MANNA FROM HEAVEN SEPTEMBER CAME AND WENT, and there we were still holed-up in the gray mission

compound. To keep our spirits bolstered, the re-orientation team had Block 35 converted into an information center complete with latest issues of Time, Life, Look, Readers Digest, Field & Stream, Saturday Evening Post as well as a ashy array of the new fandangled pocket books. Bolster our spirits? Quite the reverse. It galled us to read about the opening session of the United Nations at San Francisco, about Britains Prime Minister Clement Atlee promising independence for India (what had happened to Winston?), about the new wonder drug penicillin, about the new craze the Bobby Soxers. Left stranded on the sidelines as the world rolled merrily along its way, liberation was fast losing its relish for us. Wed had enough of lecturing and were tiring of Spam and were getting pretty blas about the planes that came over everyday, the C47s, the B24s, the B25s, even a diminutive L5 which put on a spectacular aerial display entirely for our benet. But maybe not so blas about the B29s. They were incredible. First sign of them was the deep rumble of distant thunder, and the rumble all the time increasing in resonance until with a deafening eruption they broke into view. And we thought the B24s huge! How could such a colossus of seventy tons dead weight defy the natural laws of gravity? The lead behemoth would swing open its bomb bays, signaling the rest to follow suit, then in the blink of an eye the sky was a galaxy of variegated chutes. Some chutes failed, by golly. Wired in tandem, fty-ve gallon drums, trailing tangles of
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red and white silk, came crashing down, spewing deadly missiles from the war factories of Dole and Heinz and Maxwell House. In one furious blitz on the camp hospital, ten pound cans smashed into the wall immediately above a row of cots splattering the patients with 67 varieties of soup and stew. Miraculously, no deaths, no injuries. Just as on liberation day, the gates were ung open and out we dashed into the countryside. We had to be quick about it. Local peasants were already there gathering up the manna from heaven. Twenty feet from where Aubrey Grandon and I were stufng ourselves with Hershey Bars from a smashed carton, bronze-faced natives were sucking soup and pineapple juice from punctured cans. One old geezer was squeezing Barbasol shaving cream into his mouth when Aubrey called out that the stuff was not for eating. The old mans lips spread in a frothy grin. Then he was laughing. Then we were all busting ourselves, we and the natives. It was carnival time. A very pink, very sweaty, very out-of-sorts GI came trotting up to our little esta. He bellowed at the Chinese: Who the hell do you gooks think you are? Thats our chow. Beat it. Go on, scram. The Chinese stared without expression. The GI drew his Colt and pointed it threateningly. Still the Chinese held their ground. The GI said to Aubrey, Tell deeze sonzabitches to get lost. Aubrey converted the order into a polite request. One of the Chinese replied: Tell the soldier of the foreign invasion army that this is our land, not his. Tell him that for the last three years the Eastern Ocean Devils conscated our seed grain to feed you Western Ocean Devils. Tell him that in sustaining you, we were brought to ruin. Aubrey tell the foreign invasion soldier? There was nothing Aubrey could tell him. He was doing all the telling himself with his: We gonna shoot you crazy sonzabitch gooks if you doan get yer ass outtahere pronto. . . .
