Fulton "Jack" Taylor was born in 1925 in Corbin, Louisiana [Annotator's Note: cannot verify town name]. The family moved from there to central Louisiana, south of Burnside, when he was young. Because his father worked as a section foreman on the railroad, the family moved around quite a bit. The family finally settled in Burnside. That was where Taylor started school. His school teacher lived with the family. In the late 1930s, the railroad discharged a large number of section foremen because of the impact of the Great Depression. The size of the work crew allocated to each section foreman was doubled. The remaining section foremen had more men to direct while some lost their job. Taylor's father lost his job along with half of the section foremen. The family moved to St. Tammany Parish where his father had grown up. The family lived there for ten years. Taylor went to a country school. He attended high school in Covington until his father went back to work for the railroad in 1941. After two more moves resulting from his father's job, the family settled in Geismar, Louisiana where Taylor graduated from high school in 1942. During this period, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The family heard of the attack while in the car listening to the radio. At 17 years of age, Taylor was too young to realize too much about the attack. His brother was already in the Navy at the time. After high school graduation, Taylor did odd jobs. In November or December of 1942, he decided to join the Navy. He went to the recruiter and obtained the papers to fill out and get his parental approval signatures. In January 1943, he returned to the Baton Rouge recruiting station and filled out more papers. He was sworn into the Navy in January 1943 in New Orleans.

Fulton Taylor chose the United States Navy because service there appealed to him. His older brother was already in the Navy so that influenced him also. After being processed into the service in New Orleans, he went to San Diego for boot camp. He was used to hard work so boot camp did not bother him. He just went with the flow. After boot camp and leave at home, he was sent to Treasure Island in San Francisco to await further assignment. He was then assigned to Port Hueneme in California. He was not there very long before he was put on a ship. He was assigned to ACORN 8 at that time or slightly after deployment. ACORN stood for Aviation, Construction, Ordnance, Radio, and Navigation. His outfit had all those aspects of service covered. There was no particular reason for the ACORN 8 assignment except that he did not attend additional training.

Fulton Taylor was deployed on a Liberty Ship to the Pacific after his assignment to ACORN 8 [Annotator's Note: Aviation, Construction, Ordnance, Radio, and Navigation]. The outfit stopped at New Caledonia for a month or so and then proceeded to Guadalcanal. The outfit went ashore and helped with some minor work, but there was not much for them to do. The Marines and Army infantry had taken control of Munda, New Georgia. That was to be the destination for ACORN 8. The CBs [Annotator's Note: members of special naval construction battalions] went in ahead of ACORN 8. The latter would operate the airstrip there. Taylor was in the ordnance section of ACORN 8. He handled weaponry and munitions. This included working on guns for aircraft and loading bombs on planes. He helped with receiving and then storage of bombs in the stacking area. Even though he dealt with high explosives, the only time it became worrisome was when an air raid alarm went off. That was early on while he was at Munda Point. He took cover under a truck load of bombs during one raid. He knew the bombs would explode in the truck only if there was a direct hit. If there was a direct hit, he would have been killed by it anyway. Living conditions on New Georgia Island was not bad. He lived in a tent for a year. Temperatures were hot because they were not far from the Equator. Taylor got malaria while he was overseas. He would get quinine for the tropical disease. He felt alright until an attack came on. He had two attacks overseas. He had several attacks after returning to the United States. He received disability because of the disease. He was on New Georgia for about a year and then left for the Russell Islands, between New Georgia and Guadalcanal. After staying there for a few weeks, the outfit was loaded aboard a ship where they stayed for 40 days before they were deployed to Owi which is north of New Guinea. It is near a larger island named Biak. He was on Owi with ACORN 8 performing the same work for about eight months. The work on the islands near the Equator was not extremely hot because of the sea breezes that blew across the islands. Working vigorously could result in an individual becoming hot, but Taylor was used to hard work. There were sometimes Japanese troops remaining near their airstrips but usually not. The Army infantry or the Marines had, for the most part, succeeded in pushing the enemy back from the air fields. On New Georgia, some Japanese had gotten a field gun and some shells and fired some rounds at the airfield manned by ACORN 8. American planes got rid of that threat. Taylor was overseas in 1943 and 1944. In November 1944, while still on Owi, a buddy named Louis Gaudet from Louisiana had orders to return to the United States. Taylor had assumed that he would return to the states with the outfit. Instead, he was given orders to return, but he had to find his own transport. Since his outfit ran the airstrip, he could use Army transport to get back. He made a flight to New Guinea and then to northeast Australia. His orders were to report to the Naval Air Station in Alameda, California. From Australia, Taylor boarded a ship that was a former cruise liner for the President Lines. It took three weeks from California to New Zealand using a zigzag pattern in a convoy under a slow speed. On the return to the United States from Brisbane, Australia to California only took 12 days plus it was a nice ship.

Fulton Taylor returned to California and reported for further assignment. He received a 30 day leave en route to his next assignment which was Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida. After a few days there, he began duty in Daytona Naval Air Station until his discharge in March 1946. At Daytona, Taylor armed fighter aircraft for target practice. The practice involved firing at a towed object during which colored rounds, unique to an aircraft, would indicate which pilot hit the target. The tip of the ammunition was dipped in paint to facilitate this identification. Taylor was performing this work when the atomic bombs were dropped in August 1945. Taylor had initially signed up for a tour which would end when he reached the age of 21. The onset of war negated that agreement. He returned to New Orleans for discharge in March 1946. His family lived in Arlington, just south of Baton Rouge, at this time. Arlington had been a stop of the railroad at the time when his father and family moved there.

Fulton Taylor used the GI Bill to help pay his tuition for college. He graduated from Louisiana State University in August 1949 with a degree in electrical engineering. He was married just before he graduated. After his return to the States, Taylor stayed connected with some of the buddies he met during his time in service. He never heard from any of the people from his ACORN 8 [Annotator’s Note: ACORN—Aviation, Construction, Ordnance, Radio, and Navigation] unit from his time in the Pacific. Taylor feels that time is wearing away the understanding of the significance of the sacrifice of his generation in World War 2. Some know about it but the younger generation is becoming less knowledgeable.