We Were Beautiful Once Read Online Free PDF Page B

had claimed that the last time he remembered seeing him was in the late winter of either 1952 or 1953.
    Montoya had been moved from Camp 13 in June 1953 the following year.  But he recalled an American officer who spoke Chinese as being familiar with what went on in the camp: he thought his name was Tad or Tray or something unusual.  Harold Foster, the young JAG officer working for Harris, went in two directions: setting up an ex parte deposition, to which Castalano wasn’t privy, to obtain an official statement from Montoya and locate an American POW officer that spoke Chinese.  Although there were several Chinese-American POWs in Camp 13 that spoke the language, none were officers.  However, based on a DD 214 service record of First Lieutenant Trent Hamilton, it was learned that he spoke Chinese and had been in Camp 13 during the last year of the war.  He was easy to locate; he had a secret security clearance, because his company did work for the Defense Department.  Harris’s staff arranged a conference call.  The discussion did not produce anything pertinent to their investigation and they moved on.
    Harris’s next step was to fly to New Mexico and interview Montoya.  Foster arranged to have Montoya’s statement recorded, but the government had no intention of sharing it with Nick under the “work product privilege” attorneys use to conceal things lawyers create in the course of litigation.  Phone interviews of Bradshaw and Sheer had pointed to the fact that Girardin may have been a POW.  But the interviews weren’t exhaustive and Harris remained skeptical about much of what the men had to say after thirty years.  Montoya seemed to be the last in the line of those who may have had contact with Girardin.
    Montoya, a small-shouldered, dark-complexioned man wore the tan shirt and pants of an inmate.  At the end of a long table, he seemed lost. Crammed in behind him sat a stenographer from the U.S. Attorney’s office at Santa Fe.  Suit jackets removed, shirt sleeves rolled up, Harris sat at one side and Foster the other.  Harris, balding man standing well over six feet tall, did not have enough room to stretch his legs.  Near the door, a prison guard in short sleeves sweated profusely, water streaking down his pancake-shaped face.
    After introductions, Harris asked, “Mr. Montoya, do you have anything you’d like to say before we get started?”
    The man ran his fingers through his crop of dark gray hair, then smiled through large, amber-stained teeth.  “Hi Mom,” he giggled.
    â€œMr. Montoya, this is a serious matter,” Harris cautioned.
    â€œYeah, yeah, got a weed?”
    â€œNeither of us smoke.  Anything else?”
    â€œI wanna make sure we gotta deal.”
    Foster interjected tersely, “I think we discussed that fully.”
    â€œYeah, but tell that man over there,” Montoya countered, his voice tense.  He nodded in Harris’s direction.  “He’s el jefe, no?”
    â€œSo there’s no misunderstanding, you tell us what you think we talked about,” Foster said.
    â€œWell, if I tell you what I know, Justice will recommend I get good time added for parole.  You talked five years.”
    Foster, a man in his late twenties, lowered his voice, “I think we talked along those lines.”
    Montoya flipped his head in the direction of the stenographer.  “Mr. Reporter, get all that?”
    The stenographer, a slight man in his fifties with black pencil mustache banged on a few keys. “Yes.”
    Harris began by having Montoya recount his training and early combat missions.  He said he was in-country almost nine months, on his way to Japan for R&R, when at the last minute he’d received orders transferring him from the 101st Calvary to the 32nd Army Special Forces.
    â€œThere came a time when you were captured by the Chinese, right?” Harris