Albert O. Weissberg Papers

Albert O. Weissberg was born in New York City on May 26, 1919 to Leo and Irene Weissberg, a couple from Butte, Montana. Weissberg spent the first few years of his life in New York, returning with his parents to Butte in 1922 after his father was offered a partnership in a men’s clothing store with his two brothers-in-law.

Weissberg married his wife, Muriel, on January 1, 1942, three weeks after the incident at Pearl Harbor, and served as head of the public voucher section of the newly opened Naval Supply Department in Seattle. He joined the US Navy Japanese Language School operating in Boulder, Colorado in December of 1942 and graduated in 1944.

After graduation, Weissberg was sent to New York for advanced Naval Intelligence training, and then on to the Pacific via San Francisco on May 19, 1944. Over the course of the next eighteen months Weissberg served at Pearl Harbor under JICPOA, was assigned to the 10th Army on Okinawa, the 5th Phib. aboard the USS Auburn, CINCPAC on Guam, NavTech in Tokyo, and the US Strategic Bombing Survey in Tokyo and Washington. Weissberg’s duties in the Pacific consisted mainly of translating Japanese weather documents. Muriel Weissberg gave birth to the couple’s first child, Bobby, in June of 1944, but Weissberg was unable to see his son until his return to mainland in December of 1945. He and his wife also had another child, their daughter Judy.

After the war Weissberg went on to complete graduate studies at University of Washington, the University of Iowa and Syracuse University, leaving with a PhD in audio-visual education. Weissberg moved to Redding, California in 1956 to be the television coordinator for the Shasta County Schools. Afterwards he taught English, journalism and drama at Central Valley High School and was an instructor in the Evening Division of Shasta College. He also played an active role in his community as a founding member and president of Temple Beth Israel, a board member and president of the Community Concerts Association and the local chapter of the California Retired Teachers Association. Weissberg was also a member of Shasta County Citizens against Racism, which gave him its civil rights award in 1998. Albert Weissberg died at his home in Redding, California on February 1, 2008 at the age of 88.