Willard Berger

Willard Berger was 15 years old and in high school in Lincoln, Illinois when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He graduated early and went straight into the Army at 18. He was sent to training in Miami Beach, Florida, where his squad lived in a hotel and ran drills on golf courses and beaches. He was sent to bomb China, traveling East over Africa. The convoy he he was on didn't have the bearings for many of the spots it had to stop at along the way. Once, when they needed to stop in Cairo, they followed the tracks of Patton's Army through the dessert up to the Mediterranean's, and later had to turn around. His battalion's mission in China was to bomb out anything that the Japanese might use, but the Americans were as afraid of getting shot down by Chinese Communists as they were of getting shot down by the Japanese. The war ended while Berger was on a ship headed for furlough in Hawaii. The ship changed course and headed straight for San Diego. After the war Willard Berger drove a taxi, attended school at Illinois State University, and worked a variety of jobs.



View Larger Map