The children in our 4th grade class were ordered to dig and transport earth to a work site some 200 meters away. Twelve children dug holes with shovels and the other children carried the dirt in zinc buckets or sacks. The site of the digging was a clay hill, 4~5meters high. The clay was fairly soft so it was not difficult to dig. But we were afraid because the hole, which became deeper as we continued digging, seemed like it could collapse at any time. As we dug away one shovel of dirt, two shovels full of would full of dirt would fall.
After working for two or three days, our hole became two to three meters deep inside. Dirt often fell from the top of the hole. The teachers did not care and told the children to go ahead with the work inside the hole. Then all of a sudden, the hole collapsed. It was so sudden that nobody had time to do anything about it. Six children screamed and disappeared from our sights. There was a huge pile of dirt where the six had been digging. The other children were so shocked that they threw up their shovels and scrambled out of the hole. We trembled with fear. Three children were killed and three other children were badly wounded that day. The children were blamed for carelessness.
We heard the school principal and the teachers shouting at the older children, “The s.o.b.s! Why did you dig at the bottom without knowing what was going to happen?”
After digging down some 50 centimeters, we found three children first. Fortunately they were alive but they were crying out in pain for their mommies and daddies as they were moved out. Perhaps their legs or arms were broken. When we dug about a meter further, we discovered the figures of the remaining three children. Their faces were full of dirt and blood, their noses and mouths still bleeding. The teacher put his hand over their hearts, examined their eyes and shook his head hopelessly. Teachers covered the bodies with straw mats and allowed nobody to come closer. The girls could mot control their sadness at the sight and burst out crying.
“You crazy bitches! Are you crying to bring us bad luck? Stop that!”
The school principal scolded the girls. He swore at the crying children in a booming voice and blamed the dead children for what had happened. He said. “You should have known better than that. You were lazy to dig only the bottom and this is what happened. You s.o.b.s, you see what happens to you if you don’t work hard. You got it?”
It was near lunchtime and we stopped work and came back to the classroom. The parents of the dead children rushed to school frantically. They cried and pleaded to have a last look at the faces of their poor children but the teachers had already buried the dead children. The teachers argued that allowing the parents to see the corpses would only deepen their pain.
Stains of blood were still vivid when we arrived at the work site after lunch. We were horrified at the sight and everyone tried to be at the end of the line. The teacher in charge of our class looked at us angrily and called out twelve names to form new digging teams.
At the end of the day’s work, we were assembled at the school ground to hear the principal’s long and angry speech. As expected, he blamed the children for the accident. None of us agreed with him and, in fact, all of us trembled inside our hearts with anger at his words. Yes, indeed, we were small children but we were sensible enough to understand why this happened.
