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"The guy looks at me and says, 'Would you be willing to join this organization if you knew that there was a 50-50 chance that you were going to die?' I said, 'Yeah, I would.'" (Video Interview, Part 1, 40:10)
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John Vanden Berg |
John Vanden Berg [2003] | World War, 1939-1945
Army Air Forces/Corps
Detachment 404, Southeast Asia Command
Ceylon; Burma; Kashmir, India; Malaysia; Indonesia; Australia; China-Burma-India (CBI) Theater
Technical Sergeant
IA
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John Vanden Berg's Army career during World War II was divided into two chapters: two years of training that included nine months of intensive study at Yale in the culture of Southeast Asia and the Malay language, followed by a stint in the Special Operations branch of the Office of Strategic Services. Based in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), he helped train Malay natives to slip back into their occupied country and work as saboteurs against the Japanese. Just as he completed training to participate a full-scale invasion of Malaysia, the war came to an end.
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