George Colburn was born in Medford, Massachusetts in March 1926. His sister died as an infant and he grew up alone. His father worked for the railroad in Boston. A lot of men were laid off, but his father just made it. He made 35 dollars a week. His mother would buy meat for their neighbors who had nothing. He would hang the packages on the neighbors' doors. In 1933, the best president, FDR [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States], got elected. Everybody loved him. The only president ever elected to a fourth term. Colburn would play ball in the park with other kids. His father was a World War 1 veteran who had fought in Belleau Wood [Annotator's Note: Battle of Belleau Wood, 1 to 26 June 1918] and Alsace-Lorraine [Annotator's Note: Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine, then Germany, now France] and had some medals. He came in and told his mother about the attack on Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. It did not impress Colburn then at age 15. He knew from his father it was bad news. His father said we were back at it again. The war did not dominate conversation. There were a lot of new things, they got a telephone.

On 11 July 1944, George Colburn and two others went into the Federal building in Boston [Annotator's Note: Boston, Massachusetts]. They knew they would have to go in the service, and they wanted the Marine Corps. They had seen the movie "Guadalcanal Diary" [Annotator's Note: 1943 Lewis Seiler film based on the book by the same name by Richard William Tregaskis]. It showed the Marines on a beach with palm trees and sand. The other pictures they were seeing showed Army soldiers in cold. One of their friends told them they would get killed in the Marines and he went into the Army. He was in one of the groups of 150 men before the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945], was captured and then killed by the Germans. [Annotator's Note: Colburn is likely talking about the Malmedy massacre which occured on 17 December 1944.] Colburn enlisted in the Marines mostly because it was going to be warm. He remembers the movie well. He went to Parris Island [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, Port Royal, South Carolina] for boot camp. He'll never forget it. He got off the train with three others who came from the same area. Two of them were later wounded on Iwo [Annotator's Note: Iwo Jima, Japan]. The MPs [Annotator's Note: military police] yelled at them to wait for trucks. One asked if there was anyone there from Alabama. One guy said yes, and the MP had him go mop the office. That was when Colburn learned to keep his mouth shut.

George Colburn had never been away from home until arriving at Parris Island [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, Port Royal, South Carolina] for boot camp. He was with three guys and they made close friends for the whole time. Colburn had been brought up not to swear. The Drill Instructors were using swear words and calling them names. He thought to himself that they did not even know them, and they hated them already. [Annotator's Note: Colburn laughs.] He went there in July 1944. They were doing close order drill in sand and were wearing sun helmets. His helmet band was loose and a breeze knocked his hat off. The Drill Instructor halted them, got the hat, and put it back on Colburn's head. He then went around to the side of him and punched the helmet down to his nose. He said to the men that Colburn's helmet would stay on now. Colburn could only see the heels of the man in front of him. It is one of the funniest things he remembers. They were fed well, but they had to eat everything they took. They had gotten shots one morning and he took more than he should. He ate it all and then went down the stairs and then threw it all up. Colburn was a rifleman on the M1 [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic rifle, also known as the M1 Garand]. You had to be at least a marksman. He wanted to be a sharpshooter. After about three shots, he found that the guy next to him was shooting his target and those shots kept him from getting sharpshooter.

George Colburn got a ten-day leave to go home after bootcamp. Two of his buddies were home at the same time. He then went to Camp LeJeune, North Carolina for more training. His mother cried when she saw him. His father was angry that the country was going to war. Herbert Hoover [Annotator's Note: Herbert Clark Hoover, 31st President of the United States] was for the rich and he put this country into the Depression. His father blamed him for the war. He did heavy training at Camp LeJeune. Captain Casey [Annotator's Note: unable to verify identity] stayed with them all the way through and was the first guy of their group to get killed on Iwo [Annotator's Note: Iwo Jima, Japan]. They went on a firing problem with 12 guys to a squad. The ones who shot the best would get a reward. Casey called the winners forward. He had a case of beer and he gave each of the 12 guys two of them. There was a ribbon tied to each bottle and he put that around their necks like a real medal. They had to give a pass and review. They loved that Captain. Later on, Colburn was told that Casey had both legs blown off. He knew they were in trouble then. From Camp LeJeune, they took a troop train across the southern United States to Camp Pendleton, San Diego [Annotator's Note: San Diego, California]. He was starving on the train. It stopped once and there was a watermelon patch. They ran off the train and grabbed some. They had cabbage and coffee to eat when they got there. Oceanside [Annotator's Note: Oceanside, California] was the little town there. Their platoon would have their names called every hour at muster so they could not take off. They started calling out each other's names so they could sneak down to Oceanside to get a steak dinner.

