War Trash is the unforgettable story of Yu Yuan, a young Chinese army officer sent by Mao with a corps of 'volunteers' to help shore up the Communist side in Korea. When the Americans capture Yu, his command of English propels him into the role of unofficial interpreter in the psychological warfare that defines the POW camp. Desperate to return to his beloved fianc???e and widowed mother, Yu is trapped by both barbed wire and politics...
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War Trash is the unforgettable story of Yu Yuan, a young Chinese army officer sent by Mao with a corps of 'volunteers' to help shore up the Communist side in Korea. When the Americans capture Yu, his command of English propels him into the role of unofficial interpreter in the psychological warfare that defines the POW camp. Desperate to return to his beloved fianc???e and widowed mother, Yu is trapped by both barbed wire and politics...
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Ha Jin's novel "War Trash" (2004) is cast in the form of memoir written by the 73 year old Yu Yuan recounting his experiences nearly 50 years earlier as a Chinese soldier and POW in Korea. The fictitious memoirist is a man of my own age. I could understand his desire to reflect on the momentous events of his younger life. A lifelong resident of mainland China, Yu writes his memoirs while visiting his daughter, her husband, and two grandchildren in Atlanta, Georgia. He notes that at his age he "won't be coming to the States again." He writes in English, a language he began to learn at the age of 14, and tells his story "in a documentary fashion to preserve historical accuracy." Yu regards his memoir as "the only gift a poor man like me can bequeath his American grandchildren."
Yu was a graduate of the Huangpu Military Academy in China and his student years overlapped the Nationalists and the Communists. He was sent to Korea as part of the Chinese invasion, leaving behind an aged mother and a fiancee. His unit was decimated by the Americans and Yu suffers a severe leg wound. He recovers the use of his leg thanks to the work of a American woman physician, Dr. Greene. Yu is then sent to a variety of prison camps. His memoir describes the harsh life of the camps with among other things the heavy tension between the nationalist and the communist Chinese and the interrelationship with their American captors. Yu is a bookish young man and his skills in English are put to use as an interpreter. He is pulled throughout by both the nationalists and the communists. Yu is not ideologically inclined and wants in his heart only to go home to take care of his mother and marry his sweetheart.
Ha Jin succeeds in giving the tone of a memoir to his novel. He gives an extensive bibliography of sources he consulted for information about the Korean War and about the treatment of POWs. While the depiction of the war is convincing, the focus is on Yu and on his detachment from the competing groups and from the brutality around him. Although not religious, Yu is shown as a reader of the Bible which he says improves his English. The only Biblical book mentioned by name is Ecclesiastes with its emphasis on change and on the shortness of human life.
Yu has two formative experiences which he wishes to explain to his grandchildren and which pervade his memoir. The first involves a tattoo which he received on his belly against his will from the nationalist Chinese. It consists of a standard four-letter American obscenity followed by a reference to communism, which later becomes changed for prudential reasons to keep the obscenity and to remove the letters in the word "Communists" with the exception of the "U" and the "S". Much of the memoir explains the story of the tattoo Yu has carried with him through life.
The second experience involves Yu's relationship with Dr. Greene, the American physician who cured his leg and whom he never sees again. Yu has kept the memory of Dr. Greene and it forms what he sees as the value of life and of his hopes for his young grandson. It is critical to the memoir and prevents Yu's understanding of life from descending into only existentialism or individuality. Yu reflects:
"I cannot explain in detail to my son and daughter -in-law why I often urge Bobby to think of becoming a doctor, because the story would involve too much horror and pain. In brief, this desire of mine has been bred by the wasted lives I saw in Korea and China. Doctors and nurses follow a different set of ethics, which enables them to transcend political nonsense and man-made enmity and to act with compassion and human decency."
"War Trash" has a thick, complex texture with many characters and places. It invites reflection and slow, careful reading. Yu writes at the conclusion of his memoir of his relationship to his captors and fellow POWs: "In the depths of my being, I have never been one of them. I have just written what I experienced." The book tells the story of a war and of a person.
Robin Friedman
PaulK
Apr 23, 2007
Excellent, Thought-Provoking Book
War Trash is an engaging, exciting, and depressing account of life in a US army POW camp during the Korean war. At the beginning of the war, the protagonist finds himself fighting for a cause for which he cares little--and then again after being captured. In this book, Ha Jin vividly and masterfully portrays life in a POW camp. But much more importantly, he delves into the psyches and personalities of war prisoners, and examines the personalities that support nationalism and communism. I highly recommend War Trash, especially for its insight into the politics of revolution and national rebirth.
