Preparations for Transport
In early December, Ki-jo borrowed a commuter bus the U.S. Army ran out of the 7th Division and brought it to the Cheongsan plant. He set the mechanics to going over it in detail, then took the report from Yeom Ban-jang of the repair crew.
"It's a Japanese-built bus, so the frame runs weak. Reinforce the floor, though, and she'll carry a decent load."
"If we reinforce the floor, how much will she take?"
"Distribute the weight right, and two tons ought to sit easy."
"What about the cargo space inside? You've measured it. What did you get?"
"Near enough to a truck bed. It'll change, though, with where we stand the bulkhead between the cab and the freight."
Yeom Ban-jang went around to the rear and pointed up at the roof.
"And this part's got a bad aru in it. Curves down hard. We're going to lose cargo space on account of it."
The roof at the back of the bus dropped away in a long streamlined fall. Bus design in the fifties followed the fashion of the time, and the fashion was the curve.
"We'll take that aru—the curve—out later, when we build the cargo door," Ki-jo said.
He told them to raise the rear roof and fit a cargo door. The engine sat up front, so a door in the back of the bus was possible, and he wanted that door to run from floor to ceiling and to match the bus in width.
"How do you think we ought to blank the windows?"
"Pull the glass and fill the openings with dotan. Galvanized sheet—zinc iron."
"Tear out all the seats and we'll have yaji to spare, all the room we need. For the dekoboko, when the road breaks into ruts and ridges, we'll need hooks inside to lash the cargo down. Don't gento that work. No guesswork. Set them properly, where the frame takes the load."
For the first time in a long while, Ki-jo was talking in the language of the construction sites. He had forgotten the words somewhere along the way, but he had come back to the fifties, and they rose to his mouth of their own accord. They were the terms technicians and job-site laborers had used every day in that time.
He stepped into the bus and worked it out with Yeom Ban-jang: how far the interior should be given over to cargo, and what they would build the inner wall from, the wall meant to protect the driver's space.
Ki-jo meant to bring in thirty of the Army's commuter buses and run them in place of trucks. He wanted the conversion for a plain reason. Unlike Hanjin, Cheongsan had no box trucks—no closed truck with the freight bay built up into a box, the kind that carried goods shut away from the road.
If the canned beer was to be moved without a slip, security mattered. No one outside could be allowed a hand on the freight, and better still if no one could even tell what was being hauled. Every truck Cheongsan owned had an open bed.
A canvas tarp would have covered a load well enough, except that a man with his eye on the canned beer needed only a knife drawn across the cloth, and so much for the security. Converting the trucks already on hand into box trucks was no answer either. Hauling brick through spring, summer, and fall would turn miserable. Loading the brick and taking it off meant a man in the bed and a man on the ground, throwing the bricks back and forth between them. Box that bed in, and the work lost its pace.
"The seats we pull off the buses—store them well, and we'll use them again when we need them."
"Yes, sir."
Later, once the trucks had multiplied, he intended to bolt those seats back in and run the vehicles as buses once more. The talk finished, he sent the bus back to the 7th Division and turned toward the yard.
In the broad yard, emptied now of every brick, Ma-ryang and Han-su had a drill going. A hundred-odd drivers and plant workers, under Ma-ryang's direction, were rehearsing how to keep a load from being seized. He had raised several truck-shapes out of brick, seated the escorts in the beds, and put drivers and assistants in the cabs.
"Head-on collision!"
At the shout, the man on the handcart made as if to slam into the brick truck at the head of the line. The men aboard spilled off in a rush, charged the driver, and scrambled up toward the bed, playing out the theft of the cargo. Escorts and driver on the truck under attack moved to hold them off. The men in the cab lifted short wooden clubs and feinted blows at the heads of the raiders closing on the driver's side, while the escorts in the bed used long poles to bar the way.
"Truck Two! What are you doing!"
Ma-ryang bellowed it at the crew of the second truck, waiting behind the one under attack.
