In 1945, he became a Superfortress crewman with the 39th Bombardment Group, based on Guam, and was assigned to a B-29 bomber, flying on 25 missions. Army Air Forces in 1943, serving as an aircraft gunner in the 760th Flexible Gunnery Training Squadron. Buchinsky became the first member of his family to graduate from high school despite the fact that he didn't learn English until he was a teen.īuchinsky enlisted in the U.S. According to legend, Buchinsky's family was so poor that at one point he had to wear one of his sister's dresses to school because he didn't have anything clean left to wear - not exactly what you'd expect from a future macho superstar actor.įrom a young age, he proved to be a tough, quiet, self-reliant type, traits that would serve him well in the movies later in life. The son of a Lithuanian immigrant father and the 11th of 15 children in the family, Bronson started working the coal mines at age 10 when his father died, earning the measly sum of $1 for every ton of coal mined.
