Authors: Jung-myung Lee
Months later, early on the morning I was to enlist in the army, I rubbed my newly shaved head and thought about my father, who had walked along this path before me. Just like that day when my
father went off many years ago, a black train puffed out steam and a military band played a martial song. I wasn’t afraid. Nor did I feel it was unfair that I was to become a soldier. I just
worried about my mother, who was too small to open the heavy gate over our shop front by herself every morning.
After training I was assigned to be a guard at Fukuoka Prison. High walls, sharp barbed wire and cold bars enclosed my future. My youth was incarcerated in a brown uniform. I was strictly
isolated from books. No text was allowed. Staid directives were the only things to read, and the only words I wrote were in the log detailing my rounds. Hungry for words, I read everything I could
lay my hands on. I devoured incarceration logs, punishment records, directives and administrative documents, even the entrance and exit signs. But they were merely dead words that couldn’t
move me. My soul was perpetually malnourished. I wanted to encounter a living, vibrant line of prose. But that was a luxury not afforded a soldier in wartime.
That was how I walked into war – as though entering dreamland. I wanted to return to my former life. I wanted desperately for the war to end so that I could toss my military uniform aside,
replace it with a school uniform and read Stendhal. But I didn’t know when that would happen, or whether the war would ever end. I didn’t know that, instead of the school uniform,
I’d be wearing prisoner’s garb when the war was finally over.
The inside of the workroom was damp with sweat. Together the prisoners repaired and dyed military uniforms and clothes. This indoor workroom was reserved for skilled long-term
prisoners. The less fortunate suffered outdoors in the cold, willing their frozen bodies to make bricks, haul materials on their backs, push wheelbarrows and shovel the cold earth. Any talk during
working hours was forbidden; if caught, the prisoners would be beaten within an inch of their lives. Even a brief pause caused work to pile up and invited beatings from the guards. They died from
torture, the cold and disease. Families were given ten days to claim the corpses. If nobody showed up, their bodies were donated for research. The squat hill outside sprouted a cemetery for those
unclaimed bodies; as the war grew intense and the number of prisoners increased, the cemetery grew in tandem.
The prisoners tasted their only freedom during outdoor break time from four to five in the afternoon. Exhausted Koreans grouped together near the wall, seeking the wan rays of the sun. They
murmured endlessly among themselves, secretively, turning the yard into a noisy marketplace. This ruckus always made the guards tense; those manning the checkpoints made sure to keep their machine
guns loaded. These prisoners insisted on their innocence, telling stories to each other. Although they were thieves and thugs and crooks and spies, they had a visceral understanding of each
other’s sense of injustice; they all believed that they’d been caught in cunning Japanese traps and falsely accused. They raged in despair.
I walked along the wall, watching the group clustered together. They were all troublemakers; quick fists were a source of power within the prison. I was well aware that prisoners frequently
attacked guards. When unpopular guards were on duty, they purposefully picked fights and disabled machines in their work unit, despite the certainty of beatings and solitary confinement. They
quietened down when I approached, gripping the hilt of my club. ‘I’m Watanabe Yuichi! I am the investigator assigned to uncover Sugiyama’s murder. You better cooperate.’
The men looked me up and down. Prisoner 156, a balding former dockworker, mocked me. ‘I thought the special investigator was from the Special Higher Police. But a brand-new
student-soldier? Well, sir, we haven’t done a thing.’
I’d heard about him. Prisoner 156 had stowed away ten years ago to Shimonoseki, and three years ago he’d received a seven-year sentence for leading a dockworker riot in Tokyo. The
Japanese workers were the ones who’d plotted and instigated it, but 156 had been made a scapegoat. I studied each man carefully. One of them spat on the ground and another feigned
disinterest, picking dirt from under his nails. I could tell they were hiding something. Then again, everyone in this prison was hiding something.
‘I didn’t say you did,’ I snapped. ‘But you might in the future. Your talents lie in fighting, ostracizing, violating the rules and getting sent to solitary,
no?’
‘A student-soldier? Then you can’t even be twenty,’ Prisoner 945 mocked. ‘A snot-nosed kid investigating a murder?’
Prisoner 397 turned to him. ‘The warden knows that if this incident gets out, he’s done for. That’s why he’s not calling the Special Higher Police. He’s trying to
hush it up.’
