A Christmas Story

Originally published on WestAndClear.com on December 24, 2007.

Editor’s note: I wrote this story a few years ago when I first started my other blog. I wanted to update it and re-post it to honor the man it is about, Fort Worth’s own Karl King. That’s a picture of him at the left on his 16th birthday in 1940. When I wrote the story, Karl had already passed away, but I didn’t find out until earlier this year. Please take a moment to read it to remember something about the spirit of the man and the spirit of Christmas.

Christmas stories are much like the day itself — filled with magic and possibility but ultimately a bit of a letdown. As a child you wait the whole year as those December days to drag by, your anticipation rises until you feel like you will burst by Christmas Eve. Then on Christmas Day, there’s that feeling of … well, not emptiness, but more of “Is that it?”

Most Christmas stories are the same way. Unlike old George Bailey or Ebenezer Scrooge, most of us don’t experience a Christmas epiphany that leaves us glad to be alive and thankful for our time here in this life.

However, there is one story I know that captures this.

I met Karl King at an SPJ meeting a month or so after I lost my job in the Great Dot-Com Implosion. I meant to do some networking after speaking on this panel about electronic media or something like that. But I already knew most of the people there and job leads weren’t forthcoming, so I ended up talking to this old guy who wanted to tell me about his book.

Karl certainly had some stories to tell — he went into the Marines at 14 back in 1939 and spent most of World War II as a Japanese POW. He then worked for many years as a radio journalist and was among the first to report that JFK had been shot in Dallas. After he retired, he went back to school at TCU and earned his Bachelor’s degree. I thought I might be able to write a story about him and sell it — something to pass the time and make a few bucks.

I met Karl at a coffee shop about a week later and spoke with him for two or three hours. And there he told me this story.

Actually, he told many horrific stories of his POW days — surrendering on Corregidor and going for days without food or water, burying the dead who had rotted under the merciless sun, beatings, malaria and living in the dark, hot hold of a freighter steaming from the Philippines to Japan. However, when I asked him if he held any bitterness toward the Japanese about the way he was treated, he said no.

After all he went through, this surprised me. I had to ask him why. And that’s when he told me this story. Here’s how he wrote it in his memoir, Alamo of the Pacific:

“Japanese civilian, Mr. Miamoto, that I had worked under on several occasions, motioned for me to follow him. He led me to a corner of the shop behind some boxes. The little man had straight black hair and a small moustache. His demeanor and body language reminded me of Charlie Chaplin without a cane. Squatting down on his haunches he wrote a little message using a piece of chalk. ’12-24-42,’ he wrote. Then he drew a Christian cross and box with a ribbon bow on top. With sign language and pointing to his writing on the shop floor, he had me understand that he was aware of our custom of giving a gift a Christmas time. With that, he produced a small paper sack and pressed into my hands his Christmas gift. It was a sack with about a teaspoon full of sugar. Mr. Miamoto indicated to me that I didn’t have to give anything in return. Back at camp that evening I heard several POWs recounting similar experiences, receiving gifts from cigarettes to candy. I later learned that Mr. Miamoto’s gift was his entire December ration of sugar.”

Karl explained that groups are capable of terrible things, but individuals like Mr. Miamoto were capable of great kindness. Even though Karl would break down in tears when recounting some of his experiences, the man did not hate.

Karl’s lack of bitterness was humbling. I’ve known people who have suffered far less and nurtured their anger and resentment far more.

But not Karl.

He was fond of quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson‘s essay on self-reliance. One of the lines Karl liked best was this: “There comes a time in the life of some men when that momentary gleam of light, a thought, an idea or an inspiration, once grasped and nurtured, can be the source of survival by one’s own endeavor — the difference between life and death.”

Karl really took this to heart. He wrote, “I am one of those whom fate placed in the arms of living death and that I had to make living a necessity in order to survive that living death.” He didn’t see himself as a victim, but instead a warrior who believed in his own strength and determination to overcome adversity. Above all, he believed that you have to make living life a priority. That is what I take from this Christmas story: you get what you are looking for out of life. We should all have the courage to find the joy and happiness in this world.

So, like any good Christmas story, Karl King — with an assist from Emerson — is still here with us to offer an epiphany.

Thanks, Karl. And Ralph.

Merry Christmas.