In Truck Two, the two men in the cab snatched up clubs and braced. Of the escorts in the bed, two stayed. Four jumped down with clubs and helped subdue the raiders clinging to Truck One. Their reaction had not been fast enough to suit him, and Ma-ryang tore into them in a fury.
He ended the attack on Truck One and sprang one upon the tail truck instead. If the last vehicle in the line were hit, the trucks ahead might never know, and so the driver under attack had to sound his horn at once.
"Honk! Honk!"
The tail driver shouted it for a horn. Escorts came leaping out of the trucks ahead and running for Truck Two. Raiders and defenders alike streamed sweat. The drill was that hard.
Ma-ryang gave the men a rest and came over with Han-su, and Ki-jo offered them a word.
"Hard going, all of you."
"You go through hardship like this, and when the real thing hits, a man don't freeze so bad."
Ki-jo nodded to him. Ma-ryang never let up on training for the real. It may have come of commanding soldiers through a war in China. He liked repetition, the kind that taught a body to answer before the mind caught up.
"And you, Han-su?"
"It's only a mock drill, but my blood's up before I know it. Ha ha."
Sweat was running on Han-su's forehead. Ki-jo clapped him on the shoulder. He thought matters would change once the buses had been made into trucks, but he did not take that to mean the training itself was needless.
"The two of you will be living in Yeoncheon for a while, then."
"That's how it's got to be."
"Keep at it. And tonight, grill beef with the men. I bought it at the American post and brought it along."
"Understood."
Having satisfied himself that the preparations for the haul were in hand, Ki-jo went up to Seoul.
While Ki-jo saw to those preparations, Cho Choong-hoon of Hanjin was everywhere at once, set on winning a larger share of the canned-beer contract.
A contract with the U.S. Army was not a thing easily won. Even with a record of business already to show, a firm was examined, closely, for any further capacity to haul. It was nothing more than carriage done on the Army's behalf, and still the Americans demanded a prior inspection of the vehicles and personal sureties for the drivers. They also arrived unannounced at Hanjin headquarters in Incheon and looked over the repair shops.
Choong-hoon kept his own maintenance crew, and he was not thrown by it. Plenty of outfits had nothing but the trucks themselves, and he was sure Hanjin would be rated above the rest on that score. But to be handled by the Americans like a criminal in the making, and put through their inspection and their grading, drew the lament out of him.
Poverty is the crime. Poverty is the crime…
Nothing could be done. American freight was stolen so often that the Army could come on in this fashion and a man had no answer to give. Koreans were not, by nature, a people who stole. They had done it only because living was too hard just now. He could have pleaded that. He did not think the Americans would believe him.
The inspection done, the officer from the Army transport unit held out their sheet and required Choong-hoon's signature. Choong-hoon read the checklist, then protested to the officer, who had judged his capacity to haul as short of the volume of canned beer he had asked for.
"Look here. What you've inspected isn't even half the facilities Hanjin–CS holds. The greater share of the mechanics and the trucks is with CS, the firm in partnership with us."
"Is that so?"
The American officer looked at Choong-hoon with distrust plain in his eyes. Choong-hoon believed the Army respected a businessman confident in his own ability more than it did a modest one, and he went on without giving ground.
"Go to Yeoncheon and inspect CS Company's repair shop and trucks. Right now."
"Would it truly be all right to look immediately?"
"Of course. You came to our company without warning, didn't you?"
The officer nodded, called his aide in close, and ordered him to contact the transport unit of the 7th Division and have them verify CS Transport.
"Confirm the place, and once the hauling capacity of the two companies is established, assign us a larger share of the canned beer."
The officer had come meaning to cut the allocation. When Choong-hoon asked him to assign more instead, he laughed.
He had nothing particular left to say, and still he stayed on in Choong-hoon's office. Leave, and the man might telephone Cheongsan Transport the moment he was gone and warn them to prepare for a surprise inspection. That, it seemed, was why he would not go.
