Early Years
Bongiorno was born in New York City, but moved to Turin (his mother's native city), when he was young. His father was a Sicilian American lawyer. During World War II Mike abandoned his studies and joined a group of Italian partisans. He was captured and spent seven months in the San Vittore prison in Milan and was then deported to a German concentration camp. He was liberated before the end of the war due to a prisoners of war exchange between the United States and Germany. He returned to New York and in 1946 started work at the radio headquarters of Il Progresso Italo-Americano (The Italian-American Progress) newspaper.
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