Schuyler Lininger was born in Evanston, Illinois in October 1923. Lininger had one older brother and one younger sister. He did not stay in Evanston for his entire childhood, but vividly remembers the blistering cold winters. His family moved to Tucson [Annotator's Note: Tucson, Arizona] because his father's health could not take the climate of Evanston. He remembers when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He was 16 years old. He understood that war was rapidly approaching for the United States. Lininger was enrolled at the University of Arizona [Annotator's Note: in Tucson, Arizona] in the ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps] program at the time. Even through the war's beginning, Lininger continued on through college. At that time, ROTC was mandatory for the first two years of college, and then 55 candidates were selected to continue the program until graduation. Upon graduation, the Army would award them the rank of second lieutenant. Lininger was pulled out of college at the beginning of his junior year to be inducted at Fort MacArthur, near Long Beach, California. After being inducted, inoculated, and issued uniforms he was put on a train and sent to Fort Riley, Kansas for basic training. Lininger's group was divided into mechanized and horses. He ended up with the horses. After completing basic, he was supposed to go to OCS [Annotator's Note: officer candidate school]. Because a variety of those training programs closed during the war, the Army sent him back to the University of Arizona for ASTP [Annotator's Note: Army Specialized Training Program; generally referred to just by the initials ASTP; a program designed to educate massive numbers of soldiers in technical fields such as engineering and foreign languages and to commission those individuals at a fairly rapid pace in order to fill the need for skilled junior officers] instead. While completing college, Lininger and the other soldiers lived on campus and marched to class. The Army offered them a few choices. They could go to Fort Knox [Annotator's Note: Fort Knox, Kentucky] to be in the tanks, they could go into the infantry or the Army Air Corps, or they could go to engineering school at Belvoir [Annotator's Note: Fort Belvoir in Fairfax County, Virginia]. Two soldiers in his cohort went to study medicine at Columbia Medical School [Annotator's Note: now Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Columbia University in New York, New York]. When the OCS at Fort Benning [Annotator's Note: Fort Benning, Georgia] opened, the Army sent Lininger there. For the 17 weeks he was in OCS he lived in a barracks built by the Civilian Corps [Annotator's Note: Civilian Conservation Corps; 1933 to 1942] in the 1930s. Upon graduation, the Army offered him the chance to stay at Fort Benning or to go back to Fort Riley, he chose the latter. The Army commissioned Lininger a cavalry officer at Fort Benning. The Army then sent him to Camp Fannin [Annotator's Note: Camp Fannin in Tyler, Texas]. Troops were needed to replace those lost during the war, and after the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945] the Army needed new officers to be shipped out, so Lininger was sent back to Fort Riley.

Schuyler Lininger was sent to the Pacific in August 1945. He was part of the replacement troops coming in for the invasion of Japan. He sailed out of San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] to San Angelo, Philippines. The voyage took about two weeks. On 26 September [Annotator's Note: 26 September 1945] the Army gave him orders to report to Tokyo [Annotator's Note: Tokyo, Japan] for occupation duty. He was given the orders, but had to find his own transportation, managing to find a ride on a B-24 [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber] to Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan]. He spent a night there, and then flew to Tachikawa Air Base [Annotator's Note: Tachikawa Airfield, Tachikawa, Japan] outside of Tokyo the next day. He was put into the 2nd Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division. The 1st Cavalry were the first division put in Tokyo, and the men of Lininger's squadron were the first American troops to arrive in the city. At first, the American troops were very concerned about duty in Japan as they did not know if renegade Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] would attack them despite the emperor's surrender. No such attacks happened. The Army placed four different calvary regiments in Tokyo: the 5th [Annotator's Note: 5th Cavalry Regiment (Infantry)], 7th, 8th [Annotator's Note: 8th Cavalry Regiment (Infantry)], and 12th [Annotator's Note: 12th Cavalry Regiment (Infantry)]. Tokyo was divided into sectors and each regiment patrolled their respective sector. Lininger's squad was assigned to patrol downtown Tokyo. He saw firsthand the devastation of the firebombing attacks that LeMay [Annotator's Note: US Army Air Forces then US Air Force General Curtis Emerson LeMay; Fifth Chief of Staff of the US Air Force] ordered. Because the United States bombed the Japanese factories, Japan moved its various industrial processes into private homes, which meant that the United States needed to destroy those as well to stifle war production. Because many of the buildings in Tokyo were made of wood and paper, the area was completely flattened by the destruction. Japanese citizens expected the United States to come pillage their cities