Frank H. O’Leary was born in June 1921 in Boston [Annotator's Note: Boston, Massachusetts]. He had two older brothers. His mother died when O'Leary was five years old, and since his father was an alcoholic, the boys were sent away. When his father turned his life around, he took the boys back and moved to Wilmington where they lived in a shack for about two years. Then his aunt took them in and raised them. O'Leary was very proud of his middle brother who moved up in the Navy ranks and was given his own fleet. O'Leary finished high school and went to work. After World War 2, he took some math courses at MIT [Annotator's Note: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts] and went to Northeastern [Annotator's Notes: Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts] for metallurgy, and then went to work for Gillete.

Frank H. O'Leary was leaving his friend's house when he learned about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. His friends decided to go down to Revere Beach [Annotator's Note: Revere Beach, Massachusetts]. One of the guys that he was with got into a scuffle with another group of guys. They ended up at a diner and began discussing the war and if they planned on enlisting. They all decide to join the Marine Corp and go to the enlistment office on 9 December 1941. The line of guys waiting to sign up was wrapped around the block. They had to wait until 29 December 1941 to join the Marine Corps. They went to Parris Island [Annotator's Notes: Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, South Carolina] and went through boot camp that lasted about six weeks. He was assigned to Company H, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division. He volunteered for the mortar platoon, thinking that it had to do with jeeps. [Annotator's Note: Someone enters the interview room and there is a disruption at 0:23:03.000.] During his training, they were tested on speed and accuracy. He was appointed as the loader and had to carry the tube piece of the mortar.

In June 1942, after mortar training at Camp Lejeune [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, Jacksonville, North Carolina], Frank H. O'Leary and the rest of his company [Annotator's Note: Company H, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division] were sent to San Francisco, California where they boarded an ocean liner called the Ericsson [Annotator's Note: SS John Ericsson]. They got off the ship the next day, boarded the Elliott [Annotator's Note: USS George F. Elliott (AP-13)] and shipped out. During the trip, O'Leary recalled that many of the servicemen got seasick. After a long voyage they docked in Wellington, New Zealand and proceeded to unload and then reload for combat. O'Leary remembered they received liberty to go into town once or twice before they shipped out. They went over some rough seas heading for Guadalcanal [Annotator's Note: Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands]. One morning, O'Leary looked out and never saw so many warships. He thought that they were invincible. He was transported on a Higgins boat [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft Personnel, Large or LCP(L)] and landed on the beach. There was no resistance from the Japanese when they first landed. They headed for a mountain called "Grassy Knoll," but they never made it because the cornfields were too high. On their way back to the beach, his platoon ran out of water and was struggling for days. They finally met up with an amphibious tractor that gave them some water. One night, when they had bivouacked, there was a friendly fire between two companies and O'Leary's platoon's campsite was in the middle of it.

Frank H. O'Leary and his platoon set up on the Tenaru River [Annotator's Notes: Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands]. On the first night on the river, combat began. When they received the order to fire, O'Leary dropped the shell down the tube of the mortar and got out of the way. Nothing happened; there was a misfire. He and his squad had to dislodge the shell from the tube, which was very dangerous. During battle, his squad was given orders to fire and this helped keep the enemy reinforcements from coming up to the front line. O'Leary recalled hearing the machine guns during the battle. After the Marines gained control, they cleaned up the area and sent out patrols. He recalled some of the Marines that were killed in the battle, and a month or two later, the admiral gave out military decorations to several of the Marines.

After the Battle of the Tenaru River, Frank H. O’Leary and his squad were only given one and half meals a day because the supplies were getting low due to the ship [Annotator's Note: USS George F. Elliott (AP-10)] they arrived aboard being sunk by the Japanese. Many of the men in their platoon began stealing food and clothing from Army regiments. O'Leary recalled every other night, the Japanese ships would shell the Americans on Guadalcanal [Annotator's Note: Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands]. Anytime planes came over they would jump in foxholes. O'Leary got dysentery and was put in the hospital, which was located between the beach and the airfield. The Japanese began shelling the airfield and O'Leary did not want to stay at the hospital, so he went back to his unit [Annotator's Note: Company H, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division]. He was put on a work party to dig holes near the airfield, but someone took his place instead. He found out that the party of 17 Marines were killed that night by Japanese strafing. He has been bothered by this ever since. O'Leary became a gunner from then on.

In December 1942, Frank H. O'Leary was on Guadalcanal [Annotator's Note: Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands] when his platoon was told that they would be relieved by the Army. He boarded a ship for Espírito Santo [Annotator's Note: Espírito Santo, Vanuatu] on Christmas Eve. They thought they would receive a Christmas dinner, but they did not, and O'Leary was not happy. They stayed for a couple of weeks and he recalled the Navy taking very good care of them. O'Leary and his regiment [Annotator's Note: O'Leary was a mortar man in Company H, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division] were shipped to Melbourne, Australia. While there, his regiment received plenty of liberty and good food. He received some mail from a couple of girls from school. He was in Australia from January to October 1943.

Frank H. O'Leary and his unit [Annotator's Note: Company H, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division] left Melbourne and went to Goodenough Island [Annotator's Note: also known as Nidula Island, D’Entrecasteaux Islands, Papua New Guinea] to train up again and get back into physical shape. Then they set out to invade Cape Gloucester [Annotator's Note: Cape Gloucester, New Britain, Territory of New Guinea], and their mission was to set up a roadblock to stop Japanese reinforcement. They were able to invade the beach with no opposition and were also able to set up the roadblock. They finally started to receive resistance from the Japanese from the top of a hill. They were throwing knee bombs [Annotator's Note: Japanese Type 89 Grenade Discharger, referred to by Allied servicemen as the knee mortar] at the Marines. A few men were killed and injured. They were on Cape Gloucester for a couple of months. O'Leary recalled a time when they were sitting in their tents and a Marine was cleaning his machine gun and accidently fired it, wounding another Marine. From Cape Gloucester, O'Leary's regiment moved over to Pavuvu [ Annotator's Note: Pavuvu, Solomon Islands]. Because reinforcements were coming in, the Marines drew numbers to go home. O'Leary drew a winning number; however, he had contracted malaria while on the island. He refused to report it because he did not want to stay in the hospital on the island. A couple of days before the ship came in to take him home, he was taken off the list without a reason. His commander was able to talk to his executive officer, Chesty Puller [Annotator's Note: then US Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel, later Lieutenant General, Lewis Burwell "Chesty" Puller], and he put O'Leary back on the list to go home. He was shipped to Camp Lejeune [Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, Jacksonville, North Carolina].

Frank H. O'Leary took a job as the clothing quartermaster at Camp Lejeune [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, Jacksonville, North Carolina]. He oversaw issuing uniforms to the new recruits. He used his new title to work out deals with other departments. He would exchange clothes for other services. [Annotator's Note: There is an interruption at 1:49:10.000.] Two days after World War 2 ended, O'Leary was discharged from the Marine Corp [Annotator’s Notes: There is an interruption at 1:49:56.000]. He married a friend's sister after the war.