Jakiw Palij was born on 16 August 1923 in the town of Piadyki, in what was then eastern Poland and is now in the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast of western Ukraine. At the outbreak of World War II, in 1939, Soviet troops moved in to occupy his home town, along with other Polish territory, in accordance with the terms of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. In June 1941, when the Germans attacked the Soviet Union, the town was captured by the Nazi troops.