They were all playing with me. My cheeks burned. I wanted to pull my club out and hit them.
‘It’s too bad that the guard died, but it has nothing to do with us. Just leave us alone,’ said Prisoner 945 soothingly.
‘I’m not going to bother you. But I’m going to uncover who did it.’ I met each person’s eyes as though I were stamping a seal.
Prisoner 156 frowned. ‘Don’t even think about blaming us. You don’t have any proof. I don’t know anything about how that arsehole died, but I know one thing. He got what
was coming to him. So watch out, if you don’t want that to happen to you.’
I swallowed. ‘Is that a threat?’
‘I guess so, if it scares you.’
‘Don’t you talk back to me. I can send you to solitary.’ My flinty words didn’t have any effect.
‘Go ahead, put me in solitary. I can spend a week there – easy. Wanna beat me up? Be my guest. Any wound will heal in a week.’ 156 pounded his chest with his fist and shoved
his head towards me, taunting me to club him.
I glared at him, my hand trembling on the club. I knew I would lose, the moment I pulled it out. I wasn’t Sugiyama. The club wasn’t the solution.
Prisoner 543 glanced at the watchtower. ‘It’s stupid to kill a guard,’ he commented slyly. ‘Who could have done such a ridiculous thing?’
Not caring that I was right there, Prisoner 156 snapped impatiently, ‘Why is it stupid to kill an evil guard? Comrade, you know he deserved it!’
They all turned to look at a man standing far away, whose wide chest bore clear numbers: 331. He continued walking around the yard, oblivious to the men. Then he turned and came closer.
‘Comrade Choi!’ 156 called loudly. ‘You tell us. Who do you think killed that son-of-a-bitch?’
‘It doesn’t matter who killed him,’ Choi answered as he rubbed the tip of his reddened nose. ‘What’s important is who survives.’
He was clearly addressing me. He looked up at the sky, then at the watchtower with its two guards, a loaded machine gun and a 2,000-watt searchlight that illuminated the prison at night, tracing
automatic arcs.
The waning sun faded. The men’s voices became heated, ignoring my presence, as they argued with one another. A long bugle sounded, signalling the end of outdoor break.
‘Disperse!’ I shouted.
The men slowly parted ways, shuffling their feet. Their toes were poking out of their worn shoes; their yellowed toenails were split and their heels were chapped and cracked. The guards quickly
finished the head count. Grousing in Korean, the prisoners went back into the work areas like a herd of sheep. Choi and his men walked along together. I noticed that the fabric on their knees was
baggy and threadbare. They must have habitually knelt before someone. Who had brought them all to their knees?
Back in the guardroom I searched through files, looking for the log listing the names of inmates sentenced to solitary and the length of their stay. The solitary wing was a
makeshift cement building in the knoll between the prison wards and the cemetery. It consisted of small rectangular cells, one metre wide by two metres long, closed off by thick steel doors. A
prisoner lying on the floor would touch each wall with each shoulder. It was as stuffy as a furnace in the summer and froze like a block of ice in the winter. Being sent to solitary during a
heatwave or a cold snap was, for all intents and purposes, a death-sentence. All you got to eat was half a rice ball and half a bowl of miso soup, once a day. Countless men left wrapped up in straw
mats, and even if one managed to walk out on his own two feet, his life often hung by a thread.
Maeda looked over my shoulder. ‘The murderer’s name isn’t written in the log, you foolish boy! It doesn’t matter who it is. Just hang those Koreans upside down and beat
them, and they’ll talk. There’s no harm in giving them a little tap on the hand.’ His eyes creased in a smile.
Was he actually urging me to force someone to give a false confession? But then that prisoner wouldn’t be the murderer, he would merely be a pitiful liar. I flipped through the solitary
log. Even if I did end up interrogating someone, I still had to be prepared.
‘There’s nothing useful there,’ Maeda said. ‘It’s filled with Koreans. They’re all troublemakers: 397, 156, 331, 543, 954, 645.’ He smirked. ‘I
know all of them, each and every one. Kang Myeong-u, Lee Man-o, Choi Chi-su, Choi Cheol-gu, Kim Gwing-pil, Hiranuma Tochu! Those dirty pig-names are fouling my mouth.’
I paid no attention to him as I started to scan the records from six months ago.