because the propaganda told them that. The Japanese were absolutely scared to death of the occupying American forces. Lininger and his roommate Todd Moorehill [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling] had a houseboy named Joe who moved in with them, taking care of their day to day needs such as laundry and food. They lived in a traditional Japanese house, made mainly of wood and paper. One of their acquaintances, Bob Decker [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling] who was a plumber before the war, put a tub of water on their roof and attached live electric wires to it, giving them hot water. Lininger never experienced any resistance or insubordination from Japanese citizens. During his time in Japan, he visited a few other places, such as the Great Buddha at Kamakura [Annotator's Note: Kotoku-in, a Buddhist temple located in Kamakura, Japan], the naval base at Yokosuka [Annotator's Note: Yokosuka, Japan], and Yokohama [Annotator's Note: Yokohama, Japan]. While in Tokyo, Lininger went to the hospital for what was thought to be malaria [Annotator's Note: mosquito-borne disease caused by a parasite] but turned out to be hepatitis [Annotator's Note: inflammatory condition of the liver]. His stay lasted nearly two months. The nurses that took care of soldiers in the hospital were from Boston [Annotator's Note: Boston, Massachusetts]. He vividly remembers one of the young Irish nurses, Mary Catherine Cronin [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling], taking care of him during his time in the hospital. He took her out for dinner a couple of times. When the hospital deemed him healthy enough, he returned to his duty. On 1 May [Annotator's Note: 1 May 1946], he was watching a Japanese protest about food rations when a friend from the United States greeted Lininger. It was a classmate from a year ahead of him in high school and ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps] at the University of Arizona [Annotator's Note: in Tucson, Arizona]. Lininger and his squad looked at the occupation of Japan as them just doing their jobs. None of them thought they were saving the world by being an occupational force in Japan. They were all counting their points [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving overseas could return home] waiting for the time when they had enough to return home.

Schuyler Lininger departed Tokyo [Annotator's Note: Tokyo, Japan] for San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] on 1 July 1946 and then continued on to Camp Beale outside of Maryville, California. There, the Army discharged him. Lininger chose to stay in the Army Reserves, an idea he reflects on as being one of the smartest he ever had. At the end of his Army career, he had 34 years of service and retired as a bird Colonel [Annotator's Note: this is a term used to distinguish a full colonel from a lieutenant colonel]. Because he was still in the reserves, he thought he was going to be called up for the Korean War [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953]. At that time, he was serving with a tank outfit in Tucson [Annotator's Note: Tucson, Arizona] but only the Marines stationed there were sent to Korea. He also thought he was going to be shipped out during the Berlin Crisis [Annotator's Note: Berlin Blockade, Soviet Union blocked Western Allies access to Western control sectors, 24 June 1948 to 12 May 1949], but the Army wanted lower ranked officers instead. Lininger went on the Honor Flight [Annotator's Note: non-profit that pays expenses for veterans to travel to Washington, DC and visit memorials]. He visited the Korean [Annotator's Note: Korean War Veterans Memorial, Washington, D.C.], Vietnam [Annotator's Note: Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington, D.C.], Lincoln [Annotator's Note: Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C.], FDR [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, Washington, D.C.], and Women in Service [Annotator's Note: Military Women's Memorial, Arlington, Virginia] memorials. He was also able to stop by Arlington [Annotator's Note: Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia] and see the Changing of the Guard. The next day he visited Fort Myer [Annotator's Note: now Fort Myer Historic District, Arlington, Virginia] where Francis Scott Key [Annotator's Note: American author, and poet] wrote The Star-Spangled Banner [Annotator's Note: the American national anthem] in 1812. After World War 2, Lininger used the G.I. Bill [Annotator's Note: the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts and unemployment] to finish his final college semester and earn a Finance degree. Lininger bought a hotel named The Lodge on the Desert from his parents after the war. Lininger has visited The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana] multiple times, and thinks it is an incredible tribute to the war and the soldiers who served. He was given a tour by Steve Ambrose's [Annotator's Note: American historian, founded the National D-Day Museum, later National WWII Museum] son [Annotator's Note: Hugh Ambrose, historian, former vice president of the National WWII Museum]. Lininger says that the younger generation of Americans do not understand the sacrifices and experiences of the veterans of World War 2. He laments that many people do not remember the Korean War, a war that is still technically ongoing today, as there was no peace treaty only a cease fire.