The Camp and Bare Life

Based on Giorgio Agamben’s concepts of “the state of exception” and “bare life,” Nanjing City in Nanjing Requiem and POW camps in War Trash can be viewed as the state of exception which turns the refugees and POWs to bare life. This chapter explores how these characters of bare life are governed and exploited in the state of exception.

In Nanjing Requiem, although most stories take place in Nanking Safety Zone, which is like a refugee camp protecting powerless Chinese civilians from the atrocities of Japanese troops, the state of exception actually happens in the whole Nanjing City. After Chiang Kai-shek’s armies retreat, Japanese troops occupy the whole Nanjing City and turn the city into a void of laws where Chinese citizens lose protection from Chinese government and are deprived of human rights. Japanese troops are allowed by their officers to rob, rape and kill the Chinese at will, holding

6 Wing Tek Lum, an Asian American poet in Hawaii, composes a poetry collection, The Nanjing Massacre: Poems (2012), to commemorate the Chinese war victims in Nanking Massacre. In “Nanjing, December, 1937,” the narrator describes the Japanese troop’s ruthless manslaughter against Chinese

the sovereignty over this state of exception. The unprotected Chinese civilians and disarmed soldiers thus fall into the existence of bare life. The narrator of this novel, Anling Gao, mourns, “our ancient city, noted for its beauty and cultural splendor, had become hell overnight, as if forsaken by God…. No one could brutalize others like this with impunity in the long run” (55). George Fitch, an American missionary, describes the situation, “the Japanese arrest practically all the young men. There was no way to reason with them. Oh, Minnie, this is horrible, as if we still live in the Dark Ages” (54). As Nanjing is in a state of exception, without the protection of Chinese civil rights and human rights, Chinese civilians are not treated as humans but as killable living beings. Japanese troops can determine the life and death of any Chinese noncombatants in Nanjing during their occupation. Dr. Chu, a Chinese doctor who works for Autonomous City Government, says that “in war, victory justifies all sorts of violence. A complete victory means to have finished off the enemy. In fact, I believe that Japanese committed all the atrocities as a celebration of their victory, as a kind of reward and gratification” (190). In the state of exception, morality and

humanity seem suspended as Japan’s victory has justified their brutality. However, non-Chinese missionaries, teachers and journalists are free from the Japanese atrocity as “a white face could serve as a pass and a guarantee of personal safety here” (158).

When Anling claims that she works in the American embassy, the Japanese troops dare not arrest her. In Nanjing Requiem, Chinese civilians are excluded from the protection of laws due to their nationality, but they are included in Japan’s cruel governance. Thus, their paradoxical status can be regarded as bare life.

In Nanjing Requiem, the Chinese who cooperate with Japanese troops is another kind of bare life. Many Chinese choose to collaborate with their enemies to protect themselves and family. Anling’s husband, Yaoping is invited by his friend to

“cooperate with the Japanese so that we could at least prevent some part of China from being totally destroyed and annexed” (195). Cooperating with the enemy is a persuasive proposition for decreasing the damage and casualty of civilians in the captured area, but it inevitably becomes an issue of possibly betraying one’s own country. As the Nationalists in this novel give “a clear, indisputable definition of treason: insofar as the enemy’s army occupies the land of China, whoever works for them is a traitor” (218). With this announcement by Chinese government, all national traitors become killable. If Yaoping “serves in the prospective puppet government, he might be killed by the underground partisans” and “become a public enemy” who jeopardizes the fate of his family (195). In this case, the sovereign should be either the Nationalists or Communists in China, and this existence of bare life happens to

Anling’s son, Haowen, a medical student studying in Japan. In order to protect his Japanese wife and in-laws, he is forced to join Japanese troops. Anling is devastated because she hates those Chinese who serve in Japanese army, but she is totally unprepared that her son would also become “a running dog,” “a half Eastern devil”

(148). Anling not only worries that Haowen’s treason “had disgraced us and put us in potential danger,” but also mourns that her son is “ruined” and “might never become a normal man again” (148). Serving in Japanese army, Haowen is still discriminated by his comrades and grieves that “the japs treat me as a Chink, they don’t trust me. I’m cursed, cursed! I’m a pariah no matter where I go” (175). As an alien in Japanese troops, Haowen is judged as a traitor by the Chinese. His life could be easily taken by whoever regards him as a traitor, so he falls into the existence of bare life. Finally, Haowen is stabbed to death by a Chinese partisan after he fails to rescue a seriously wounded Chinese POW, and the local newspaper announces that he is a “traitor killed by partisans” (243). In Nanjing Requiem, after Nanjing is occupied by Japanese troops

and falls into the state of exception, Chinese civilians are turned into the existence of bare life as all laws and rights which can protect them are suspended. They are living beings whose life can be deprived anytime.

