Langer's Imperial Past

From the same Forbean Times article:

Few people know this; but L Springer grew up in Imperial Singapore. His family, like the rest of the Brits, was caught cat-napping by the Jap invasion. The young Springer was forced to live on the streets – scrounging for scraps from locals and eating rats till captured breaking into a pharmacy in search of morphine. Of his experience in the Jap camp, the crypto-Buddhist Springer was once quoted as saying: Nothing is forgiven, nothing is forgotten.

After the war, Springer had immigrated to the States where he proceeded through a unique brand of drive and devil may care to accumulate a vast fortune from stationery products and photocopying machines before branching out into other media…