Voices in the Field 185Chinese in this camp.^18 So the Chinese in the kitchen wanted to see him
perform. Our Korean tried to show that he could cook. He worked his
hands furiously. He did not know how to cook at all. The Chinese looked at
him disapprovingly. However, they told the camp guard that they would
take him. Privately, they said to him, “You are a Korean, Koreans are our
brothers.” He came back after serving five years. The Chinese had saved his
life [by giving him the job of a cook rather than his having to be a laborer in
near Arctic conditions].^19Perhaps, the Chinese prisoners found that, through bestowing small acts of
kindness, their sense of agency was revived. This, in turn, buttressed their
resolve to survive.
These “histories” are part of what memory and fieldwork can also
reveal— that is, alternative narratives that defy convention, established hier-
archies, and the heretofore “known.” Hopefully, this story will live on with
my retelling of it. In this case, we see several men in a strange land (the
USSR), thousands of miles away from home, without any hope of return or
any earnings/money to send back home (the very reason for their journey).
These men faced a would-be chef desperate to survive, whom they granted a
“ free pass.”