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The peasants did pick up and leave, and as they sauntered away, I noticed that one was armed with an ancient fowling piece. By itself, no match for the American Winchester, but a million fowling pieces, ten million, a hundred million . . . ? That there were two sides to the American character bewildered me no end. I brooded over it. How could they be so overwhelming in their warmth and generosity, yet without qualm run roughshod over the hapless peasants? Even more dismaying than the incident at the airdrop was the way their ofcers were openly embracing the infamous General Nieh, the puppet commander, who only a month back had collaborated with the Japanese in their rape and pillage of central Shantung. Embrace? Yes, not too strong a word if you were witness to what I was. Soon after their arrival in camp, the Americans called for Chinese speaking inmates to volunteer as interpreters. I was one of the rst to do so, but it was Roy Tchoo who got the plum assignments, and well he should; his Peking Mandarin was Mandarin at its purest. Though I hoped to get the assignment, he was the one selected to head out to the hills with the rescue party to bring in the US ghter pilot whose plane came down near Tsingtao. And he was the one to get all the glory when the team arrived back with the rescued pilot Lt William Zimpleman. Two things about the pilot surprised me. Where I had expected a big tall fellow, he was short and
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stocky. And instead of the leather jacket as depicted in Hollywood lms, he was in a suit of dark green. When someone asked if members of his squadron all wore the strange uniform, he gave a laugh and said that during the six months he was under the care of Chinese guerrillas, they provided him with his own personal tailor who made the suit for him. Back to Roy Tchoo, he was the one to sit at the American commanders side during the negotiations with Weihsiens city fathers. But then I was not totally left out. I was Roys assistant for the big show the Americans put on for General Nieh. The strutting re-orientation majors rst act as master of ceremonies for that occasion was to unceremoniously turf out the several internees who happened to be using the center at the time. He then had his men set up a coffee urn, and lay out platters of Spam and cheese sandwiches, and stack each seating with an inviting display of Hershey bars, Wrigleys gum, Chestereld cigarettes. Our guests were late. We twiddled our thumbs for close on an hour before they paraded in. What a bunch of cutthroats the general and his entourage! Not a glimmer of a smile among the lot. For sure youd never want to bump into them on a dark night. They scooped up the cigarettes. They left the food and candy untouched. They stared tight-lipped at the major as he launched into his welcoming speech, which Roy repeated in Chinese, three-four sentences at a time. The speech dwelt on the solidarity of the Sino-American alliance. It lavished praise on Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek and his hierarchy of loyal generals of which the name Nieh was put at the very top. It concluded with the grand pronouncement that America and China would march forward together, their eternal friendship cemented by General Niehs unswerving faith in freedom, justice, and democracy . . . . While Roy was apologizing for the lack of real China tea, a US sergeant pinned blankets over the windows. The lm projector began to click and whirr. Some of the newsreels were black and white, some Technicolor, all concerned American repower: battleships, carriers, tanks, artillery. We saw carpet bombing, dive bombing,
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incendiary bombing. We saw battles galore: Saipan, Manila, Okinawa, Bastogne, Falaise. And we saw mountains of dead dead Japanese, dead Germans, and, surprisingly, dead Russians. The sight of Russian dead brought the General and his thugs to life. They clapped heartily. They cheered Hao! Hao! The major preened. He beamed a toothy smile at Roy. Thanks for your help, buddy. We really impressed them. Looks like Uncle Sam has won himself a ne ally. Then he rounded on me as if it were my fault the guests hadnt touched the food. Why dont the gooks eat? You get them to eat, Buster. Thats your job. I presented a tray to one of the Chinese. Shaking his head coldly, he muttered: None of you Americans are touching the food. What fools do you take us for? The man next to him added: You eat it. You poison yourself. As I retreated, I heard him say: If I had my way, it would not only be the Americans wed get rid of, but all the Foreign Devils, the whole stinking lot of them, before they once again spread like vermin across our land.
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As it turned out, the man had his way all right. An American Transport Ofcer announced to a crowd of internees that they were to be immediately evacuated. And almost the very next afternoon a group of six hundred internees, about half the population of Weihsiens Foreign Devils, left by train for the port of Tsingtao. They were lucky to get through. After that, no more trains. The line was cut, bridges downed, stations set are. Chinas factional war had ared up across the land. All night long we heard the din of battle, but then at sunrise the shooting stopped, and there they were, out in the elds, droves of peasants bent over sickles, working the harvest just as countless generations of their forebears had done before them. With such scenes of pastoral tranquillity it seemed peace had returned. If that were only so. Came dusk thered be a desultory shot, then another, then two in succession, then a fusillade, then machine gun bursts, then the loud thud of grenades and mortar bombs; and you wondered how a single peasant could survive the carnage. Yet at daybreak they were back again, whole families, reaping and gathering. I could vouch for that. I saw it with my own eyes when as interpreter I rode out each morning in the truck with a squad of GIs to the abandoned Japanese airstrip at Erhshihlipu. Pretty eerie out there in the wide open waiting for the days supply plane. Though the strip was guarded by
