Chapter 4
Return to Prisoners of Liberation: Four Years in a Chinese Communist Prison
Chapter 4
Dell: July 25, 1951, began like any other summer day in Peking. Dressed in shorts and thin short-sleeved shirts, we still felt pressed down by the heat. My arms stuck to the desk and little trickles of perspiration kept running down my face and neck as I struggled over an analysis of ancient Chinese literary criticism. Rick had a class with his Chinese tutor, Mr. Chi, that morning and as they sat in the living room I could hear Rick trying to pump him for some information about the rumored drought in the countryside.
Just before noon the doorbell rang and a moment later our cook, old Wang, ushered a rather shy young policeman into our study-bedroom. After asking him to sit down I explained that Rick was in the midst of a class.
“Should I call him?”
“No,” the young man shook his head in reply. “It is nothing important.” But he went on to ask several times if this were the house of the American, Li Ko.
I assured him it was and even wrote out our names in Chinese and English so there would be no doubt. With a vague promise to return in the afternoon the officer finally left, and I promptly forgot about the incident. With arrest practically upon us I still felt no forewarning in the visit of this policeman.
We had invited guests for dinner that evening, some British friends, including a First Secretary in the Negotiation Mission and a manager of the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank in Peking.
At 4:30 Rick rose from his desk, stretched, and said, “I think I’ll knock off for a while and make the ice cream. If I don’t get started, that cake of ice will have melted down so there won’t be enough left to pack the freezer.”
As he started out the door he turned back, as if to ask me something, but at that moment there was a loud knocking at the big front gate.
We watched old Wang, looking hot and peevish, cross the courtyard to open the door, and in a moment the place was swarming with men and women dressed in uniform. I took only a cursory glance at them and then, thinking, “It must be a health inspection group or something like that. Rick is up. Let him take care of them.” turned back to my poetry.
I heard Rick go into the living room with some of them and then the low murmur of voices. It was impossible to distinguish what was being said, but with my curiosity at last aroused I knew it was useless to try to concentrate on my work any further. I was just wondering if I should go into the living room too when Rick came back into our room, followed by several policemen. As I looked up I caught a glimpse through the open door of Harriet, standing tense and frightened in the living room.
“I guess I’ll have to go with them,” Rick said in a strained voice.
I started to exclaim, “Go with them?” but the words stuck in my throat as one of the men said gruffly, “You are not permitted to talk to each other.”
Rick changed into his trousers and leather shoes. As he went out into the courtyard and sat down on one of our wicker chairs I noticed a couple of helmeted soldiers with rifles standing by the wall. It sank in finally that this was no health inspection group. Rick was being arrested!
Someone told me to go out and sit on the low narrow verandah which faced the courtyard. As I sat down I gazed at Rick, who looked white and miserable. Movie scenes in which the heroine throws herself on her beloved as he is led away to prison flashed through my mind. But I shrank from making any display and instead smiled what I hoped would serve as a message of encouragement and love. If anything, my smile seemed to make Rick look even more miserable, and I was about to throw all caution to the winds and run over to him anyway when I was told to go into the living room.
“Play along with them. Don’t give them a chance to make the situation any worse than it is,” a voice inside me cautioned. I followed the guard into the living room and when he asked, “How much rent do you pay for this place?” answered meekly, “1,300,000 JMP.” (People’s Currency— about $65.)
The man’s voice had not been disagreeable but I could not forget the Tommy gun laid across his lap as he sat. I could see nothing of the courtyard from where I sat, and could only speculate on what was happening from the sounds which drifted my way. Soon the front gate banged loudly and a jeep started up. Not long after, the sounds were repeated and things began to quiet down. No one came into the living room, where the guard and I continued to sit in silence. I began to think, “They must have taken Rick and Harriet away, but they’ve left me. If they were going to take me too, wouldn’t they have done so by now? Maybe they’re going to leave me here. But why? Rick, when am I going to see you again?”
Rick: I had looked in bewilderment at the small army of khaki-clad men and women who surged into the courtyard as old Wang opened the gate, but by the time I was led into the living room and presented with a warrant I knew the long-expected day of my arrest had at last arrived.
