Joseph Heller was born on May 1, 1923, in the Coney Island district of Brooklyn, New York, the son of Isaac and Lena Heller. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Russia. Isaac, who arrived in America in 1913, was agnostic, interested in socialist politics, and a delivery truck driver for a wholesale baker. Joseph had a half-sister, Sylvia, seven years older than he, and a half-brother, Lee (originally Eli), fourteen years older and born in Russia; their mother had died.
Joseph’s father died following an operation in 1929, as Joseph began his formal education at Coney Island’s Public School No. 188. Lena never learned to speak English well, and the family struggled financially. After graduating from Abraham Lincoln High School in 1941, Joseph immediately went to work as a file clerk for an insurance agency. When the United States entered World War II in December of that year, he took a job as a blacksmith’s assistant in the Norfolk Navy Yard. World War II would become the key formative event in Heller’s life, providing him with rich experiences in the military and, eventually, a formal education.
In 1942, as the war progressed, Heller joined the Army and worked as a file clerk. In October, he switched to the Army Air Forces, as the aviation branch was known prior to the establishment of the United States Air Force in 1947. Joseph initially intended to be a gunner on a bomber; when he was told, erroneously, that the average life span of a gunner in combat was three days, he quickly enrolled in cadet school to become an officer and bombardier.
After graduating from cadet school as a first lieutenant early in 1944, Heller was assigned to the 488th Squadron of the Twelfth Air Force in Corsica. Heller later said that, as a twenty-one-year-old officer, he initially had no serious complaints about his life in a combat unit. He enjoyed the camaraderie of his fellow airmen on the base and the pleasures of visits to the group’s officer apartments in Rome, following the city’s liberation in June. The bombing runs went well enough.
