Vasili Yasevich

Vasili Yasevich (b. ca. 1920) was a Russian resident of Harbin, Manchuria at the outbreak of World War III. His parents, who'd supported the Whites during the Russian Civil War, fled to to Harbin after the war ended. Yasevich was a toddler at the time. He and his family survived the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. His father was a druggist, and he taught Vasili his trade. However, Vasili was more talented in carpentry. When the Red Army invaded Manchuria in August, 1945, the NKVD entered Harbin. Vasili's parents committed suicide. The now adult Vasili was left alone. He stayed in Harbin even after Chinese Communists took control of the town, and found plenty of work as a journeyman carpenter.

On January 23, 1951, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on several Manchurian locations, including Harbin. Yasevich was in Pingfan helping to repair the train station there. He was asleep when the attack began, and was awakened just prior to to atomic explosion in Harbin. In short order, he had to remind a Chinese builder, who'd almost certainly lost his entire family in Harbin, that he, Yasevich was Russian, not American.

Yasevich was immediately put to work by the Chinese government cleaning up in Harbin. He was exposed to the horrors of the atom bomb: the charred corpses of the dead, the burns injuries suffered by those who survived the blast, but ultimately succumbed, the radiation poisoning in people who were a distance from the explosion, and the like. He scavenged valuables, and had to work to keep the secret police from taking everything he'd found when he left Harbin at night.

Word soon got around that Yasevich had some skill as a pharmacist. After providing ma huang to the wife of a Peking commissar charged with rebuilding Harbin, other spouses of officials bought various drugs from him. This meant that he didn't have to help rebuild the railroad and expose himself to radiation.

Selling drugs had its own risks. In April, a man named Wu approached Yasevich for ma huang. Feeling uncertain about the stranger, Yasevich told Wu he'd meet him the next day after work. Wu insisted twice that he could go home with Yasevich for the ma huang. When Yasevich told Wu no and insulted him, he further reached for the razor in his pocket. He didn't have to use the razor; Wu stomped off. That was nothing compared to a commissar who approached Yasevich in the closing days of April in search of opium. Yasevich turned him away: possession of opium was grounds for execution under Mao, and Yasevich didn't want to take the risk. Ironically, he did have opium stashed in his rooms. Some weeks later, he was approaching his shanty when he saw a jeep in front of his home. Realizing that he'd been denounced, Yaseich fled Harbin. He made his way towards Soviet territory, seeing the atomic destruction of Khabarovsk in the distance as he traveled. Once he reached teh Amur, he found a fisherman who carried him across.