Jerry Mike Angelich was born 1 March 1916 in Butte, Montana to Milovan “Mike” and Joka (Kashikovich); he had one brother and two sisters; he was the youngest child. His parents immigrated from Yugoslavia; his father owned a grocery store and later a candy factory. His mother died when he was about a year old and his father married Bozcia Petkovich in 1920 after the family moved to Wilmington, California.

Jerry attended the Phineas Banning High School there but later transferred to the Narbonne High School after his father’s death in 1931. He was active in sports in school, playing football, basketball, track and baseball. He was a star pitcher for the Sacramento Coast League even pitching against Japan’s all-star team after he graduated in 1934. He was later with the San Pedro Knights of Pythian (semi-pro team and Inter-City league winners). He played semi-pro in many leagues around Los Angeles. In 1939 he took a job on the Deer Creek Dam project in Provo, Utah. While there, he played for the Provo Timps which competed throughout the state. He was back in California in 1940, still pitching, this time for the San Pedro Longshoremen and working as an operating engineer for the Griffith Company.

He enlisted in the Army-Air Corps on 19 August 1941 standing 6’2” tall weighing 167 pound with brown eyes and black hair. He was soon stationed at Hickam Field with the Headquarters Squadron of the 17th Airbase Group, an anti-aircraft battery, as a private.

Hickam Field, Hawaii, home of US Army bombers, was the most modern, self-contained of any overseas American base in 1939. It was the largest in the world – an octopus with ten wings containing enough bunks for 3,000 men. It is located at the northern side of the entrance to Pearl Harbor. Rumors of a war with Japan had been circulating in 1941 but no idea of aerial sabotage had been entertained. All thought any assault would be on land and the planes at Hickam were lined up next to the runway with wing tips 10 feet apart – so they could be guarded by a few soldiers with revolvers.

The first wave of Japanese bombers hit at 7:55 a.m. on 7 December 1941, targeted hangers, ammunition storehouses and the Hale Makai Barracks which was hit with 27 bombs alone, catching personnel just waking or leisurely making plans for a Sunday. Major Chares P. Eckhert (AAF) said that of the 100 bombs dropped, almost all were hits. Most of the 188 completely destroyed planes were lost on the ground, many engulfed in flames of a neighboring aircraft that was on fire – a domino effect; another 159 were only damaged. There was no challenge or anti-aircraft fire, no one believed the US would be attacked. Subsequent attacks (8:25 and 9:00 a.m.) found personnel confused, panicky, and scattered everywhere. Some broke into locked ammunition facilities, some assisting wounded or dying, many trying to make sense of the confusion and death raining everywhere. The flag that flew over the burning building at Hickam Field was the most stirring until it was surpassed by the flag at Iwo Jima.

Pvt. Jerry Mike Angelich (Service Number 19003575) is listed as Killed in Action, being strafed by Japanese aircraft fire while trying to set up a machine gun in a wrecked airplane. He is buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. He is also listed on a memorial located outside the entrance of the Lomita Post Office. He received a Purple Heat, WW II Victory, American Campaign, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign and Good Conduct medals as well as the Army Presidential Unit Citation for his service.

SOURCES: Pearl Harbor Ghosts by Thurston Clarke; HonorStates.com; Ancestry.com; Find-a-Grave memorial, Newspapers.com; Baseball in Wartime; Baseballsgreatestsacrifice.com

This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see www.storiesbehindthestars.org). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen saved on Together We Served and Fold3. Can you help write these stories? to this, there will be a smartphone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen's name and read his/her story.

Angelich, Jerry Mike, Pvt