David Dawson was born in October 1924 in Tampa, Florida. They moved to Gary, Indiana when he was two years old. His father ran a street car there. Most of his childhood was spent in Florida. His father was in the automobile radiator business. He started school in Athens, Georgia. He graduated high school about seven miles outside of Athens. He remembers hearing about Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] when he was in high school. His older brother signed up for the Navy two days before Pearl Harbor, and two days after he went to Virginia for boot camp. Dawson and his friend drove from Athens to Columbia, South Carolina. He enjoyed being in the service. He experienced food he had never eaten before. A lot of people could not eat well during the Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s]. It was a different world hearing about the war. When Dawson went in to have his physical, he was told he had high blood pressure. He joined the Navy. His brother was in the Navy and his uncle had been in the Navy during the First World War [Annotator's Note: World War 1, global war originating in Europe; 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918]. His wife was in the Navy. He was stateside the whole time. His mother cried when he joined the Navy. They had to buy their own uniforms. On Saturdays, they would be in parades in the city, or they would do calisthenics in the field.

David Dawson was in Hollywood, Florida at Navy gunnery school. He would pick up people that lived off the station and bring them out to the gunnery range where he was an instructor. He learned about guns, rockets, and torpedoes. Dawson used to bowl a lot. He went to a football game with his friend in Jacksonville, Florida where he met his future wife. She was a WAVE [Annotator's Note: Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service; United States Naval Women's Reserve]. Every Wednesday night, they went back to the same burger place they went to after they met. Eventually, they got engaged and married. His wife was Ukrainian and from New Jersey. Her parents were from Ukraine and met when they moved to the United States. [Annotator’s Note: Dawson talks about his father-in-law and the rest of the family.]

David Dawson remembers they did a lot of close order drilling. [Annotator’s Note: Dawson was training in Florida.] They were given seven weeks of training. When they would be on the calisthenics field, one guy would fall out and have to be taken to the infirmary. Dawson worked on getting a citation. They had to learn to assemble guns in the dark. He worked on guns that had mechanical issues. They had to know how each part felt and where to put it. One time, some guys brought in a .50 caliber gun [Annotator's Note: Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun] from the Rhine [Annotator’s Note: Rhine, Germany]. It had a misfire in it. If jarred hard enough, it could have put a hole in him. There were new things coming onto the market during the war. Dawson is proud to be a part of the Greatest Generation.

David Dawson used to listen to the radio. He would listen to the news program every day. A lot of the bad news was propaganda. The greatest thing about being in the service was meeting his wife. His brother was in the service and he would see the Uncle Sam signs [Annotator’s Note: Uncle Sam is the personification of the United States federal government, dating back to the 19th century. He's typically depicted as an older gentleman sporting a star-spangled top hat and red bow tie]. He was going to be drafted. He went into the Navy as a volunteer. The war taught him about people. It brought the country out of the Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s]. Families used to be close-knit, but they are not anymore. Farmers would pay his father with produce. There are a lot of people that do not know what the war was about. Dawson is 91 years old. He thinks future generations need to be taught about the war.