War Trash

A tall man stood up and spoke in a hoarse voice, tears streaming down his face. He pointed his forefinger at the defendant and kept shouting. The left side of his face was scarred, burned, he said, by hot irons when he had refused to betray his comrades. He pulled up his shirt to display some dark wounds on his chest, which he kept slapping. He said these scars had been inflicted on him by South Korean guards and GIs. There was also a healed knife gash on his stomach in the shape of a horseshoe, which looked at least ten years old. The Korean interpreter was rendering his accusations into broken English that was hard to follow, but the main drift was clear. He was saying how he had been refused medical treatment because he wouldn't speak into a tape recorder.

After him, a squat man spoke. He said an American officer had given him a steel bar and ordered him to murder Mr. Park. He wouldn't do that, so they hung him up on a beam in the torture chamber and thrashed him almost to death. A South Korean sergeant even threatened to cut his anus and feed it to a dog. After this a willowy boy, about eighteen years old, stood up and spoke in a thin voice. He claimed that a GI often groped him when searching him at the gate to his compound.

As the accusers continued speaking, many representatives became enraged and couldn't help but shout at General Bell, who avoided looking at their scowling faces. Every once in a while Bell seemed so absentminded that Colonel Choi would order him to "Pay attention!"

One of the three female representatives, Shunji by name, could speak English. She was a high-cheeked woman of about twenty-five and must have been stout once, but now she looked rawboned with a sunburned face. She stood up and began speaking with emotion. Her voice was clear, though her accent muffled her words somewhat. She said many of the women inmates had been abused by the prison guards, who would beat and curse them at will. Some South Korean men had even burned their faces and chests with cigarettes in the presence of American officers, who had always shut their eyes to all lands of physical abuse. Shunji lifted her foot, put it on the table, and pulled up the baggy leg of her pants all the way to her thigh, which was rather ski

While she was speaking, the small woman seated beside me started sobbing. Shunji pointed at her and said, "She's been paraded through the streets of Seoul for two days, together with more than thirty sisters. The American imperialists and their Korean ru

"Look at her face," said Shunji, pointing to the other woman still in her seat. All eyes turned to that face, spotted with scabs. She was quite young, under twenty, with tender, healthy skin on her neck; her blemished face must have been quite pretty once. She got up too and began speaking through Shunji as her interpreter. She said she had been a guerrilla and had been caught by Americans, who then handed her over to the South Korean police along with twenty of her comrades. They beat her, beheaded several male guerrillas in front of a large crowd, and even forced her to hold her elder brother's decapitated head so that they could take a photo of her. To this day she still had nightmares and often screamed and writhed in bed at night, wrestling ghosts. Why did the police treat human beings worse than animals? Why did the Americans encourage and co

A man jumped up and rushed toward General Bell, his arms flailing wildly; he was yelling like crazy, but two representatives restrained him. He said he and his comrades had also been ordered by Americans to undress completely when they were captured. The GIs thrashed their buttocks with rifle butts and jabbed the muzzles of the guns in their crotches. As a result, one of the men still had blood in his semen to this day.

Like everybody else, I was angry too, as I remembered how some men had been tortured by the pro-Nationalists. Colonel Choi told us to remain coolheaded, reminding us that Bell was just an officer who had to obey orders given by the real criminals – the U.S. government and Wall Street.

I saw Bell 's large hands, hairy and veined, shaking a little. He held the edge of the table to stop them from trembling and fixed his eyes on the teacup in front of him. Now and then he bit his lower lip.

In the afternoon the accusations and condemnations resumed. A Korean officer, who had lost his left arm, accused the medical perso

The general stood up and said, "I'm not sure. Some of the awful things you mentioned I know might have happened, but some I don't think are true. I shall look into them nonetheless."

He remained on his feet even after the Korean officer had returned to his own seat. Colonel Choi asked Bell to sit down, and said, "We're Communists and won't treat you the way your men treat us. We respect your human dignity and will not insult and abuse you. But as an American general, you must have the courage to face the facts."

Bell nodded, sweat beading on his domed forehead.

At the midafternoon recess Chaolin and I talked about our prepared speech scheduled for delivery the following day. We felt that although we had written it out, we should present more evidence. Also, it would be impossible for me to translate our lengthy accusation into English that very night by myself; I would need help. So Chaolin went to talk with Colonel Lee and returned to Compound 602 in a jeep after di