Even back in the summer of 1949 I had begun to realize that my connection with ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) and the Consulate might someday prove troublesome. But, still quite sure of myself, I had only determined to be a little more careful. I had burned the mass of material I had been collecting to turn over to Naval Intelligence on my return home, and from then on I tried to make all my activities appear like those of any ordinary student. My relations with British and American officials had ostensibly been purely social. My trips into the countryside had been motivated simply by a desire to visit cultural landmarks. When I discussed politics with Chinese it was in the role of a well-intentioned student with an academic interest in China.
This pretense of being a simple student was dealt a shattering blow when in the summer of 1950 the Marine Corps, apparently unaware of the fact that there had been a revolution in China, had sent me my health record and orders to report to the nearest naval hospital or U.S. public health authorities for a physical examination. Before I could get word back to them I was showered with Marine Corps letters and bulletins all addressed to 1st Lt. W. A. Rickett.
From the time of the Korean war on, I assumed that I was being carefully watched, though I had no actual evidence of it. Of course, after we failed to receive exit permits I knew definitely that I was under constant scrutiny. People who had no reason for being friendly with me suddenly became so. I was constantly on the lookout for traps. Some of them I felt I had avoided, but others, I discovered afterward, I had not.
For instance, in June, 1951, just before I left Yenching I received a note from a former student at Tsinghua, who had been one of my best contacts there. I had not seen him for almost a year and was surprised when he said he wanted to see me again. A few days later we invited him to lunch and our old friendly relations were reestablished. In his last days at Tsinghua Deng had begun to turn “progressive,” but now he told me that he had changed his mind again, primarily because his father, a Nationalist official on Formosa, had been declared a counterrevolutionary and there was some chance that his property in Peking would be confiscated. This seemed quite logical to me, and after checking up on Deng as well as I could it seemed that he had indeed reverted to much of his original antipathetic attitude toward the new regime. So, it was not long before I began using him as a source of information again.
One day in July he told me that he wanted very much to contact his father but was afraid to send letters through ordinary mail. Hoping to cement our relations even further, I told him I had ways of sending letters out secretly and could do the same for him. Deng promised to write the letter and give it to me. But the next time he arrived, he said he had decided to think about it for a while. That day Dell and I had bought a small gift for his new baby girl and, as he was leaving, I gave it to him. From the expression on his face when he took it I knew something was wrong. He left, hardly saying a word. As I walked back to the living room I had a queasy feeling. Now they not only knew I was collecting information but that I had ways of getting it out.
All these things flashed through my mind as I stood looking at the warrant. Where else had I slipped up? Now that arrest had come at last, how was I going to handle it? Trying to pretend an almost calm indifference, I asked if I might change into some suitable clothes. The tall, lean, rugged-looking security policeman in charge nodded his head. I went into our study-bedroom, where Dell was sitting and, as she looked up questioningly, tried to make my voice sound reassuring. “I guess I’ll have to go with them.” The guard abruptly cut off any further conversation and stepped between us while I hastily slipped into slacks and leather shoes.
My fumbling fingers had barely finished tying the shoelaces when the guard motioned me out into the courtyard and told me to sit down on a chair. Soon Dell came out and sat on another chair on the verandah. At the sight of her drawn face my heart turned over. What had I let her in for? Overcome with shame and remorse, I could only stare at the ground. When I finally looked again in her direction, her faint smile of encouragement served only to increase my despair. Just then a man stepped out and told Dell to go into the living room. I could hear their voices and wondered how long it would be before I saw her again.
In the room back of me I could hear Harriet talking to some policewomen. She came out shortly and as she passed near me I heard her mumble, “It looks like this is it.” She went out the gate and I heard a jeep start up.
In a few minutes the security policeman who had served the warrant came back and told me to come out to the jeep. He followed and quickly climbed in after me. With a jerk the jeep started rolling through the hot, crowded streets toward the northern part of the city. Unhandcuffed and accompanied by only one guard and the driver as I was, for a moment I gave full rein to my imagination. Should I try to escape? In all the spy stories I had read or seen in the movies the hero could easily have taken advantage of such a situation and made a break for it. But I was inclined to hesitate. In the first place where would I go? With my big nose, blond hair, and light eyes, I could not possibly hide. Besides, though my companion was slightly shorter than I and weighed far less, I was sure he could make two of me in a fight. Even more, supposing I did get away, that would not solve Dell’s problem.
