World War II Honoree

Milton Jay Berrey

Branch of Service

U.S. Navy

Hometown

Montpelier, Idaho

Honored By

Ellen McCall

Relationship

Daughter

He joined the United States Navy in September 1942 and tested for entry into the Navy Air Force. he found out he was colorblind and therefore unable to fly. However, he became a Navy Seabee attached to the 3rd Marine Division of Combat Engineers, I Company, 3rd Battalion, 19th Marines. He participated in the campaign to build an airfield on Bougainville Island. His unit was assigned to build a trail from Red Beach 1 northwest to Piva Trail over the jungle mountains using only axes, machetes and one bulldozer. From Bougainville he was sent to Guadalcanal Christmas Day 1943. Afterwards he went on to Agana, Guam, where the Seabees established camps and built roads of crushed coral. In Guam, in May 1945, he was called in to see the Company Chaplain who informed him that his older brother had been killed in an artillery attack in Germany on November 11, 1945. He was sent home on emergency leave where he discovered that his younger brother's plane had been shot down 19 days later, November 30, 1945, over the Dutch East Indies. He would have been sent back after leave, but the war ended. He was honorably discharged on September 22, 1945 from Seattle, Washington at Pier 91.