you a lesson or just killed you” (86). Often Yu reflects that he has doubts about the choices of actions taken by his Communist leaders, although he is not allowed to voice these doubts and would receive punishment had he done so.Quickly the reader learns about the authoritarian structure imposed by the Red Chinese on their military, with each so-called leader actually responsive only to his own superior, so that no individual decisions are allowed below the highest levels of command. This resulted in military failures during combat when orders were not received in a timely fashion and causes increasing distress for the Communists in the POW camps who cannot contact their superiors to find out what they should do. But most are so devoted they fail to realize their mainland leaders have already written them off as cowards because they did not die rather than be captured. One of the Nationalists reminds them if they return to China “you must prepare to go through denunciations, corporal punishment, prison terms, and executions...you will be the dregs of their society for the rest of your lives...Once you have set foot in this camp, you’ll never be able to exonerate yourselves from the blame” (103). However, the die-hard Communists continue to act as if they are still part of the Revolution, and rewards and citations are handed out for those who perform without reflection their assigned tasks with the proper spirit and dedication. When both Chinese factions are interned in the same POW camps, it becomes imperative that a man declare his allegiance to a specific side. Personal desires are insignificant: the Red Chinese must save face by insuring most soldiers choose repatriation, while Nationalist forces hope to gain additional manpower for their army on Taiwan. Indeed the terrible treatment Communist Chinese soldiers received during their service, when their bodies were used in the cruelest way as cannon fodder, and starvation led to eating grass and wild plants to survive the brutal Korean winter, causes many to decide to go to the unknown Taiwan, leaving behind families and ancestors. Since most soldiers have adopted pseudonyms for personal protection, there is no way to communicate with relatives and equally no way for relatives to know what has happened to them. In a profound existential sense, these men are dependent only on themselves as individuals, unable to trust anyone, who might out of malicious intent or simple ignorance betray them. Each man is an island, and this despite the fact that the family and the group are of great importance for the Chinese. Yu decides he must learn to become more independent after witnessing the Nationalist atrocities in the camp and returning to his Communist comrades, only to discover that they distrust him because he’s educated and susceptible to a “petty bourgeois outlook” (123). For the Communist there is no neutral position, “Either you become their friend or their enemy” (123). As much as Yu likes the benefits of socialism and dreads isolation, as do most Chinese who “depend on a group to feel secure,” he realizes “One should rely on nobody but oneself” (123).One main reason he’s mistrusted is that previously Yu had attended sermons held in English in order to improve his English. The military chaplain, Father Woodworth, had seemed like a friendly, kind person, especially as he was preaching the message of Christ. He asks Yu to translate some of the hymns for the Chinese POWs, and Yu agrees. Yu is warned that Woodworth hates the Communists, which he doesn’t believe until he asks why some prisoners are treated better than others, when, according to the Bible, all are equally sinners. Yu says that some, like him, just want to go home and aren’t even Communists, but the preacher retorts “it’s a tough choice, but life is full of choices.” “For most of us there’s no choice,” replies Yu ... “Every man here can choose his own way of suffering,” Woodworth cruelly responds, shattering Yu’s “illusion there might be shelter in God’s bosom for every person” (81). In addition, Woodworth didn’t answer a desperate prisoner’s plea for help when he was being whipped by the Nationalists, and Yu realizes that even religion is not above political values, unlike the actions of the American military doctors who saved his leg and showed they were truly humane. In a sequence worthy of Dostoevsky, the ethics of the Christian preacher are shown to be hypocritical and just as vicious as the political values that are in conflict; it is indeed ironic that Yu’s brief contact with Woodworth becomes a major reason for his rejection by the Communists. Ha has researched the history of Chinese POWs; many anecdotes and specific incidents show they come from actual documents. In fact, at times the narrative seems to bog down in the recitation of foods eaten, supplies provided, and nature of the living accommodations, along with the exact Chinese slogans used by the different sides, and the text of documents created to express demands or political viewpoints. As an historical, quasi-Marxist narrative, much of this detail can be justified in its unglamorous, mundane specificity. Unlike Western war novels where melodrama creates brutal stereotypes and an array of equally stereotypical victims or survivors, here the brutality is more situational. Often the Communist leaders in the POW camps desperately create