Carroll George was born in October 1919 in Atlanta, Georgia. He grew up ten miles from Atlanta out in the country. His father was a building contractor who built his house and a swimming pool. His mother taught him and his sister the first and second grade at home. His father built a two-room schoolhouse in Vinings, Georgia, one mile away. [Annotator's Note: George mentions that his mind is a little weak at his age.] There were four grades in each classroom. His sister and he were one half of the graduating class. He then attended Georgia Tech [Annotator's Note: Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia] in Atlanta. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer and interviewee discuss turning off chiming clocks in the house.] They were most fortunate that the Great Depression did not really affect them. His father was able to help some of those hardest hit. At Georgia Tech, he was majoring in textiles. His neighbor was a professor in that. He wanted to be a textile engineer. He never graduated. After four tries, he got into the Coast Guard Academy [Annotator's Note: United States Coast Guard Academy, New London, Connecticut]. Three times he failed due to physical issues, the third one was because of his hearing. The fourth time, he was in line for the hearing test and an officer came up and asked him how he was doing. He told him he was going to try the hearing test again. The officer said he knew that and had him come into a side office to do something about it. He was the Commandant of Cadets of the Coast Guard Academy. It was over two hours away by train. He brought a doctor in to make sure George passed, and he did. Ten years later at homecoming, he was wearing two hearing aids. There, he met the man who rescued him and got him in the Academy. He thanked him.

Carroll George enlisted in the Coast Guard because it is always looking out for the welfare of others. It saves lives on the big water. God's second commandment was to love thy neighbor as thy self. The Coast Guard came the closest to that that he could imagine. George was in the Coast Guard Academy when he heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He had tried so hard to get in the academy. He attended a junior college and he got to be a Naval Cadet to get three months training for a reserve commission in the Navy. He was on a battleship that went to Cuba for 14 inch gun practice that put the final touches on his hearing. His classmates got their commissions one month after he left for the Academy. The Coast Guard said he could not come in until the Navy let him loose, and the Navy said they could not let him loose until he got in the Coast Guard. It finally got straightened out after he came back from Cuba. He took the physical in his Navy uniform. [Annotator's Note: George laughs.] He cannot remember what training he did. It was a wonderful three years at the Academy. He was separated from his future wife by 1,000 miles. He was hitchhiking from Georgia Tech [Annotator's Note: Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia]. She mistook him for a high school kid and picked him up. She told him the Confederacy [Annotator's Note: another term for the Confederate States of America that fought against the Union in the American Civil War of 1861 to 1865] was still alive, and the United States would be better off without it. She was a pediatric nurse in an ultra-rich Jewish household. She was from New York State in the Deep South [Annotator's Note: cultural and geographic subregion of the Southern United States] with her ideas. He felt he needed to get her associated with their Christian church. She became a church friend of the family all summer. They were never in private together or thought about a partnership. His mother admired her and planted a seed. His mother told him to take her to see the Fall leaves turn and show her how beautiful it was there. He did that. Four years later they were married. [Annotator's Note: George laughs.] They condensed four years worth of training into three years because of the war. His wife was two years in the Atlanta area on jobs, her father died, and then she went to New York to stay with her mother. She came down to Connecticut and they got married on his graduation day. That was a wonderful day.

Carroll George trained on the USCGC Danmark (WIX-283) [Annotator's Note: Danmark; full-rigged ship of Danish Maritime Authority; returned to Denmark in 1945]. It was at sea when Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] went into Denmark, so they came to the United States and offered their services as a training ship. He trained on that tall ship. The United States took the USCGC Eagle (WIX-327) [Annotator's Note: formerly the Horst Wessel, or Barque Eagle] from Germany in reparations after the war. It is still at the Academy. He received his orders to the Coast Cutter USS Taney (WAGC-37). He left Boston and went to North Africa ushering a convoy to the Mediterranean. George was an engineering officer. He made sure that everything worked properly, and repairs were made. Later on, on a voyage to the Battle of Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan], he was Engineering Officer in Charge. They were taking on fuel from a Navy tanker and he saw it coming in too fast and said to reduce the pressure. Before it could be turned off, there was a fountain of black oil in the crew quarters. He went aboard the tanker to find out what the problem was. A gauge was on the wrong side of the valve. The admiral sent the captain an order to fix it. That was a sticky mess. They did not know what they were getting into at Okinawa. He knew it was going to be a major battle. He did not see any of it. They were in the center of all of the shipping where they were loading onto the beach. His brother was on a landing ship at another battle. They shot at a lot of planes and they downed one. On that one day, in that battle, there were 134 kamikazes. On 5 May 1945, the Germans were about to give up to the Allies, so the Japanese sent them. They sunk half of the ships that they sunk during the war that day.

