Burton "Burt" Johnson was born in December 1925 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. When he was seven, he spent the summer at his mother's aunt's farm. He was bitten by a spider and was put in the hospital. He was active in sports. He has seven brothers and six of them were in the service. His father was a streetcar conductor and was employed during the Depression [Annotator's Note: The Great Depression, a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States]. Johnson scrubbed floors in a drugstore once a week. He left school at 17 to go in the Marine Corps. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Johnson if he remembers the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] He was in a theater watching a movie with four other boys who all hung out together. The attack was announced in there. They said they were going to go join. A couple were old enough and went in the Navy. Johnson was eager to join and did later. A good friend of his said that they should join the Marines. They walked out of school and went to sign up. He was told he had to have his father sign for him. The next day he went back and was accepted and sworn in. Johnson chose the Marines because his friend said they should. They went through boot camp together in San Diego [Annotator's Note: US Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego in San Diego, California]. It was not that bad. He had a good DI [Annotator's Note: drill instructor], corporal, and PFC [Annotator's Note: Private First Class]. The only thing he did wrong was putting his clothes in water instead of washing them. The corporal threw them on the ground in the dirt and made him wash him again. He learned how to obey and listen to his elders. He then went to 60 mortar [Annotator's Note: M2 60mm mortar] school at Camp Elliot [Annotator's Note: in San Diego, California] after boot camp.

Burton "Burt" Johnson went to mortar school [Annotator's Note: M2 60mm mortar at Camp Elliot in San Diego, California]. He received good training. [Annotator's Note: There is a break in the video at 0:07:19.000 and it restarts with Johnson mid-sentence.] After completing the school, they shipped out. They had no furloughs [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time]. The ship went to New Guinea and then Pavuvu in the Russell Islands to the 1st Marine Division. They trained there starting in March 1944. He was in the mortar group and had a good platoon leader named Warrant Officer Bogen [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify]. They boarded a ship to Peleliu for the landing [Annotator's Note: Battle of Peleliu, codenamed Operation Stalemate II, September to November 1944 at Peleliu, Palau]. The beach was being shelled and the landing craft were being hit. Bodies were laying all over. Johnson got separated from his platoon. Sergeant Wolf [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify] yelled at him to get behind a tank and stay there. The platoon did get together and spent the night in a place where the Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] put their planes. They were shelled there too. The next day they moved up and encountered some tanks. One ran over his backpack so he did not have socks or toothbrushes for a month. Originally, they were to be back in three days after taking the airfield, but that did not happen. The third or fourth day, they got orders to move out. The Gunny [Annotator's Note: nickname for US Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant] told everyone to get ready to charge. There were dead bodies all over and he wanted to get a bulldozer to bury them. Johnson got a Japanese bugle off of one and also got a couple of flags. They moved around a point and set up for the night, digging foxholes. It was hard to dig in the coral. It was raining too. They had run across a Japanese warehouse that had blankets, canned crab, and saké [Annotator's Note: Japanese alcoholic beverage]. They grabbed them and canned oranges too. It rained all the time. The mortars were dug in at the bottom. The Japanese attacked that night, killing two men. One Japanese soldier ran over Johnson's foxhole, down to the water. They were trying to get into the water to cross and join up with the Japanese soldiers across it. Bogen got in a boat and wanted to find a .50 caliber [Annotator's Note: Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun] to shoot the Japanese in the water. They did not have one though. The next day they walked 24 hours to another island and set up. They did guard duty two hours on and two hours off. The Japanese would have Banzai attacks [Annotator's Note: Japanese human wave attacks] at night. He was on Peleliu for a month. Afterwards, they returned to Pavuvu. They were there for quite a while and then they dropped the bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945].

Burton "Burt" Johnson was on Pavuvu [Annotator's Note: Pavuvu, Russell Islands with the 1st Marine Division]. He never had malaria [Annotator's Note: mosquito-borne disease caused by a parasite] and was lucky. Some of the men who did would moan all night long. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks for Johnson's assessment of the fighting ability of the Japanese.] They killed a lot of his men. They were sneaky. The landing on Peleliu [Annotator's Note: Battle of Peleliu, codenamed Operation Stalemate II, September to November 1944 at Peleliu, Palau] was the worst thing he ever experienced. On Pavuvu, they started training for Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Battle of Okinawa, codenamed Operation Iceberg, 1 April to 22 June 1945 at Okinawa, Japan]. They landed there 1 April [Annotator's Note: 1 April 1945]. They did not see any battle for a month. They were taken to the front lines in trucks. They went up in the hills and set up for the night. He and a friend were setting up their mortars when the Japanese dropped three in on them. He got hit in the left shoulder. It went to his stomach but missed anything important. He got scared, ran, and jumped in a foxhole on top of Red Dean [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling; unable to identify] who told him he was bleeding all over him. Dean called for the corpsman [Annotator's Note: enlisted medical specialist in the US Navy who may also serve in the US Marine Corps]. He got a shot of morphine [Annotator's Note: narcotic used to treat pain] and went to sleep. He was taken by jeep to an Army field hospital. Johnson then went on a hospital ship. He did not think it was that bad, but an Episcopal priest came, prayed, and told him he would see him in Hawaii. Johnson went to the hospital on Tinian [Annotator's Note: Tinian, Northern Mariana Islands] for three months, flew to Guam [Annotator's Note: [Annotator's Note: Guam, Mariana Islands], and then took a ship back to Okinawa. He rejoined his company to prepare to land in Japan. He was glad to be back.

