They rounded up 123 of us and started us off on what was to be a 120-mile walk to another camp of the northwestern border of North Korea. It took us almost twenty day to get there and we didn't have much to eat except boiled potatoes. A lot of the men were getting stomach problems or severe colds, but they just kept marching us. When we got to the camp, there was only 100 of us left.

They let us rest for about two days. Then, on December 24, they threw us a Christmas party. They had actually gone out and cut down a pine tree and decorated it with pieces of colored paper. They handed each of us a few pieces of candy, five or six salted peanuts, and a tailor-made cigarette --- these were our Christmas presents. And then they started this bit where wanted us to get up and make confessions. This was a big deal in Communist brainwashing, to confess your sins.

After a week or two they started giving us English editions of Chinese newspapers, with certain articles circled in red. We had to read the articles and make sure we understood them, because later the Chinese would test us on them. And they were so ridiculous -- stuff about Chinese soldiers who jumped on the back of an American tank, ripped open the hatch with bayonets, and threw grenades down there and killed the crew, and you were supposed to believe it. There were also stories about the terrible situation that we had in the United States. I remember one about how people were dying of starvation on the streets of Bakersfield, California. Of course, we all knew this was not so, but when we told the so, we had to listen to long-winded lectures in a barn which meant three of four hours of freezing to death. So eventually we got the idea.