Dillon, Wilton, March 24, 1979

Wilton Dillon (1923-2015) was born in Yale, Oklahoma. He attended the University of Alabama to study creative writing, and was part of the school’s ROTC program during WWII. The Army Air Forces sent him to the Philippines at the end of the war. After the war, Dillon went to Japan as a civilian information specialist in 1946. He worked with the U.S. Education Mission and later the Allied Control Council that allowed him to work with the War Guilt Information Program. Once Dillon returned to the United States after the war, he earned his doctorate in anthropology from Columbia University. Dillon was known for leading the Smithsonian Institution’s interdisciplinary conference series. He passed away in 2015.