provocations that freely sacrifice willing subordinates in order to hopefully achieve recognition by their distant superiors. At other times they share equally their food and living arrangements, and Commissar Pei, their leader in the camps, hands out awards and certificates to show his appreciation for sacrifice. However for Yu these Red Chinese commendations and certificates promised for selfless devotion ultimately seem valueless compared to the lives that are lost. The Nationalist side has some good aspects along with its major flaws, such as its methods to convince prisoners to choose Taiwan rather than return to their families. Even though Communist soldiers are usually so naive or brain-washed they don’t realize the truth of how they’ll be treated when they return from the camps, the actions of Nationalist Wang Yong seem bizarre and counter-productive when he authorizes the brutal tattooing and subsequent slicing off of the tattoos from Chinese who choose to be repatriated,. Does he think by being violent he will cause POWs to realize that his position is correct, or simply terrorize them into submission? The reader assumes the accuracy of this essentially irrational behavior. Another example of “irrational” behavior is shown when he maintains a traditional Chinese respect for education, so he protects the “Communist” Yu because he is able to read books, an ability that ironically makes Yu suspect by his Communist comrades who have been trained to distrust intellectuals. Ultimately, Wang is a man who cannot be trusted, so Yu is always cautious. Indeed Yu ultimately becomes cautious of everyone: his Communist Commissar Pei is not above sending him to supposed prison or death in order to save an important officer, and even his former friend Dajian turns on him when he feels Yu’s presence may cause the loss of important privileges. Finally Yu is reduced to reading Ecclesiastes in the Bible for comfort in its advice: “I must be patient and learn to resign myself to waiting. There is a time for effort and a time for repose, a time for knowledge and a time for ignorance. At present all I could do was wait with an alert mind” (317). The reader is exposed to a large amount of the propaganda that the POWs received during their imprisonment, when they had no larger picture of what was happening in the real world that was controlling their existence. The propaganda, built as it often was on misinformation, lies and distortions of reality, along with rallying cries using patriotic slogans and thoughts of family, friends and homeland, must have created such mental confusion that ultimately all the POWs could wish for was to be released. Many of these slogans seem foolish from an American perspective, but for a illiterate Chinese peasant with no contact with the rest of the world and trained to believe what his superiors tell him, these awkward, malicious and distorted phrases ultimately created his world view. The importance of propaganda may be a theme most Americans ignore, except to object to that which is negative to America, but clearly all countries and peoples are inundated with propaganda, and, like Yu, one must learn to see clearly and think carefully about the ideas that surround one. Both sides in this conflict had significant flaws and behaved in ways that were reprehensible. If the hardships imposed on Yu by the Communists seem greater, it may be simply because his life there had always been marginal. Since the Nationalists while in China were easily defeated due to their decadence and corruption, it is unclear whether life in Taiwan would have been free of the same indulgence for the upper classes and reverence for almost feudal social structures. As with any situation where there are two opposing sides, neither of which is without fault and both of which have some valuable aspects, an individual, such as Yu, has to think critically about decisions, their consequences and whether another course of action might result in more favorable results. Belonging to a group may not in these circumstances provide any protection. As the narrative proceeds the reader can see that Yu learns to be more careful in his approach to others, developing from a man with simple beliefs in the value of the group and obedience to those in charge to one who ultimately distrusts the decisions of those in power and examines the motives of others very carefully before deciding on the choices he must make to save his own life. Each decision has been difficult and involved much thought, and ironically at critical moments, he has been aided by the tattoo placed on him by the Nationalists that helps him avoid punishment and allows him to take the course he thinks best, even if that means first siding with the Communists, then the Nationalists and then at the moment of repatriation siding again with the Communists, though he has truly never belonged to either side.The story of Yu Yuan shows that even a simple man, placed into a dangerous situation, can survive by applying careful thought, treating others with respect, and offering friendship or help to those who need it. As he says at one point, “one must accept one’s fate,” but that doesn’t mean one should be passive; indeed accepting one’s fate for Yu means using circumstances to grow into a stronger and more resilient individual, even if he also becomes more cautious about others in the process.
