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Contact Info
Home Town Boise, Idaho
Last Address Fairfield, California
Date of Passing May 16, 2003
Location of Interment National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (VA) - Honolulu, Hawaii
Wall/Plot Coordinates Plot: SECTION CT6-A ROW 400 SITE 429
William C. Anderson, author and Air Force officer, was born May 7, 1920, in La Junta Colorado. Shortly after his birth, his father Robert and mother Fannie Anderson moved to Boise, Idaho. William, also known as Andy, grew up in Boise. He graduated from Boise High School in 1938. After high school William attended Boise Junior College and Fort Hays College in Kansas. He put his education on hold and joined the Army Air Corps shortly after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
Anderson chose a career as an Air Force Officer. He flew in the Berlin Airlift, piloted air-evacuation aircraft during the Korean War, and commanded a weather reconnaissance squadron during the Eniwetok H-bomb tests. He also wrote while in the Air Force, editing Air Force publications and beginning work on his first books. He ended his military career involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis and working in the Pentagon. He retired from the Air Force in 1964 and eventually moved back to his hometown of Boise.
Love for writing kept him busy in his retirement. His 20 books were influenced by his experience in the military and his natural wit and humor. Anderson “hit it big” with his bookBat-21, the true story of the rescue of a downed American Air Force officer in Vietnam. In 1988 he wrote the screenplay for the movie version, starring Danny Glover and Gene Hackman. This movie was a huge success and the highlight of Anderson’s career. Anderson also wrote a monthly column for Motor Home magazine. This was a humorous column about Anderson’s journeys with his wife on the road.
Anderson married Dortha Power in 1948. William and Dortha were the parents of three children: Ann, Scott, and Holly.
Anderson died of natural causes at the age of 83 in Fairfield, California, on May 16, 2003.
Description The Korean War; 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) began when North Korea invaded South Korea. The United Nations, with the United States as the principal force, came to the aid of South Korea. China came to the aid of North Korea, and the Soviet Union gave some assistance.
Korea was ruled by Japan from 1910 until the closing days of World War II. In August 1945, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, as a result of an agreement with the United States, and liberated Korea north of the 38th parallel. U.S. forces subsequently moved into the south. By 1948, as a product of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, Korea was split into two regions, with separate governments. Both governments claimed to be the legitimate government of all of Korea, and neither side accepted the border as permanent. The conflict escalated into open warfare when North Korean forces—supported by the Soviet Union and China—moved into the south on 25 June 1950. On that day, the United Nations Security Council recognized this North Korean act as invasion and called for an immediate ceasefire. On 27 June, the Security Council adopted S/RES/83: Complaint of aggression upon the Republic of Korea and decided the formation and dispatch of the UN Forces in Korea. Twenty-one countries of the United Nations eventually contributed to the UN force, with the United States providing 88% of the UN's military personnel.
After the first two months of the conflict, South Korean forces were on the point of defeat, forced back to the Pusan Perimeter. In September 1950, an amphibious UN counter-offensive was launched at Inchon, and cut off many of the North Korean troops. Those that escaped envelopment and capture were rapidly forced back north all the way to the border with China at the Yalu River, or into the mountainous interior. At this point, in October 1950, Chinese forces crossed the Yalu and entered the war. Chinese intervention triggered a retreat of UN forces which continued until mid-1951.
After these reversals of fortune, which saw Seoul change hands four times, the last two years of conflict became a war of attrition, with the front line close to the 38th parallel. The war in the air, however, was never a stalemate. North Korea was subject to a massive bombing campaign. Jet fighters confronted each other in air-to-air combat for the first time in history, and Soviet pilots covertly flew in defense of their communist allies.
The fighting ended on 27 July 1953, when an armistice was signed. The agreement created the Korean Demilitarized Zone to separate North and South Korea, and allowed the return of prisoners. However, no peace treaty has been signed, and the two Koreas are technically still at war. Periodic clashes, many of which are deadly, have continued to the present.
