Reply #9: No One Famous... [View All]

My most interesting would be my great-uncle Alfred.

He was a 17 yr old horn player in the Marine Band stationed in China when Pearl Harbor happened. He was quickly transferred to the Philippines. He was captured on Bataan and escaped from the death march, only to be recaptured later on Corregidor and be put on the second death march (I may have them backwards). He spent 42 months as a POW in the Philippines and later in Japan, and was near Hiroshima working as a slave laborer and was burned by the Atomic Bomb. He had been tortured by his captors, had his teeth beaten out with a rifle butt and his nipples cut off with a bayonet, plus rusty nails driven thru his tongue. He was once crucified in the camp because he would tell them how he had escaped to town to buy alcohol and then broke back in to the camp. After returning to the states, he became a strong advocate of POW issues, and was the first person in Missouri to be given a POW License Plate ("POW 1"). He had early alcohol problems and became and alcoholic at a young age, and drifted the country for a few years, until getting sober in California, where he married his 3rd or 4th wife. Together they returned to Missouri, and when he found there were no AA meetings in the small town they lived, they bought a building and turned it into a local Alano Club, where to this day people go to meetings. He once spoke at a state conference for AA and I have a cassette tape of him telling his life story. I never met the man, but after he died, I found his widow and she sent me a large package of articles and clippings about his life. He was buried with military honors in Ft. Scott Kansas.

RL