Finally, the jeep entered a long narrow hu-tung (lane) and came to a stop before a large red gate. It was quickly opened by some guards and we drove into an enormous courtyard which looked like a drill field. I was told to get out and follow the guard across the field, but just before we reached a small gate leading into another courtyard he ordered me to halt and motioned to a sentry on duty to keep an eye on me while he went off. The sentry, with the point of his gun, directed me into a small garage close to where I was standing and then told me to squat down and wait.
As I squatted there, looking into the barrel of the guard’s Tommy gun, there came to me a picture out of my childhood of the St. Valentine’s Day massacre in Chicago. These gruesome thoughts were quickly dispelled, however, when the policeman returned and ordered me to follow him into a small office where I was searched, fingerprinted, and told to turn in my watch. The young woman in charge asked me if I needed my glasses. I nodded and she allowed me to keep them.
Another man wearing the faded blue cadre uniform of a government worker appeared and led me out into a courtyard flanked on either side by long one-story whitewashed buildings. Closing the other end of the courtyard from where we entered was a two-story affair with the traditional upsweeping Chinese tile roof. Flower beds ablaze with dahlias, zinnias, and giant cannas lined both sides of a cobblestone walk in the center. The picture was that of a typical rich residential compound and from the courtyard it appeared little different from those serving as dwellings throughout Peking. The only discordant notes were the armed guards and the wooden palisades around the outside of each window. I later learned that this courtyard was known as the west prison compound.
I had little more time to observe my new surroundings when I was ordered to enter the building on the left. Just inside we turned into a long, dim corridor which ran the length of the building and was lined on either side with solid wooden doors. We came to a halt before that of cell No. 3. The cadre threw open the door and motioned me in. As soon as I had crossed the threshold, I heard the door slam behind and the metal bolt shot home with a loud, rasping noise.
I stood peering around while my eyes became accustomed to the gloom. The cell was not large. It appeared to be about ten by eleven feet, with a rough concrete floor and rather dirty whitewashed walls. Most of the room was taken up by a kang, a wooden platform about two feet high which, in Chinese fashion, served as a bed at night and a place to sit during the day. There was a rather large barred window in the wall opposite the door, but it did not afford much light because of the wooden palisade on the outside.
Seated cross-legged on the kang were five Chinese. Except for one, all were stripped to the waist because of the heat. Three were dressed in old nondescript khaki uniform pants; another, a tall, lean man, was wearing dirty, rumpled, Western-style slacks and shirt, and rimless glasses which immediately typed him as an intellectual. The fifth, a huge, bull-like fellow, was clad only in thin white cotton, Chinese-style, trousers. He was vigorously wielding a palm-leaf fan as the sweat rolled down his giant frame.
Were these men prisoners, or—? Ever since the summer of 1950, when I had begun reading such books as Koestler’s Darkness at Noon and Orwell’s 1984, my mind had become more and more filled with thoughts of the torture which would certainly follow if I were arrested. The three men in khaki might be security police and the bull looked like someone who had just stepped out of a Hollywood horror story. It seemed as if even an interpreter had been provided in the person of the intellectual.
As I began wondering how much torture I could stand and hoping I could pass out quickly if it came, one of the men, a slightly built, sharp-faced individual of about forty, pointed to the kang and told me to sit down. Kicking off my shoes, I sat gingerly on the edge and waited to see what would happen next.
“What’s your name?” the man asked in a mild tone, and when I answered he followed with, “Are you a German?”
“No, I’m an American.”
His eyes opened wide. “Priest?” he asked.
“No, student.”
This excited his interest even further.
“My name’s Jeng. The government has appointed me to act as leader of this cell.”
Then, pointing to the intellectual who was sitting beside him, he continued, “This is Ju. Maybe you know him. He was a dean at the Catholic University in Tientsin.”
I did not know the man, but that spring I had read in the papers about the arrest of some French Catholic priests and Chinese at Tsin Ku University and I looked at Ju with interest.