Burton "Burt" Johnson was with his unit [Annotator's Note: 1st Marine Division] on Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan] when the atomic bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] were dropped. When Johnson was in the hospital on Tinian [Annotator's Note: Tinian, Northern Mariana Islands], he met a corpsman [Annotator's Note: enlisted medical specialist in the US Navy who may also serve in the US Marine Corps] from Saint Paul, Minnesota who took him around the island. The fact that it was the staging area for the bomb [Annotator's Note: the atomic bomb, nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] was kept secret. He thought he was going to take part in the invasion of Japan. He was with good men, and they trained every day. They were prepared. It did not happen after the bomb, and everyone was so happy. Johnson went to China for the occupation. He was with 5th Marines [Annotator's Note: 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division] there. He got on a train in Taku [Annotator's Note: Taku Forts, also called Peiho Forts in Tianjin, China] after taking an LCI [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft, Infantry] into shore. The train took them to Peking [Annotator's Note: Peking, China], now Beijing [Annotator's Note: Beijing, China]. The company stayed in a place with a big bar. He was there in October 1945 and stayed until January 1946. Every two weeks, they would go the airfield and guard American planes from the Communists [Annotator's Note: Chinese Communist Party military forces]. At night, they could hear them chatting. In other places, they had taken the weapons from the Japanese still there. They even took their watches. They marched them to ships and sent them home. Johnson never guarded a train, but others did. Four Marines were killed by the Communists. Johnson came home and was discharged on Valentine's Day [Annotator's Note: 14 February 1946] at Great Lakes [Annotator's Note: Naval Station Great Lakes in Lake County, Illinois]. One of the men was from Chicago [Annotator's Note: Chicago, Illinois] and showed them around before going home by train. He returned to Minneapolis [Annotator's Note: Minneapolis, Minnesota]. He enjoyed it [Annotator's Note: his time in the service] and had nothing against the service. He was always with good people and that makes a big difference. He wishes he remembered more about it. He had no trouble adjusting to civilian life. He took a bus from Chicago to Minneapolis where he got on a streetcar. He went home early in the morning. He tried to get his family awake up by throwing rocks at the window. Five of his brothers who served were already home. The oldest brother was a Chief in the Navy as a pharmacist corpsman with the 3rd Marine Division and was in California where they were destroying some hospitals. His duty was to make sure everything got put on a barge and dumped in the ocean. After that, he got discharged.

Burton "Burt" Johnson had five brothers in the war as well as him. Three were in the Air Corps, two in the Navy, and he was a Marine. The oldest brother joined the Army before the war and then got in with the Air Corps, flying eight missions in the Philippines. He was grounded for eye problems. He flew B-24s [Annotator's Note: Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber]. Johnson watched B-29s [Annotator's Note: Boeing B-29 Superfortress very heavy bomber] on Tinian [Annotator's Note: Tinian, Northern Mariana Islands], including crashes. All of his brothers made it back. One brother was a bombardier and engineer on a B-24 in Arizona that crashed. Several of the crew was killed and his brother was not sent overseas. His brother Bob [Annotator's Note: Bob Johnson] flew B-24s in Europe on 35 missions, came home for a while, and then signed up to go back. He then flew cargo planes from England before coming home. His younger brother was in the Navy. Arthur [Annotator's Note: Arthur Johnson] was a chief in the Navy as a pharmacist. Bob was the B-24 pilot. Arnold [Annotator's Note: Arnold Johnson] flew out of the Philippines and then went to Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan] where he met up with Johnson for 72 hours. His brother had a whole box of .45 pistols [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber M1911 semi-automatic pistol] and gave one to Johnson. Johnson sold it for 25 dollars to a guy who took it apart, put it in a sack, and got it home. Johnson enjoyed his time even though he got worried sometimes. The night he was wounded, he was on morphine and asleep [Annotator's Note: Johnson describes this event in the clip titled Wounded on Okinawa of this interview series]. He went onto a hospital ship and got a nice cot with the help of a nurse who gave him peaches. He got sick from eating them. He could see the sailors coming in from ships that had been hit. They were burned and it smelled. It was bad. Johnson feels the country [Annotator's Note: the United States] understands the war and what the guys went through. They knew that if they had not gotten the Japanese and Germany, we [Annotator's Note: the United States] would have been two different countries.