This case of bare life is a paradoxical situation of those Chinese who cooperate willingly or reluctantly with their enemies. They are denounced by both the Japanese and the Chinese, which turns them into the figures of bare life. Haowen’s dilemma is not just a struggle between the safety of his Japanese family and loyalty to China, but an impediment of cross-national identity under a binary and arbitrary loyalty/betrayal issue. As a Chinese, Haowen’s destiny has been inseparable from Japan since he marries a Japanese wife. His identity keeps oscillating between the two nations.

Anling assumes that if Haowen had determined to fight for China, he could have

“abandoned his wife by deserting the Imperial Army,” and “joined the resistance force and survived,” so Chinese people would have praised him for “devoting himself to fight the national enemy” (246). However, Haowen does not determine to stand for either China or Japan but remains in the in-between situation, which eventually leads to his death. Haowen’s death is actually attributed to his kindness and responsibility to the two nations, so Anling concludes that Haowen is “doomed by his nature as a good, faithful, average man” (246). Because of his cross-national identity, Haowen becomes indecisive about which side to take and ends up belonging to neither side but under the threat of both sides.

In Nanjing Requiem, Nanjing Safety Zone is a unique space in Nanjing, in the state of exception under the sovereignty of Japanese troops. Fifteen non-Chinese voluntarily provide sanctuary for Chinese noncombatants and use their non-Chinese identity to protect the Chinese refugees. Although their protection is not completely effective because the Japanese authority does not acknowledge the neutrality of Safety

Zone, this region is comparably safer for civilians than the other places in Nanjing. In Safety Zone, Principal Vinnie Vautrin provides the refugees with medical treatments, handcraft training and spiritual comfort. Nanjing City is in the state of exception, but the Safety Zone is ‘an exception’ within. The Safety Zone is the safer space for its inhabitants, so the civilians sheltered in the Safety Zone do not really suffer from bare life.

In War Trash, the state of exception occurs in the American POWs camps in South Korea which imprison the soldiers from Communist China and North Korea.

The American army does not have sufficient faculty to govern all POWs, so they authorize the pro-Nationalist POW officers to govern the whole camp on behalf of the Americans. The pro-Nationalist officers cooperate with the American soldiers and the force of Chiang Kai-shek in Free China (Taiwan) to encourage soldiers to choose repatriation to Taiwan. The pro-Nationalist officers launch a reign of terror in the camp. According to the Geneva Conventions, the POWs must be treated in humanitarian ways⁷. On most occasions, the American soldiers treat the Chinese soldiers well, providing them with medical treatments and sanitary environment.

However, since the American army allows pro-Nationalist officers to govern

Communist soldiers, the application of the Geneva Conventions has been suspended.

This situation formulates a special structure in the camp: with a camp within the camp, and the prisoners ruled by the pro-Nationalist officers governed by the

American force are in the state of exception. The imprisoned Communist soldiers are

7 See the treatment of prisoners of war in Geneva Convention (III) finalized on 12 August, 1949, Art 13: “Prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated. Any unlawful act or omission by the Detaining Power causing death or seriously endangering the health of a prisoner of war in its custody is prohibited, and will be regarded as a serious breach of the present Convention. In particular, no

prisoner of war may be subjected to physical mutilation or to medical or scientific experiments of any kind which are not justified by the medical, dental or hospital treatment of the prisoner concerned and carried out in his interest.”

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deprived by the American force of protection from the Chinese government, and their human right are exploited by the pre-Nationalist officers (the sovereign). The key point to distinguish the inside from the outside is the loyalty to the Nationalist or to the Communist. In the pro-Nationalist dominated camp, the Communist soldiers who show their intention to return to China would fall into bare life.

