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Casualty Info
Home Town Wilmington, California
Last Address Hickam Field, Oahu, Territory of Hawaii
Casualty Date Dec 07, 1941
Cause KIA-Killed in Action
Reason Multiple Fragmentation Wounds
Location Hawaii
Conflict WWII - Pacific Theater of Operations/Central Pacific Campaign (1941-43)/Attack on Pearl Harbor
Location of Interment National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (VA) - Honolulu, Hawaii
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.
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.