Olivi, Frederick John “Fred”.

Olivi, Frederick John “Fred”, born on 26-01-1922 in Chicago, Illinois, the youngest of six children of Adorno Olivi, 1878 and hid wife Primitiva Simonin, 1880, joined the service immediately, when war with Japan broke out , because he was the sole male provider of his mother and sister. Graduated in 1940 from Pullman Tech High School, where he played halfback on the football team. He then went to work for Pullman Co., the storied railroad-car maker for which his father, Adorno, also worked. But ten months later in October 1942, the 19-year-old enlisted in the Air Corps  against his mother’s wishes; four months later he was called to duty. Olivi then underwent officer’s training, in hopes of becoming a pilot. In August 1944 he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant. United States Army-Air Corps Veteran of World War II. He was the Co-pilot on the B-29 bomber named Bock’s Car

   that dropped the second Atomic Bomb on Nagasaki, Japan on 09-08-1945. Olivi’s recollection of the bombing from high above was that a very bright light with a bluish cast, cloud cover and debris from the explosion made it almost impossible to see any of the city below. In spite of the fact that Bockscar was low on fuel, Sweeney decided to take a second pass over Nagasaki, hoping for better visibility; the results of the second fly over were as disappointing as the first. Olivi remembers three shock waves, the first being the worst, a hard right banking of the plane and a barely successful effort to outrun the radioactive cloud headed toward the plane.  Olivi and the surviving members of Crew C15 still meet on a regular basis for reunions. The gatherings began in Chicago in 1962; initially at five year intervals and later two. They met last year, but with 1995 marking the fiftieth anniversary, they have decided to gather once again at Albuquerque, New Mexico, near the Los Alamos Testing Center, between August 5^th and 10^th. He was real proud he retired before he poked a hole in the river,” his nephew said, paraphrasing a quip his uncle often made in reference to the 1992 Loop flood. “He was a kidder.” In October 1965, Mr. Olivi married Carole McVey, his high school sweetheart. They moved to Roseland, and in 1969, they moved to Morgan Park, where Mr. Olivi lived until his stroke. His wife Carol died in 1998. “That was the start of his decline,” his brother said. “He was pretty crazy about her. They were a great couple.”

Death and burial ground of Olivi, Frederick John “Fred”.

  Living in Alsip, Illinois, he at the old age of 82, died of a stroke, on 08-04-2004. He is buried with his wife Caroll McVey, age 75, in 1998, on the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, in Aslip. He told the Tribune: “We saved Japanese lives as well as American. I took no pleasure in killing civilians. And after four years of fighting, it wasn’t a matter of revenge for Pearl Harbor. It was a matter of getting them to stop. … I do not apologize.”

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