He smiled at me and asked in Chinese, “Can you speak French?”
“Not as well as I can Chinese.”
“Then that isn’t very good, is it?” remarked Jeng. “Have you had anything to eat yet?”
“No, I just got here.”
“Then I’ll get you something.”
Swinging his body around and slipping his bare feet into a pair of badly worn Chinese cloth shoes, he shuffled to the door where he shouted for the guard. I certainly did not feel in the mood for eating and started to say “Never mind,” but then I thought it might be a good idea to keep up as much of a pretense as possible, and so remained quiet. When the guard came and opened a small window in the cell door Jeng told him a new prisoner had just arrived who had had nothing to eat and asked if it would be possible to get him some food.
As the guard went off Jeng came back to the kang and introduced the others. One of the other men, who must have been in his middle forties from the looks of his bald, bullet-shaped head and heavy, tough-looking features, was named Gwo. Jeng introduced him as an ex-cop. The other, about my age, with a pock-marked face and shaven skull, was called Meng. He had been an officer in an underground Catholic youth army which had been organized by Nationalist agents before the liberation. The bull, whom I had pictured as my torturer, was a harmless butcher named Lu. His brother had been a Nationalist agent, and Lu had made the unfortunate mistake of allowing him to use his house as a hideout and thus had been arrested as an accomplice.
While the introductions had been taking place I noticed that both Gwo and Meng were wearing ankle chains. I did not quite dare ask about this, but it did help convince me that they were really prisoners and not security police. Casting another glance at Lu’s enormous scarred head and ham like hands, I breathed a sigh of relief.
For a while we sat talking about where and what I had been studying and how I had come to China. Then Jeng suddenly asked me, “Why are you here?”
I shook my head, pretending I did not know.
Jeng’s face became tight and stern. “You don’t know?” he snapped. “Do you know what this place is?”
“I guess it’s a jail.”
“You guess? It’s a jail all right, but it’s not an ordinary jail. This is the Tsao-lan-dzu Hutung Detention Quarters. The only people who come here are spies and counterrevolutionaries. Discipline is different here from other prisons. You see that fence around the window? That’s so you can’t look out, and when you leave the cell you’ve got to keep your head down. Don’t look around and don’t talk to anyone. If you break discipline, get tough, or insist on lying, you’ll end up in handcuffs and those.” He nodded toward Gwo’s ankle chains. “And let me tell you, when you’re called in by the investigating judge for questioning you’d better tell it straight. They’ve got you cold or they wouldn’t have brought you here in the first place. Now do you know why you’re here?”
“Well, I came to China on a government scholarship. It probably has something to do with that,” I said, hoping to avoid any further argument.
“All right,” said Jeng, “but believe me, you’d better come clean. You know what the law is. If you don’t confess, they can take you out and shoot you tomorrow.”
It was only later that I learned how much Jeng had over-simplified the process of Chinese law, but in spite of this his threat failed to make much of an impression on me. My initial fright was beginning to wear away a little, and now for the moment death and even torture seemed rather unreal, something one only read about in books and newspapers. Still, I felt much relieved when Jeng’s lecture was interrupted by the arrival of one of the prison mess men with a bowl of string beans and a wo-tou, a type of bread made of steamed corn and bean flour and shaped like a cone. He even provided me with a spoon, but I rejected that for chopsticks which Big Lu brought out from a basin under the kang.
Up to that time I had still clung to the illusion that I was taking my arrest quite calmly, but as I took my first bite I realized how I had been deceiving myself. At another time the string beans would probably have been quite palatable, but now they stuck in my throat. So did the wo-tou. Try as I would to eat it, the food would not go down. My attempt to make a good showing had boomeranged and revealed for all to see the nervous state I was in. Finally, with almost a full wo-tou and three-quarters of a bowl of beans still staring me in the face I had to give up. Shrinking inwardly from the expected blast from Jeng, I said hesitantly, “I guess I’m not very hungry after all.”
Jeng’s thin lips twisted into a half smile and instead of blasting me he merely said, “All right, we can send the wu-tou back, but you’ve already eaten part of the beans and we can’t throw ’em away, so you’ll have to finish them tomorrow. Put ’em in that green basin under the kang and cover them over. They won’t go bad, don’t worry.”
