Construction Battalion and two battalions of ROK's.
The ROK troops weren't much help, but with the U.S. Engineers Gregory began building barbed-wire compounds. These were jerry-built affairs, for time and labor were limited; even wire was scarce. Inside the wire, Gregory constructed living quarters—huts—and sewer lines running down to the sea, for the forty thousand POW's were consuming rice by the ton, with no place to dispose of it.
One source of labor was indigenous personnel. In a very short time, most of the inhabitants of Koje discovered there was such a thing as the U.S. payroll. For all of them it was a very happy discovery. The half of the island that was unable for some reason to get on the payroll was able to sell or otherwise do business with those who had.
The Chinese and North Koreans were moved into the new, hardly secure compounds, already overcrowded as more and more POW's reached Koje. But the comptrollers were screaming over the expense: good or bad, there was to be no more money for pow camp construction.
Through it all the POW's remained subdued and quiet. They made no trouble.
Five weeks after the first captives had landed on Koje, a specially trained Military Police Detachment arrived from Camp Gordon, Georgia, to assume direction of the island. This unit, from its commander down, had been given careful instruction on how to handle POW's, which was, after all, an MP function.
There was only one problem—the instructors hadn't known anymore than the people they taught. But they had given them some ideas.
Colonel Fitzgerald, the MP commander, took charge at once. He called all officers on the island to a staff meeting.
'These people are our equals,' he said, strongly. 'Our job is to teach them democracy.' However dimly, someone in the States had recognized the essentially ideological nature of the conflict with Communism. 'We're going to treat these people as human beings. I want you to understand that if a pow is abused, or refuses to work, and a U.S. guard strikes him, the guard will be court-martialed. We are here to teach these people democracy, and we can't do it by being a bunch of bullies.'
The inescapable Anglo-Saxon sensitivity to race—all the captives belonged to the colored races—tended toward a certain overcompensation on the part of the American guards. It was not enough to stress that the POW's were human beings, to which there could be no argument; it must be brought out that they were fully equal human beings, which was debatable.
However, the assembled officers shifted their feet and got the message. The prisoners were to be equals, and not to be bashed, no matter what. They were also to be taught democracy. That was clear enough.
Nobody asked Colonel Fitzgerald, however, the approved method by which democracy was taught, which was probably just as well. As it turned out, the method seemed to consist in giving the POW's anything they wanted. As Bill Gregory put it: 'We told 'em we're here to serve you. If you want anything, you let us know, boy. We're going to show you what democracy means. You're all damn fools to be Communists—you do the way we do, and you'll be living on top of the world.'
It was a materialistic approach. The main idea seemed to be that democracy was better than Communism because it produced a life richer in the goods of this world.
Colonel Fitzgerald had plenty of help. In addition to the Americans, there was the International Red Cross, informing the POW's of their rights, and a U.N. Commission on Korea, called UNCORK by the GI's for reasons having nothing to do with their announced mission.
The POW's were furnished books on democracy, and copies of the United States Constitution. That took care of the theory, for those who could read.
For the rest of it, tons of athletic equipment, much of it abandoned by U,S. units in Pusan, were shipped in. A new hospital was built, with sick call daily. North Korean and Chinese doctors treated the POW's; these men were allowed all the drugs and medicines they desired.
Mess halls were constructed. The POW's own cooks worked in stone and baked clay kitchens, with new Korean utensils. They were given more rice, fish, and vegetables than nine-tenths of them had seen in their lifetime.
They were inspected for cleanliness and health by a special Medical Sanitation Company.
They were given new clothing, some of which, like socks, they didn't know how to use. Because most of the U.S. supply of fatigue uniforms had been diverted to surplus sales and relief work around the world and now with a new war were scarce, the POW's were issued new officers' pinks and greens, straight from QM depots. Each man received new boots and a clean mattress cover.
Major Gregory saw many men inside the barbed wire walking about in better uniforms than he owned. American officers had to pay for their uniforms, and Bill Gregory had a family in the States.
Now the POW's were screened, to determine their sentiments. Already it was becoming known that many of them were not true Communists. Of the nearly 80,000 Koreans, many were conscripts taken in South Korea, or men torn from their homes in the North, with no interest in or inclination toward politics or the war. Of the nearly 6,000 Chinese, many were soldiers of Chiang Kai-shek forcibly incorporated into the Chinese Peoples' Volunteers; many had suffered, or their families had suffered, from the Communist conquest.
Already, there was ferment in the compounds between the fanatic Communists and the non-Communists, as different factions jostled for control. This ferment was dimly seen by the guards, and not understood at all. Communists and non-Communists were treated alike, as equals.
But the screening did have one result. The worst Communists, officers and men alike, were segregated into compounds like the soon-to-be-notorious 76. The segregation did not have the desired result; instead, it concentrated Communist talent.
Now, a certain senior colonel of the Inmun Gun, the ranking POW in Compound 76 and on Koje-do, had a staff at hand. All Lee Hak Ku had to do was use it. But while the Russian-trained Lee remained the senior officer on paper, the real power among the captives was probably in the hands of a small, evil-faced officer called Hong Chol.
Lee Hak Ku, by surrendering, had shown himself capable of weakness, and the inner cadre would never again wholly trust him. And Hong Chol was where he could keep an eye on Colonel Lee.
Together, these two began to organize and control the compounds. When the Americans told the prisoners to elect representatives from each compound, Lee and Hong were ready. The campaign was brief, violent, and secretly bloody.
Occasionally, the guards would find a corpse in the latrine, or a body stuffed down the sewer line. Now and then a roll call turned up someone short, and the POW's would seem to be uneasy, talking and muttering in small groups.
The missing men were often listed as escapees.
And the Lee-Hong slate was elected. Whatever the non-Communist POW's had learned from reading the U.S. Constitution, the Lee-Hong forces were better organized at the precinct level.
Meeting with U.N. representatives, the new representatives of the prisoners slowly became more confident. The new chief
To their delight, they were never disappointed.
They asked for whitewash, and got it. Soon, pretty rock designs of Chinese, Korean, and U.S. flags adorned the compound yards. They asked for record players, paper, ink, mimeograph machines, and work tools.
Because the U.N. Commission felt it was good therapy to let them work, they got everything they asked for, at U.S. expense.
There was no appropriation for extra barbed wire, or for more compounds to case the crucial housing shortage, which made the existing compounds so large as to be almost unmanageable. But there was money for sheet metal, saws, hammers, and nails for the prisoners, who went studiously to work, making things. Some of the items they made they buried underneath the floors of their huts before the Americans had a chance to admire them.
Happy with their work, a certain amount of spirit returned to even the most apathetic Communist POW. Now some of them ignored their guards when ordered to work for their own benefit, such as in the kitchens, and spat in the guards' faces if the Americans became insistent.
One day a sergeant approached Bill Gregory. The sergeant was an old Army man, wooden-faced with his