Choosing to go to the Communist China or Free China is difficult for the Communist soldiers because both sides use violent means to threaten these

Communist soldiers. Before they go through the screening, choosing to be repatriated to China or to join Free China (Taiwan), the pro-Nationalist officers persuade, entice and even threaten the Communist soldiers to choose Free China, while the

Communist officers also urge them not to betray the motherland and the Communist party, or their family will suffer from oppression on their accounts. In order to urge them to opt for Free China, a pro-Nationalist officer Wang “hands a number of men taken to company headquarters and forced them to sign an anti-Communist vow,” and posts them in public, as a way to “cut off those men’s route to return to China” (77).

Moreover, Wang promotes a “tattoo movement among the pro-Nationalist prisoners, who volunteered to have words and drawings (tattooed) on their arms, chests, bellies and even forehead” (77). The narrator, Yu Yuan is also forced to tattoo “FUCK COMMUNISM” on his belly, so it is hard for him to claim his loyalty to Communist China. Signing vows and tattooing are the ways to distinguish the Self from the Other, the inside from the outside. According to Stephen Pitchard, the “tattoo is often taken as a key to insights of identification and socialization. It marks the body, it inscribes, constructs and invests it within a variety of psychical, cultural and political field”

(331), and “the tattoo reveals something about the site of production, not merely a process whereby individuals are ‘individualized’ or subjects ‘subjected,’ but

simultaneously the constitution of the subject in terms of culture” (332). As a sign of specific identification, the human bodies inscribed with tattoos are easily

distinguished, characterized and excluded by the sovereign. The tattoos which carry distinctive information of loyalty enable the sovereign to effectively distinguish the inside from the outside. When Yu Yuan’s belly is tattooed with anti-communist slogans, his body is objectified and politicalized by the tattoo, which will block his return to Communist China. Regardless of Yu Yuan’s will, his tattoo decides which side he stands for. However, when he alters the tattoo into “FUCK US,” this sign helps him to be accepted by the Communist, and even protects him from the accusation of treason during Cultural Revolution. The tattoos in War Trash are the signifiers of political correctness, deciding the inclusion or exclusion of the

politicalized human bodies. Tattooing the body is a biopolitical strategy, enabling the body to be affiliated with or expelled by political or cultural institutions. Different from the Chinese characters of bare life in Nanjing Requiem who are doomed to suffer the atrocities from the enemies, those in War Trash have more chances to decide their identities and stances, and more possibility to protect themselves. The chance and ability of these characters to decide which side they stand for determines their situation of bare life.

In War Trash, the extreme case of the sovereign power is pro-Nationalist officer Liu Tai-an, who “rules the regiment like a police state,” and even some American soldiers call him “Little Caesar” (69). Liu even kills Lin Wushen, a disobedient prisoner and pulls out his lungs and heart in front of other prisoners to terrify them. In this situation, these Communist POWs’ lives are under the total dominance by the pro-Nationalists who can always put them into death without taking any

responsibility. Yu Yuan feels desperate because they have become “meats for the

pre-Nationalists to hack at will” (110). However, the prisoners tattooed with

anti-Communist slogans are divided in two groups: those who are “valuable to them” and those who are their “deadly enemies” (111). Liu tortures his dead enemies to threaten the valuable prisoners. Yu Yuan is the valuable one proficient in English because he can negotiate with the American authority and secretly collect intelligence. Both the Nationalist and the Communist desire to draw him to their sides, so his special value also endangers his situation. With a history of studying in Huangpu Military

Academy, Yu Yuan is not fully trusted by his Communist comrades and watched as a possible traitor. However, even though he could choose to go to Taiwan, his

experience in the Communist POW camp brings him the same suspicion. Yu Yuan has served in both the Nationalist and the Communist armies, and both parties intend to draw him to their sides. Yu Yuan wonders whether he can choose to leave for a third country or to be a person without a motherland. However, both the Communists and the Nationalists have a clear-cut boundary to distinguish the Self from the Other, especially for the Communists: “either you become their friend or their enemy. The Communists don’t believe anyone who can remain neutral” (43). Being excluded by the sovereigns of the Nationalist and the Communist, Yu Yuan’s dilemma is similar to that of Haowen in Nanjing Requiem, but he is not identified as a killable man in the POW camp. Although his value endangers his life, Yu Yuan does not fall into the similar existence of bare life like Haowen.