When alerts came in for kamikaze attacks, Carroll George had to be in the engineering room [Annotator's Note: aboard the USS Taney (WAGC-37)]. His crew realized that they were the most protected people in that battle. There was no chance of anything happening to them really. There were two people at the battle, one on the east and one on the west, who are in complete control. He was on one of those ships and it was not a juicy target. They did not really feel like they were in the middle of things, even though they were. He saw when they downed one of the planes. That was seeing the war. He [Annotator's Note: the kamikaze aircraft] just dove in, their machine guns were "blasting like hell." It just went down and dumped into the water. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks the interviewee to describe the whole scene.] There was an island and there had been an airport there. This was two days later than the main attack date and on the opposite side of the main side. They were there for a few weeks. The longest three weeks of his life were the ones before they arrived. He got a letter from his wife that said her child would be taken by operation [Annotator’s Note: the baby would be delivered by Cesarean section; surgical delivery of a baby] the day before he got the letter. He did not get another letter for three weeks. His daughter was born by the operation and all went well. He now lives with her. His wife died in 2007 at age 93.

Carroll George felt extremely safe [Annotator's Note: in his general quarters station in the engine room aboard the USS Taney (WAGC-37)]. God had been so good to him all of his life. Every little detail, like his future wife picking him up while hitchhiking. She made a comment about the Confederacy [Annotator's Note: another term for the Confederate States of America that fought against the Union in the American Civil War of 1861 to 1865] and the problems that the Blacks had in the South. Another time she brought the same thing up. [Annotator's Note: He loses track and states that his dementia, loss of memory, is really getting him.] God told his future wife to say what she did, so that he would keep in touch with her. Otherwise, he would never have known what her name was. He cannot remember what the end of his duty in Okinawa was like. He returned home and met his six-month-old daughter. He served on two other ships. One was a transport that carried a couple thousand troops back from the war. He made two trips to the Far East and one to the Mediterranean. It was a passenger ship that had been converted into a Coast Guard vessel. Then he was assigned to a weather ship, the USCGC Owasco (WHEC-39), out of Boston [Annotator's Note: Boston, Massachusetts]. His family joined him there.

Carroll George was on a transport ship that made tremendous voyages, two to the Far East and one to the Mediterranean, to bring back about 2,000 soldiers and Marines after the war. He spoke to quite a few of them but does not recall any specifically. He did not have much opportunity to talk because he was an engineering officer. He was assigned to a weather ship. They had guys aboard who were taking information off Newfoundland [Annotator's Note: Newfoundland, Canada]. They returned to Boston [Annotator's Note: Boston, Massachusetts] and then the war was over. He brought his family there. He was not discharged. He went down to Baltimore [Annotator's Note: Baltimore, Maryland] on the ship and was in the Baltimore shipyard to get repairs. They did not know if they were going to put it in mothballs [Annotator's Note: naval slang for a ship being decommissioned and placed in reserve]. His wife was expecting so he went ashore and got an engineering job while still in the Coast Guard. He got a job with Western Electric Company in Baltimore; part of the Bell Telephone System. He and another engineer went ashore, and he rented an apartment and moved his family down. He gave his resignation because he got the job. God planned all of those things perfectly for him. He is most thankful.

The most memorable experience of World War 2 for Carroll George was the fountain of black crude oil in the crew's quarters when he was the engineering officer [Annotator's Note: aboard the USS Taney (WAGC-37)]. He had to go aboard the tanker to find out how it happened. His crew was not responsible. He decided to serve in World War 2 because he was on his way trying to get into the Coast Guard Academy [Annotator's Note: United States Coast Guard Academy, New London, Connecticut]. He had to take the exam four times. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks the interviewee how the war changed his life.] "The way the good Lord just planned and made every little detail turn out the way it did," made him the most thankful person that ever walked on the face of the earth. George did his part in the war. He thinks the war means that America is the free nation that we are. We are under attack again by terrorists. There is an extreme amount of people trying to escape from parts of the world where there is real trouble. He feels certainly that there should be institutions like the museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana]. It is wonderful and the war should absolutely be taught to future generations. One should consider investing in the unpaid part of one's grandchildren's mortgages because you can reduce their monthly budget. He did it for his granddaughter at no cost to him and it made her mortgage less than she had been paying.