Fort Mason: Where Ronald Reagan Hallucinated During WW II
Unfinished History
Fort Mason in northern San Francisco, Building 201 is white building behind green.
Photo: Carla Lazer
Building 201, Fort Mason. In this building, during the second World War, there worked a second lieutenant named Ronald Wilson Reagan. His job was to track down shipments that had gone astray. The safe, cushy "dream job" must have set him to dreaming, for years later, as President of the United States, he would tell stories about his combat service against the Nazis, going so far as to claim that he had participated in liberating the concentration camps. The truth is that not only did Reagan never see combat, he never even left the U.S.. In reality, he did routine desk jobs, like the one at Fort Mason, and acted in a few propaganda films. So as you walk by building 201, imagine a young, handsome second lieutenant sitting behind a desk, bored out of his gourd, daydreaming of battle with the Nazis. Those daydreams apparently somehow transformed themselves into bogus memories during the course of Reagan's political career as a stooge of the military-industrial complex.
--Dr. Weirde