this poignant melodrama's based on fact.

and here's a picture of him with a bazooka

1) your grandfather there looks like he’s on the military version of the Price is Right, modelling off the prize behind Door #1

ok so my great-grandparents moved to Hawaii before it became a state (so the Chinese Exclusion Act didn't apply) but it was still a territory and so my grandfather was born there as a U.S. citizen---when he was a teenager his dad took him to China as a kind of "get to know your roots" trip---but this coincided with Japan's invasion of mainland China during the Second Sino-Japanese War in which time they perpetrated a lot of war crimes---and my great-grandfather ended up "disappearing"---so my grandfather ended up orphaned and homeless in a foreign country---and he said "well, I probably should get a job" so he found his way to an American military base---the Americans were shocked that this ethnically Chinese, United States citizen, fluent in English, Mandarin, and some Cantonese just showed up on their doorstep---and instead of, you know, sending him safely back home to Hawaii where his 12 brothers and sisters still lived, they had this actual teenager start doing intelligence work for them---and he worked with a guy (unclear whether this man was also military) who promised, promised, promised that they would both find a way to Hawaii, but the second that their combined funds were enough for a ticket back, the guy stole all my grandfather's savings and vanished---so my grandfather ended up having to join the military permanently.

Gospel of Dirt. On view now