I then had a chance to look around the cell a little more closely. Under the kang there were two large, green pottery basins, which I discovered later were used to carry food and drinking water. A rice bowl and chopsticks for each man were piled in one of these basins and the other was filled with water. Alongside were several chipped enamel drinking cups with toothbrushes sticking out the tops and a cake of yellow soap which I later learned belonged to Big Lu but was used by everyone. Stretched between two pegs driven into the front wall was a string on which were hung a number of dirty face towels. On the floor beneath them was a tin wash basin full of water. A covered bucket used as a urinal had been placed in the corner away from the door. Jeng explained that there was a latrine call twice a day when everyone went out. More serious business was to be conducted then unless one was ill, and then it was possible to gain permission to make a special trip.
On a corner of the kang there was a large, disorderly pile of quilts and bundles of personal belongings. The kang itself, made of rough wooden planks supported on sawhorses, was covered by a tattered, woven straw mat. From the ceiling hung a single, bare light bulb, which could not have been more than fifteen watts in size and was so covered with dust that it gave off just enough light to keep one from going to sleep and not enough for working or reading.
After I had put the bowl away we sat around talking.
As Jeng asked me questions about myself it did not take me long to realize that here was an old professional agent. His questions came one right after another, weaving in and out and keeping me off balance completely. At the end of an hour or so I felt that he knew more about me than I knew about myself.
Finally, a whistle blew and everyone jumped up. Jeng informed me it was 9:15 and time for bed. Big Lu pulled an old piece of straw matting out from under the kang and stretched himself out on top of it on the floor, the only place that seemed to afford enough room for his enormous bulk. Jeng told me to sleep on the kang along with him and the others, and we all lay down, feet to the wall, side by side like so many sardines.
Soon I was surrounded by deep, regular breathing. Pulling out a handkerchief and putting it across my eyes to shield them from the light, I attempted to settle down to sleep but the room was still stifling hot and a persistent mosquito droned in my ear. Minutes passed slowly. I could hear the soft pad of the guard walking up and down the corridor outside and then someone placing padlocks on the doors. As he noisily locked our door I had the first feeling of really being in jail. It suddenly came to me that I would not be going home that night.
“I’d better get some sleep,” I thought, but my mind kept going round and round. What was happening to Dell? Had she been arrested, too? What an awful thing for our guests, to be met by security police when they arrived for dinner. Why hadn’t I been called up for questioning? I wished they would hurry up and get it over with.
After a while I must have dozed off, only to be awakened by the fearful grating sound of the bolt being slid back. The door was thrown open and a voice called my Chinese name, “Li Ko.” As I struggled to collect my wits, I felt Jeng nudging me and heard him say, “Get going! The supervisor is calling you to report for interrogation.” I pulled on my shirt, slipped into my shoes, and stepped over Big Lu on my way to the door.
The supervisor motioned me toward the entrance of the cell block where a guard was waiting for me with a pistol in his hand. I was ordered into the courtyard and directed across the big drill field where the jeep had stopped that afternoon. As I walked along, the night air felt chilly after the heat of the room and I began to shiver a little. I knew, though, that the shivering was not all due to cold. It was part nerves. I had been under a strain for a long time and now the big moment was at hand. I kept telling myself to take it easy and, above all, not get excited.
We entered a small rectangular courtyard with a long, low building running the length of one side and a high wall topped by an electric fence closing in the other three. The guard instructed me to halt before one of several doors in the building and shouted a few words I could not understand to someone inside. Waving his pistol, the guard then told me to enter.
I pulled back the lattice screen over the door and entered a large room. Along one side, under several open windows, were a sofa and a couple of easy chairs. At the end of the room were two large desks, behind which sat a young woman and a man about my own age in security police uniform. His strong, squarish face was set off by a small mustache and piercing, black eyes. A single, straight-backed chair had been placed a little way out from the wall opposite the desks. The guard motioned me over to it with his pistol and then, keeping me covered all the time, went to sit beside the man who was to be my interrogator. I stood behind the chair, waiting. After looking me over for some time the investigating judge asked me my name and told me to sit down.