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a contingent of General Niehs troops, we never really felt safe. Who would with that slovenly, scrofulous lot armed with antiquated single-action ries and strings of grenades dangling perilously from waist belts? They were sneaky too. Youd tell their sergeant it was forbidden to go near a plane, and hed be shouting and screaming at his men, threatening them with the ring squad if they strayed close. Yet the minute you turned your back, he himself would be sneaking aboard to see what he could snafe. Not only was it the Chinese who got up to mischief. A GI made a playful grab for a puppets rie. The puppet hung on for dear life. The GI turned to me: Tell this crazy gook he can re off my carbine if hell let me take a coupla shots with his funny old museum piece. The puppet sergeant intervened. Bu xing, bu xing. Firing of ries is forbidden. Even when under attack we are not allowed to pull the trigger until given the order. But the honorable foreign soldier can throw as many of our grenades as he likes. And when I translated that for the American, his eyes popped wide. You think Im nuts to pull the string on that rusty old chunk of iron! Anyway, why the umbrella? . . . To protect him from the rain. . . . What if he comes under re? . . . All ghting stops when it rains. . . . Thats crazy, too crazy to believe. . . . . On my rst outing to the aireld I had puffed with importance. Wasnt I at last doing my bit in the war? Second time out, I felt less heroic. It soon began to pall, those long hours of idleness on the sun-scorched mud at. The GIs had but two subjects of conversation. When they had talked themselves out about the gals they had left behind, their Marie-Lous, their Suzy-Anns, their Josie-Belles, they were vehemently defending their home towns. Nothing compare dwith St Louis, Missouri . . . The only place to live was Sacramento, California . . . El Paso, Texas was number one. . . . I dreaded the question, but it always came: Say bud, where you
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from? Confess to Tientsin, Hopei Province, and theyd gape as if I were some freak brought up in a punk smelling mud hut. Why bother telling them what long time American residents of Tientsin knew well enough, that the ofce buildings and centrally heated homes and schools there were on a par with the world's best? But no need to take all that Yankee guff. I could always walk away from their truck and buttonhole some puppet soldier. Easier said than done. The conscripts shied away from my city Mandarin. And the sergeant? Why he was off on an English speaking jag. Poor wretch, it nearly did him in. To show off his newly learned vocabulary he pointed a wagging nger at a dark-skinned GI while he laughingly mouthed the words: Black Face! How could he possibly know that in joining together those two innocent words from his English Primer he had loaded them with deadly venom. An hour before sundown the puppet soldiers would begin to agitate. In twos and threes they would abandon their posts and head towards us, rst those guarding the far end of the strip, then the point men, then even the idlers grubbing about the wrecked Japanese aircraft. Time to go, theyd say, gazing longingly at Weihsiens protective city wall. Soon the rst shots would sound heralding the evening battle. Didnt the Americans realize that out in the open theyd be sitting ducks? Of course the Americans realized it. It set them off. Why dont the Sixth Marines in Tsingtao y in and kick hell out of the sonovbitch Commies once and for all? Them marines got too much on their hands.
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Then we might as well quit this landing strip. Might as well. These gooks here are no help. With every passing day the deterioration of General Niehs guard contingent was plainer to see. Its depleted ranks were now mostly made up of youths barely able to shoulder the weight of their ries. What happened to your sergeant? I asked one of them when for several days running that scarecrow in uniform failed to show. Hes deserted and joined the Reds.

There came the day when our morning excursion to Erhshihlipu was put on hold. And when the truck stayed parked for a second day, then a third, a fourth, a fth, we had to assume the worst the Reds had overrun the strip. Numbing thought. It was the third week of October and the tenth since World War II had come to an ofcial end. You began hearing people say they were better off under the Japanese; at least then they lived in the hope of being free as birds the minute the war was over. Now, no such hope. Someone ventured the opinion that this other war now entrapping the camp was the Chinese version of the Hundred Years War. Hard to argue against that. Hadnt the Nationalists and Communists been slugging it out since 1927? And werent they still in round one, for goodness sakes? Were stuck here till doomsday was the common refrain in both Peking and Tientsin Kitchens. Faint hearts! How could
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anyone lose faith in the sublime ability of Americans to move mountains when so inclined? It was Tai-tai who broke the news. Theyre going to y out the whole camp starting tomorrow. All seven-eight hundred? Never! Orlich sent word to Betty. He ought to know. Peter Orlich, a signals corporal in the OSS, one of the original team that liberated the camp, was romantically involved with my half-sister Betty. Now stationed in Peking, the hub of the American military presence in North China, his teletype machine must be burning hot with signals concerning plans for our evacuation. When I passed on the news at the workers meal table in Kitchen Two Annex (Yes, right to the end we continued supplying meals, and hefty portions too, as can be seen from a happy Bessie Attree pictured below), it started off the armchair generals . . . If the Yanks dont have control of Erhshihlipu, how they gonna land their planes? . . . Who said they cant take over the place? . . . The Communist 8th Route Army said. . . .

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