I met Connie in Bobby Biedrzycki’s class.  Karl and Connie met at J. Walter Thompson.  Connie was a copywriter, and Karl was an illustrator.  Their friendship and their division of labor has continued to this day.

I loved my Dad’s younger brother, Jack. He was just a really nice guy.

He was a career U.S. Army sergeant in military intelligence and when he came through Chicago on his way to yet another post, the world lit up for me like a meteor shower.

He once took me and my friends to Rainbow Roller Rink and afterwards bought ice cream for all of us.

I was proud of how handsome he looked in his crisply-pressed khaki U.S. Army uniform and how he made everyone laugh.

Once, he won a Victorian doll with silk hair and a hand-painted face, as a door prize overseas, and he hand-carried the delicate lady, dressed in a long, burgundy organza skirt and gave it to me on his way to being stationed at Ft. Knox, Kentucky.

I still have it to this day.

My Dad drove us all down to Kentucky to visit Uncle Jack later that summer, and a funny thing happened right off the bat.

My brother and I both spotted these two signs over the drinking fountains at the same time:

WHITE

COLORED

Then, all hell broke loose as we kicked and pushed and shoved each other to get out of the car.

We made a mad dash to the COLORED fountain. I got there first and turned the knob as my brother howled and screamed his head off in red-faced anger.

But, to our huge disappointment, the water was not colored at all.

“You broke it with your fat fingers,” whimpered my brother Robert through his hiccup tears.

Maybe I did.

We kept trying, but the damn thing never worked right the whole time we were there and only dispensed regular clear water. We were hoping someone would come fix it and wondered what color the water would be. We longed for strawberry or cherry but grape would have been OK with us, too.

Anyway, back to Uncle Jack.

I knew that he always had to have two burly blonde body guards walk around with him when he was stationed in Japan (in case his fellow G.I.s thought he was the enemy and shot him by mistake.)

My Uncle Jack was a Japanese language interpreter. The only problem with that idea was that he was born in California and really did not know Japanese very well–certainly not the polite forms and customs that one is supposed to use with royalty and big shots. My Uncle Jack most likely did not even understand the structure of the English language, let alone Japanese with its own writing system and subtle nuances.

The U.S. Army also futilely tried to teach my Uncle Jack to speak Korean in the next war, but that’s another story.

Anyway, when General Tojo was captured by U.S. forces, Uncle Jack told me that they brought him in to question the infamous military man who immediately proceeded to try and kill himself.

The family joke is that Tojo probably listened to my Uncle Jack’s fractured Japanese and decided to end it all before Jack could mispronounce another word or worse.

Uncle Jack said that he and Tojo eventually got to be sort of friendly in the last few days after the big trial, and before he was executed.

My Uncle Jack told me lots of stories like this one in his retirement years at Seaside, California.

But, one story has made its nest in my head.

Uncle Jack said that Tojo gave him his blessing for being an American who was about to hang him. Tojo said it was OK and that Uncle Jack was an American and not really Japanese.

Then a strange thing happened.

My Uncle Jack asked Tojo if he would give him his military jacket.

As a souvenir or remembrance?

I don’t know.

Anyway, Tojo stood up and came to full attention in his drab execution garb and said that his uniform belonged to his majesty, the Imperial Emperor, and could not be given to an American soldier.
Then, Tojo softened up a little.

He looked at my Uncle Jack and told him that if he happened to find the jacket in the garbage can in the corner later, then there would be nothing he could do if Jack took it.

So, that’s what Uncle Jack did.

He brought Tojo’s jacket back to California with him on a boat along with a new bride, my Aunt Hana.

I asked Uncle Jack if he still had the jacket and if I could see it?

“Nope,” Jack told me offhandedly as if he did not really care very much.
It seems a cousin, on the Kaku side of the family, asked if he could borrow Tojo’s jacket to show to some friends.
He never brought it back.

And no one knows what happened to Tojo’s jacket except that it got as far as Lindsay, California and disappeared.

So, maybe Tojo’s jacket will suddenly appear one day on eBay.

But, like the colored fountain that never produced colored water, I guess it is one of those things that maybe really happened or maybe didn’t.