“Why are you here?” he asked abruptly.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? You’re here because you’re a spy.”
“I’m not a spy.”
”Don’t make me laugh. We know all about you. You’re a spy for the American government and an enemy of the Chinese people.”
“I am not,” I said with annoyance. “I’ve always been very sympathetic toward the Chinese people and the Chinese revolution. I never liked the Nationalists from the start.”
“That’ll be enough of that,” was his sharp reply. “Stand up!”
“I guess this is where it starts,” I thought, and braced myself for what was to come. But instead, he proceeded to tell me in firm, measured tones that the government had known about my espionage activities for a long time. I had been allowed ample opportunity to change my attitude but had refused to do so. Since I had persisted in violating the Chinese law I had been arrested in accordance with the Articles for the Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries. I was now in a military court where, if I made a full confession, I would receive lenient treatment. Otherwise—well, I knew what the punishment for espionage was.
“You’re young,” he went on, taking up a stubby Western-type pipe and filling it from a package of cheap Chinese tobacco which lay on his desk. “You’ve got a long life ahead of you. Don’t make a mistake. It would be a shame for a young man like you to sacrifice his life for that bunch on Wall Street.”
At the mention of Wall Street, I almost felt like laughing. I wanted to tell him Roosevelt had taken care of that place long ago and he was almost twenty years behind the times. Fortunately, before I could make any such stupid reply he waved his hand and said, as if he had already dismissed me from his mind, “Go back to your cell and think it over.”
Walking out into the open air, with the guard at my heels, I congratulated myself for the ease with which I had come through the first encounter. At the same time, I knew that this was only the beginning. Back in the cell I lay down and prepared to go to sleep, but it seemed as if my head had no sooner touched the makeshift pillow than the door was thrown open with a clang again. A blue clad supervisor appeared with instructions for Jeng to help me write out a list of all the books I had been using and a resume of my studies, including information as to where my notes had been kept. Jeng had just about finished writing up the material when I was called out for another trip to the interrogation room.
After ordering me to sit down the judge began again, this time adopting an entirely new approach. Where was I born? What was my family background and what did my mother and father do? Did I have any brothers and sisters? What did my brother do? Where had I gone to school? What books had I liked to read? What about detective stories? How had I become interested in China?
He went into every detail of my childhood and youth, and kept me going for what must have been a couple of hours. Then again I was sent back to the cell, but I had hardly a chance to stretch out on the kang next to Jeng before I was called out a third time. This was repeated once more before the judge’s patient probing had gained him a thorough picture of my life story.
When I left the interrogation room the last time, it was already the beginning of another hot, dry day. As I passed by the wild array of flowers filling the prison courtyard I could not help but feel struck by the incongruity of their cheerful colors and the grim purpose of the place they served to decorate.
Entering the cell door, I found the others already up and brushing their teeth. Jeng motioned me to the wash basin on the floor and threw me his towel. The water felt good on my hot, tired eyes, and I did not care how dirty it was. As I dried myself with Jeng’s towel Big Lu, the bull, finished brushing his teeth and, after carefully rinsing his toothbrush, he handed it to me. I stood staring down at it not knowing what to do. My ideas of sanitation made me a little squeamish about taking it, but I was deeply moved by his show of generosity and rather than possibly hurt his feelings dumped a little of his toothpowder on it and began brushing away. Never had I appreciated the simple morning ablution so much before, and Lu’s simple, friendly gesture made me feel for the first time in the three years I had been in China as though I were accepted as part of the group and not some foreign interloper.
A few minutes later the door opened and we all filed out to the latrine. I kept my head down but, under lowered brows, my eyes roved freely. Suddenly I almost stopped dead in my tracks. There was Harriet coming toward us, her hands cuffed behind her back. The good feeling which my fellow prisoners’ generosity had stirred in me only a few moments before now vanished in a flash of cold anger. Gritting my teeth, I muttered under my breath, “Someone is going to pay for that,” but at the same time I hoped desperately that Harriet would curb her well-known impetuosity. A hot, stubborn temper would solve nothing here.