The truth was that nobody in the commissar's place would have dared to accept the woman's favors. His cook and interpreter were outside within earshot and I was on the other side of the wall, also able to hear the conversation. Besides, the maintenance men were all watchful. Only a fool would have gotten entangled with her then and there. I dared not explain my thoughts to my barracks mates, who seemed eager to create a hero worthy of their worship.

After I saw that woman, to be honest, I thought about her for several days. What kind of person was she, bold enough to offer herself that way? Whatever her motivation, it must have taken a lot of nerve to do that. I was bothered by the fact that she was willing to become intimate with a strange man she must have despised in her heart. Did she do that only for money? Probably so. What a tough job she had, trying to seduce a dedicated Communist like Pei. At bottom I was a little disappointed, because she looked like a decent woman in appearance, not that cheap.

On the other hand, she might not have been serious about her offer at all. If the commissar had agreed to go to the Free World with her, she might have dumped him even before they reached there. Perhaps Pei had discerned this ruse; otherwise he mightn't have dealt with her that flippantly. Perhaps he had just put on a show for me and Ming and the cook to witness, so that we could tell our comrades about it.

On the afternoon of September 25, 1952, a message came from the prison house, which ordered: "Every battalion must raise our national flag on October 1 to show our spirit and resolve."

The leaders of the ten compounds passed the order down to the ranks. Most of the prisoners got excited. Bored and restless, they were eager to do something on October 1, our National Day. The immediate difficulty was how to make flags and long poles, and how to hoist the flags and protect them from being destroyed by the enemy. In our battalion people were thinking hard about how to get a piece of cloth, but nobody could come up with a suitable solution. That evening, Wenfu, a spare fellow with sleepy eyes who was the battalion chief's orderly, struck on an idea. "Can't we use a piece of rain cloth?" he said.

"You mean to get rid of the rubber part?" asked a company leader.

"Yes." Wenfu narrowed his eyes and seemed to know how to do that.

The Americans had issued us each a piece of waterproof cloth, which we could put on as a rain poncho. It had white nylon fabric on one side and coated rubber on the other.

The next morning Wenfu heated an oil drum behind the kitchen and spread his rain cloth on it. Without much difficulty he peeled off the rubber. We were all impressed. Next, we needed to color the white cloth red. But where could we get the dye or paint? One man pierced his finger with a safety pin and smeared his blood on the white nylon, but soon the blood turned brownish, so this wouldn't do. Then we remembered Mercurochrome, and a man was dispatched to get some from the medic. The antiseptic worked much better, so we decided to use it as the primer for the flag. That resolved, we had to come by five stars. Somebody suggested cutting them out of tinplate. Without delay a few fellows got hold of a pair of pliers and went about making the stars. Meanwhile, the nylon fabric was cut into a rectangle and hemmed along the edges. Then the five stars – one twice as big as the rest – were sewn to the cloth. Many hands were busy helping with the sewing, which was done within an hour.

The finished flag looked quite impressive. Now the next problem was how to make a pole, which had to be about thirty feet long. This proved easy. There happened to be a pair of stretchers left in our compound, which the Americans had not collected after we had used them to carry two sick men, so we dismantled them and tied the poles to one another. We had enough rope, but we needed to fix a small pulley to the tip of the pole so that we could hoist the flag. Since it was impossible to come by such a device, we substituted a self-made iron ring for it. Amazingly, all the preparations took us just one day.

Although I participated in making the flag, from the outset I had a foreboding that something horrific would happen. I knew Commissar Pei well enough to see that besides shattering the enemy's claim that the Chinese POWs were unwilling to return to China, he might have something else on his mind. I couldn't guess his motives yet. Somehow my thoughts kept turning to the fact that our national flag was actually in its infancy, not even three years old. My comrades were unlikely to have developed a staunch attachment to it, not to mention devoted love. Then why had they all of a sudden become determined to fly it at any cost?

Most prisoners got carried away with the plan. Many applied for the shock team and the flag protection group; some even wrote pledges in their own blood; one of the hotheads was so worked up that he broke his little finger in front of others to show his passion to fight this battle for raising the flag. Meanwhile many of us were exchanging our home addresses back in China in case we got killed on October 1.

On the surface we appeared courageous, but in reality our resolve was mixed with desperation.

We all felt ashamed of becoming POWs because we should have died rather than submit to capture. Many even believed our captivity had impaired our country's image. I often heard some men say they had "smeared soot on Chairman Mao's face." The guilt weighed heavily on their consciences. That was why ever since our arrival at Cheju, the Party leaders in the camp had propagated this slogan as the principle of our action: "Through our struggle we shall remove our shame and win back our glory!" Those words struck a chord in most inmates' hearts. Now Commissar Pei 's order gave them a chance to vent their pent-up emotions, and many men couldn't wait to fight. Some even believed it would be better to fall in a heroic, if ill-fated, battle than to be jailed like animals. So all at once the compounds turned hectic – the prisoners were busy preparing to confront the enemy. They picked up stones and piled them in places, filled bottles with urine, gathered wooden sticks and cudgels, made knives out of the steel sheets torn from oil drums, forged and honed daggers. There was some kerosene used for cooking in the kitchen, so they poured the fuel into empty cans, inserted short pieces of shoestring into them, then sealed the tops with soap to create nine bombs. To use such a weapon, they'd light the string, then pitch it.

The inmates seemed suicidally blind to the resources the enemy had. I was agitated but dared not say anything, fearing the accusation of cowardice.

On September 27 Commissar Pei issued another message, ordering us to "strike at the enemy," specifically to kill one or two top American officers. After an exchange of views among the battalion leaders, it was decided that every compound prepare to murder Colonel Kelly, the commandant here, should such an opportunity arise, and that if possible, Major MacDonald, the camp's executive officer, should also be removed. Our neighbor, Compound 7, was much more active than we, and I could hear hammers hitting hot iron in their kitchen and makeshift smithy continually. In total, they forged more than a hundred daggers and machetes. They also drilled their men in different formations for a whole afternoon on September 28. But that night a traitor slipped out of their barracks and informed the Americans of their plan.

Early the next morning Major MacDonald, a colossal man with tawny hair, came with two companies of GIs and three light tanks. They forced all six hundred men in Compound 7 to assemble on the central field and one by one searched them. Whenever they found a dagger they would slap and punch the weapon carrier or butt him with rifles. Altogether they seized about twenty machetes and seventy daggers. Throughout the search Major MacDonald, holding his pistol, stood away from the prisoners to avoid being attacked.