War Trash by Ha Jin is a conventionally written fictional memoir that begins by detailing the involvement of Communist Chinese troops in the Korean war--as experienced by the narrator, Yu Yuan, who is not a party member--and then becomes a captivity narrative when Yu Yuan and thousands of fellow soldiers are taken prisoner by U.S.-led U. N. forces.I found this novel to be interesting chiefly because of its point of view. The horrors of war recounted here are unfortunately commonplace and the situation in which the Chinese prisoners of war find themselves is commonplace, too. That doesn’t mean they aren’t shocking. They are. It just means war tends to be war, and being captured and brutalized tends to be pretty much the same everywhere.The one difference between this story and something by Dostoevsky or Solzhenitsyn is the constant and effective pressure exerted on Yu Yuan and others by the resourceful Communist Party leadership that stages various revolts and demonstrations during the captivity period. These Chinese soldiers, party members or not, don’t fall out with one another as often or as violently as is typical in other literatures. There’s fear, obedience, control, and ingenuity, but all of it revolves around fundamental Marxist-Leninist-Maoist doctrine. Yu Yuan has a simple style of relating how this works and manifests a kind of human solidarity with his fellow captives without, until the end of the novel, revealing the cynicism and betrayal the Party leaders have in mind.That’s what makes this book oddly compelling. The naiveté of Yu Yuan’s tale has to be overshadowed by what his readers must all know by the time he writes the last lines of his memoir: Mao Zedong was an arrogant, heartless, brutal giant whose pitiless leadership brought about as much wreckage as achievement. Those of us reading War Trash today know this. That’s undoubtedly part of what Ha Jin wants to capitalize on--our fuller sense of history. But at the same time Ha Jin succeeds in humanizing Mao’s pawns in the Korean War and making them seem, by and large, dignified, stoic, and generally caring individuals. This isn’t commonplace, not in the least, and Ha Jin deserves great credit for expressing the Chinese soldier’s viewpoint before letting China’s ultimately cynical Party perspective crush so many of the book’s minor heroes and protagonists.The Korean War, known widely in the U.S. as “the forgotten war,” was an early example of superpower conflict. Korea, in comparison to Japan, for instance, wasn’t of great strategic importance, but it did have symbolic political significance, and the contrast today between North and South Korea bears that out, justifying some of the sacrifices made. The North is a nightmare state. The South is a kind of boom state. A woman has just been elected president of South Korea. Yes, her father was once South Korea’s most notable dictators, but her triumph, set against the quasi-aristocratic succession of dictatorial rulers in North Korea, is a great one.In this context, Ha Jin slips in with his fictional account of the beginning of the North/South division. This is an unpretentious novel, but it well-written, unfortunately quite accurate, and worth reading.
What do You think about War Trash (2005)?
We still hear of wars and rumors of wars, but the war against terrorism is making POW status increasingly complex. Islamic fundamentalists behead their captives on website ads, and the United States sweeps "illegal combatants" into an extralegal black hole from which no light - except for a few photos - can escape.The diplomats meeting in Geneva in 1929 hoped to enshrine protections for prisoners of war, but despite their careful enumerations, the agreement they cobbled together couldn't anticipate the mutations of conflict or the ingenuity of political leaders. Even while another round of diplomats revised the Geneva Conventions amid the ashes of World War II, a new battle was burning on the Korean peninsula, throwing thousands of captured soldiers back into the old, vulnerable limbo.Several fine journalists, notably Seymour Hersh, are pursuing the legal status of today's POWs, but Ha Jin began his haunting new novel, "War Trash," in 2000 when the issue carried none of its current charge. Told in the quiet voice of a Chinese officer imprisoned by the Americans in Korea, his story is a reminder that for many people snagged on the barbs of history, the fiery rhetoric of battle is merely an abstraction. All they really want, hanging precariously between the victors and the slain, is to get back to their families, to get on with their lives.In a very brief introduction, the 73-year-old narrator, Yu Yuan, tells us that he's finally going to describe his years as a POW on the islands off the shores of Korea. "I'm going to do it in English," he writes, "in a documentary manner so as to preserve historical accuracy."This is something of a stylistic sacrifice for an author who won the National Book Award in 1999 for "Waiting." Indeed, there's a muted quality to this narrative that would grow dull from a less talented writer, but here he holds our attention like a whisper. The slightly stilted, temperate tone runs all the way to the last word, and the cumulative effect is deeply moving.Yuan portrays himself as a thoughtful young man in a culture of deadly, simplistic ideology. When he's a cadet in Chiang Kai-shek's military academy, he welcomes the revolution as a practical matter. "I felt grateful to the Communists, who seemed finally to have brought peace to our war-battered land," he says. "Then the situation changed."The conflict in Korea seems so far away and he's part of such a poorly equipped division that the call to arms against the Americans surprises him. But, he writes, "I was obligated to go to the front and defend our country." To avoid direct confrontation with the United States, China cynically classifies these fighters as "volunteers." Yuan and his comrades are pumped full of terrifying propaganda about an American germ-warfare program and sent off to battle. Starving and hampered by their officers' deliberative style, they suffer shocking casualties in the mountains of North Korea, and so begins a tragic story of brief, hopeless military engagement followed by long, precarious imprisonment.Yuan survives this ordeal largely because of his ability to speak English, which he learned as a teenager from an American missionary. Both his captors and his fellow prisoners find him a useful translator, and this role as a quasiofficial mediator perfectly matches his temperament. Though he's naive and idealistic, Yuan has none of the revolutionary zeal of his comrades. How much simpler, he thinks, to be a "genuine Communist, crazed and fanatic." He regards even those he loves or loathes from a strangely disinterested point of view.But such independence can be a deadly quality in these polarized prison camps. Saddled with thousands of detainees, the Americans cannot quickly discriminate between those with Communist sympathies and those with Nationalist sympathies. Many of the prisoners are terrified of being repatriated to mainland China, where they signed statements promising to die in defense of their country. And many others know they could be tried as Communists in Taiwan.While diplomats in Panmunjom dither over the prisoners' status, the camps devolve into war zones of coercion, retribution, and punishment between Nationalist and Communist prisoners. Through it all, Yuan struggles merely to survive so that he can return to care for his mother and marry his fiancée.He takes us through two years of imprisonment, through moments of common decency and bloody skirmishes against the guards or between opposing groups of prisoners. For the most part, the American GIs are honorable and fair, but there are episodes of brutality when the fabric of law is rent by boredom or cruelty. Far more dangerous, though, are the partisan thugs inside the barbwire who are quick to punish suspected traitors or sacrifice their followers for petty gains.Despite Yuan's claim to "a documentary manner," this is largely a story of quiet disillusionment, of learning to see that Mao regards him and his friends and millions of others as dispensable."The Communists treat every person just as a number," he realizes. "This is the crime of war: it reduces real human beings to abstract numbers."Born in 1956, Jin missed the Korean War, but he lied about his age when he was 14 to join the People's Liberation Army in China, and this novel is steeped in the details of history as much as in the flavor of personal experience. In fact, the voice of "War Trash" is a rebuttal of its title. It's a timely story about discarded survivors whose lives are more complex and more pitiable than the ideology on either side would have us believe.http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1012/p1...