Maeda spat on the floor. ‘They love it in there. Those dumb monkeys don’t even keel over.’
I pointed at the numbers. ‘But last August all the solitary cells were empty for two whole weeks, as if they planned it!’
Maeda was indifferent. ‘Obviously. It was during the worst heatwave.’
‘Why do such aggressive men become so docile during a heatwave?’
‘Because they know being in solitary during a heatwave is the express train to the graveyard. They were probably more careful.’
‘If they’re able to avoid solitary because of a heatwave, why wouldn’t they behave all the time? Isn’t that odd?’
‘What’s so odd about that?’
‘They kept going to solitary at other times, as if they wanted to.’
‘You wouldn’t think that, if you saw those cells. The fittest person couldn’t survive a week. It’s next to the cemetery. Even the guards are spooked. It’s actually
a problem. They keep making up fake reports and skipping their rounds. Anyway, why would those imbeciles choose to go? It’s not like they’ve hidden a pot of honey there!’
‘They might be hiding something, though. I’ll have to take a look.’
The solitary wing was a shabby building of eight cells and a small guard post. The wind raced around the ridge of the hill, causing the dark fir trees to howl like wolves. Maeda jerked open the
door to the guard post. An old guard wearing thick, padded clothes was hunched by the extinguished furnace, his face blue from the cold, awaiting the end of his shift.
‘Rounds of the solitary cells! Open the doors!’ Maeda shouted.
The old guard scampered off, his bundle of keys clanging. The steel doors of the solitary wing were secured by a thick metal bar and by two large locks. With clumsy hands, the old guard
unfastened the locks and removed the bars. Four cells lined either side of the hallway. When the old guard opened the door to a cell, a terrible stench assaulted my nose.
The old guard explained, ‘The prisoners come here with broken bones or festering wounds. The infected wounds smell so awful that we can’t open the cell doors in the
summer.’
I pressed my sleeve against my nose and stepped into the first cell. From the outside it looked to be somewhat roomy, but when I stepped in I realized it was only half the width I thought it
was, because of the thick retaining walls, filled with pebbles and sand. It was so cramped it couldn’t hold a single piece of furniture. It wasn’t a prison cell; it was a trap. The
spotted walls weren’t even lime-washed and the blackened floor was marinated in sweat, vomit and pus. Everywhere there were fingernail scratches and spots of blood, along with Chinese
characters of common Korean girls’ names, some Korean words, and numbers counting down to the day of release. At the far end of the cell there was a waist-high wooden partition. I peeked over
it, but had to grab my nose and jump back.
The old guard, jangling his bundle of keys, laughed. ‘That’s the can, my friend. They all bring their own commodes and put them there. When they’re released from solitary they
remove them. We don’t clean up those dirty Koreans’ shit, you know.’
I held my breath and looked behind the partition again. A wooden lid was on the floor. I flipped it up to discover a round hole with a handle on the front. I plugged my nose with one hand and
with the other lifted the contraption by the handle. Two feet below the hole was a wooden plank soaked in excrement. It was where the prisoner placed his personal latrine. Down there, on the wall,
a small ventilation window was covered in inch-thick metal bars.
I walked through the steel doors of the solitary wing and was instantly blinded by the sun. Prisoners 331, 645 and the others who frequented solitary were somehow connected. I was sure of it. I
rounded the back of the building and a gust of wind buffeted my face. Coarse grains of sand blew into my eye. ‘This is a year-long problem,’ the old guard said. ‘That shit-storm
coming from the mountain, I mean. All the sand and dust pile up under the walls of the buildings. So much so that the prisoners have to shovel it into sacks every month and clear it
away.’
A thought darted through my mind, so quickly that it almost slipped by. I whipped around and cried out, ‘Open the cell doors!’
Befuddled, the old guard ran down the corridor. The doors to the solitary wing screeched open again. I ran into the cell I’d just left. I jumped down into the latrine hole and hit the
ground with a hollow thud that trembled up through the tips of my toes. I pulled my club out and scraped at the edge of the wooden plank. It caught on a small notch. I squeezed closed my eyes and
stuck the tip of my finger in it and pulled. Damp, lukewarm air came rushing up at me, carrying the smell of dirt and tree roots and rocks. An empty hole opened its dark maw between my feet.