In the end, of course, I did track him down, but getting to meet him and then persuading him to talk was very difficult. There were no doubts in my mind that the reason he had chosen to break off all contact when he left was so that he wouldn’t have to talk to anyone about this. I understand that. I don’t accept it. In the end, with massive patience and determination, I wore him down, though it was not a complete victory for me – more like a draw. He agreed to talk to me about Huang Yiyi, but he insisted (and drew up a contract to this effect) that this book could say nothing about what he did after resigning as director. He meant something very specific by this. It was something that I had heard about back at Unit 701, and I am sure that if I could write that story, it would be much more worth reading than the tale of Abing or Huang Yiyi. Now, having signed the contract, it is a story that I am never going to be able to tell, nor even to hint at. He also demanded that I allow him to tell Huang Yiyi’s story ‘in his own way’. That was written into the contract too. So now I have to let him speak in his own words.

To tell the truth, he really couldn’t tell a story, and he was terribly discursive – perhaps because he was so old. Hammering this material into the shape you see below was really hard work, ten times worse than writing about Abing, and I am still not exactly happy with it. But what can you do? I wasn’t allowed to include any extra information or change anything, just to do some editing and some basic revisions. So here it is …

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