GRRRRR- this crap pisses me off

[Strangler Lewis]

Funny story about how out-of-control heterosexuality killed my uncle during World War II. The set-up is how, like my father, he escaped Germany as a refugee, coming over here by himself on a ship as part of the American equivalent of the kindertransport program. When the war started, he was drafted and served in the Pacific. He survived that and was stationed in the Pacific as part of the army of occupation. One night, two drunken American servicemen set fire to a geisha house to drive out a couple of girls they had a beef with. They started shooting into the gathering crowd. One of the bullets hit my uncle and killed him.

Okay, maybe that's not so funny. The funny part is how the story evolved as it was told to me as I grew up:

"Your uncle died in the war."
"Your uncle was killed in a USO station."
"Your uncle was killed in a USO station by drunken American soldiers."
Then the current version.

The events were somewhat notable because the two soldiers were sentenced to hang but President Truman commuted their sentences to life in prison, an event that merited a paragraph in the New York Times. I'm not sure, but I think Truman did this because the two soldiers were black, and he didn't want the memory of a recent hanging over a poor Jewish refugee to gum up his plans to integrate the army.

One of these days, I've got to research that assumption at the Truman library. I would hope I'd learn that the rest of the story was that my uncle was actually running out of the geisha house. From what I understand, it would not have been out of character.