Some thirty minutes passed before the officer spoke.
"Sign this document for now. After we have checked CS as well, we will add the two firms' capabilities together and reassess your hauling capacity."
Choong-hoon signed. The Americans held the knife by the hilt. There was nothing to do but what they said.
The instant they were gone, he telephoned Ki-jo.
"Hey, Ki-jo. It's me."
"Yes, hyung."
"An evaluation team from the Army transport unit will be at your Cheongsan plant soon. Sorry I couldn't warn you earlier. They inspected me without notice, too."
"It'll be all right."
"Will it really?"
"Of course. Please don't worry."
The ease in Ki-jo's voice, and the confidence, set Choong-hoon at rest.
"Even so, wouldn't it be better to get word to the Cheongsan plant, even now?"
"The phone lines haven't reached Yeoncheon yet, hyung."
"Ah… so that's how it is. All right. Even if I'd called sooner, nothing could have been done."
"Two department heads from the main office are down at the Yeoncheon plant. They'll likely handle it well."
"Is there anyone there who speaks English? That may matter more than the rest…"
"There won't be anyone who speaks English. But if the Americans so much as look at the Cheongsan repair shop, they'll see what standard we keep, won't they?"
"Ha. You're so sure of yourself that I'm left embarrassed for worrying. All right. When the evaluation comes back from the Army, I'll let you know."
"Yes, hyung."
He hung up with Ki-jo, and the worry would not leave him. Choong-hoon paced his office.
At the Cheongsan plant in Yeoncheon, Ma-ryang was lost in the drill out in the yard when he saw several American jeeps coming in through the main gate. Wondering what it was, he stopped the training and went over to the Americans, who were trying to make themselves understood to the repair crew.
A sergeant with a scar on his face saw Ma-ryang, and all at once he looked delighted.
"Hey! Mr. Jang! How are you?"
Startled by an American greeting him like an old acquaintance, Ma-ryang turned to the KATUSA who had come with them, a Korean soldier attached to the American unit.
"What's he saying?"
"Mr. Jang. He's asking if you've been well."
"What?"
While the KATUSA interpreted, the sergeant went on, glad as a man could be. The soldier listened and rendered the words, and Jang Ma-ryang broke into a wide grin, shook his hand, and embraced him.
The scarred sergeant had been on the scene himself when an American truck struck a mine at Eundae-ri.
"Ask him where the men are who saved us that day, and the truck. Tell him I want to see them."
Ma-ryang heard it translated and brought over the drivers who had rescued the Americans with him. The sergeant hugged those drivers one by one, beaming, and when they led him to the blue truck his pleasure grew greater still.
"Yeah! This truck! This is the truck that took us back to the unit! I'll never forget this truck as long as I live! Ha ha ha!"
The inspectors from the 7th Division transport unit took more interest in the blue truck than in Cheongsan's repair shop. Rumor had made a legend of it, the blue truck that had saved American soldiers.
Ma-ryang had one truck more brought out. It was the truck from the accident, half wrecked, and since rebuilt.
"This is the truck we were riding in?"
The Americans looked over the truck they had ridden, and marveled.
When they had greeted the men who saved their lives, the inspectors gave Cheongsan's repair shop a look that was barely a look at all, and held a document out to Ma-ryang.
"Sign here. Perfect score."
Ma-ryang heard the interpreter and signed.
"From what I hear, your outfit's the one hauling the canned beer. You don't need to worry. We'll make a good report to Transport Command."
Ma-ryang took the words as they were passed to him, and answered in the only English he had.
"Thank you."
He saw the Americans off as they returned to their unit, the drivers who had saved them beside him, and then he spoke.
"All right. Now we train."
At his order the men of Cheongsan Transport went back to the yard and took up the drill again. They were driving real trucks now, and the training had drawn that much closer to the real thing.
Ma-ryang was closing out the year 1954 with transport drills.