—Ron Charles
I have found another great author--Ha Jin. This book details the experience of a Chinese soldier from Communist China who has been sent into Korea to support North Korea in the Korean War. His English-speaking ability has brought him a degree of respect but he is immediately captured and finds himself caught between his homeland where his elderly mother and fiancee lives and Chang Kaichek's free China. The pressure for him to declare his intentions one way or the other is intense and he struggles to find his own way through the complex issue. He finally puts his mother and fiancee above other considerations and declares himself as wanting to re-join his family in the mainland after the war.After he is sent to an American POW camp, our narrator tries to be a loyal comrade and soldier in spite of his doubts as to the agenda of several important officers. As time passes, he becomes more and suspicious of some officers' intentions and goals.
—Janet Carroll
This novel about a Chinese Army "volunteer" taken prisoner in the Korean War could have very easily been little more than an anti-Communist screed; in another world it might have been Communist propaganda. It is neither of these. Instead it is the story of a man and what he saw, and that is good.The opening chapters actually involve some fighting in Korea, but these are sparsely detailed. Yu Yuan isn't much of a soldier - nor, really, are any of the so-called People's Volunteers, but they are there anyway, cannon fodder for a war that is still not entirely over to this day. The reader twigs easily to this subtext, though Yuan does not. All he cares about is getting back to his mother and his fiancee.My favorite thing going on in this book is the way you really get a Chinese flavor to the narrative. If you've ever read any classic Chinese literature (e.g. Romance of the Three Kingdoms or something like that) you will find a certain tone in the translations, and I was reminded of that as I read War Trash. That's not too surprising considering that the author was born in China and it seems learned English as a second language. It adds to the flavor of it, gives an authentic zest to a work of fiction. (The only other time I really remember getting this feeling, though that had to do with Japanese, was with Memoirs of a Geisha.)Yu, kind of naively stumbling around, feels like a real person, which is important because it is how you come to care about him - especially important for an American reader who may have had family who served in Korea and hold opinions about the enemy in that war. This guy is not evil, though he serves some evil people (a couple of whom we meet, most of whom we don't), but there are evil people among his opponents as well. American GIs don't always come out with shiny halos, nor do the pro-Nationalists who seek to be sent to Taiwan rather than repatriated to China at conflict's end. And because Yu's friends are the Communists, he has as much to fear from them as he does from his enemies.(view spoiler)[My one complaint about this book is that its wrap-up is a bit too pat. Yu makes his way in with the pro-Nationalists, but then at the last minute decides to go back to the Communists. Surely he has seen enough that he knows this is a poor decision! As it proves to be - his mother has died and his fiancee no longer wishes anything to do with a disgraced captive - the Communists apparently holding to the same kind of belief of the Japanese in World War II that surrender is dishonor. He takes pains to indicate he is the only of these repatriates to somehow forge a good life. Not even that, but his are the only educated children of the repatriates and he has American grandchildren as well.I thought it was kind of a weird narrative choice for the everyman (well, the everyman who is educated) to get kicked down so low and then just casually relate his post-war experiences of coming up in the world. We are happy for him, but after all he's seen the Communists do it doesn't exactly make sense why he chooses to return to their domain. Yes, there is the supposed family connection, but I don't know. I suppose I am bringing my own Western bias into that decision. The Communists are clearly bad news. It seems to me that Yu even perceives this to some extent (although he isn't much fond of the pro-Nationalists either), so I don't get the impulsive decision to return. (hide spoiler)]
—Mark
