World War II’s Ultimate Survivor: Enlisted in Five Countries, Captured from the Start

[World War II · Survival · Serving in Multiple Nations’ Armies · Turbulent Times · Ordinary Man · Playing It Safe · Turning the Tables · No System] Yang Jiu, the son of a Korean miner, was captured five times by the Japanese, Soviets, Germans, Americans, and Chinese. To survive, he played dumb, used others to kill his enemies, and clung to life by a thread. Others saw hopeless situations. He saw a chance to scheme. In a Kwantung Army POW camp, he pretended to be an idiot to avoid torture, then used Soviet artillery shells to blow up his enemy. In a Siberian gulag, at forty degrees below zero, he scraped grease from the bottom of a leather pouch with a wooden spoon to fill his stomach. A battered pocket watch protected his heart. In a German Eastern POW camp, he put on an enemy uniform and surrendered to the Americans on the beaches of Normandy in a Brooklyn accent. In an American interrogation room, he switched between four languages, leaving the intelligence officer questioning his sanity. When the South Korean army demanded anti-communist pledges in blood, he filled the page with loyalty, while inwardly muttering, “Just stay alive.” This novel has no System, no awakening, only the pure instinct to survive physically. He won’t be a hero or a martyr. He’ll be nothing but a stone rolling through mountains of corpses and seas of blood. Stay alive, like a stray dog, like a lump of muck, as long as he can still breathe. Now, he has just bluffed his way into an officer’s room by pretending to be an idiot, only to overhear a death sentence: next week, a train will take all the prisoners of war to Khalkhin Gol to be used as expendable mine clearers. Yang Jiu knows he has only three days left. [Keeping your head down in World War II is nothing to be ashamed of.]