George Colburn shipped out on the USS Rochambeau (AP-63), which was the same ship that Jack Kennedy [Annotator’s Note: then US Navy Lieutenant John F. Kennedy, later 35th President of the United States] came back on after being wounded. The trip overseas was long, and they were in a convoy. They went from San Diego [Annotator's Note: San Diego, California] to Hawaii. He remembers going around Pearl [Annotator's Note: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii]. They were there about a week. They then went to Enewetok and Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands. They landed on Guam [Annotator's Note: Guam, Mariana Islands] and joined the 3rd Marine Division. He joined Company B, 1st Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment as a replacement rifleman. The did not do a lot of training on Guam. They were on the ship until almost Christmas [Annotator's Note: 25 December 1944] and spent Thanksgiving there. The 3rd Marine Division had been on Bougainville [Annotator's Note: Bougainville campaign, Papua New Guinea]. They hit Iwo [Annotator's Note: Iwo Jima, Japan] on 19 February [Annotator's Note: 19 February 1945]. The most important thing in his life at that time was mail. A lot of the girls that he went to high school with had fathers who had been in war and they made them write. The mail kept him from going nuts. [Annotator's Note: Colburn gets emotional.] The girls always signed it "with love."

George Colburn only heard scuttlebutt [Annotator's Note: a period slang term for a rumor]. He was just a Private and they did not tell him much. He just knew they were going into combat. They were told to saddle up. As they were going over the side into the LCVP [Annotator's Note: Landing Craft Vehicle, Personnel or LCVP], a kid on the deck yelled out "you wished you joined the Navy now." The surf was heavy. This was 23 February [Annotator's Note: 23 February 1945], five days after the first wave had gone ashore [Annotator's Note: on Iwo Jima, Japan]. They could not land in the LCVP and had to load onto LSTs [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank]. There was so much debris in the water. Motoyama number one, the first airfield, had already been taken. Colburn saw wrecked planes. They did not receive any fire. They were there for a couple of days picking up wounded. This was Colburn's first introduction, carrying a wounded Marine to the first aid tent. His jaw was blown off. When he got him there, the doctor said to put him outside, he was not going to make it. That is where he met [Annotator's Note: unintelligible]. The kid was looking at him. He did not know him and Colburn was the last person he ever saw. [Annotator's Note: Colburn gets very emotional.] Father Lanigan [Annotator's Note: unable to verify identity] was a wonderful man and put his arms around Colburn. The kid died. That was Colburn's introduction [Annotator's Note: to combat].

Father Lanigan [Annotator's Note: unable to verify identity] was almost like a father to the men, including George Colburn. Religious or not, everybody loved him. This is where Colburn met Erskine [Annotator's Note: US Marine Corps General Graves B. Erskine]. There was a Corporal Flaherty [Annotator's Note: unable to verify identity] that Colburn was with. They were told to get off the trail. Everything was sandstone and the trees had been blown away. Three men came up to them and did not say anything. They were getting too close and Flaherty told them to halt. One of the men made a big mistake and told Colburn and Flaherty to stand at attention when addressing a superior officer. It was an aide to Erskine. Erskine told them to stay where they were. Flaherty told Erskine he was supposed to announce himself. He also told them that Kokomo Joe [Annotator's Note: nickname for Japanese sniper] was on the hill nearby. They never could get Joe and he kept killing soldiers. That is how Colburn met the top general of the 3rd Marine Division.

[Annotator's Note: George Colburn and the 3rd Marine Division went ashore on Iwo Jima, Japan on 23 February 1945 and took the airfield Motoyama Number 1.] Another division took Motoyama Number Two. Motoyama Number Three was under construction. He does not remember much about getting across the island. They ended up at the cliffs at the north end of the island. There were two Nambu machine guns that set up a crossfire. Colburn was carrying a pole charge [Annotator's Note: likely M1A1 Bangalore torpedo]. His job was to go up to a bunker, put the charge in, and then run. His chances were slim. The lieutenant told Colburn to give the pole charge to another soldier, Hitchcock [Annotator's Note: unable to verify identity]. They went about 100 yards and that was the end of Hitchcock. His mother was praying all the time and that was probably why it was not him. They lost a lot of men going to the cliffs and then were pinned down by machine gun fire. Two fire teams were sent to knock the guns out. Colburn saw a cave and scooted over to it. He had a BAR [Annotator's Note: Browning Automatic Rifle]. He went into the cave and there was a young Japanese kid who looked to be about 14. [Annotator's Note: Colburn starts to cry.] He was unarmed and did not see Colburn. Colburn did not want to kill him. He just wanted to tell him to get out of there. That is when Colburn got his souvenir flag.

[Annotator's Note: George Colburn had his first combat kill in a cave on Iwo Jima, Japan in February 1945.] There was a tunnel in the cave that went down to the ground. There were officer's quarters 20 feet underground. Colburn came out of the cave to find himself alone. He came across a guy he had gone to boot camp with. He did not see him again until they were back on Guam [Annotator's Note: Guam, Mariana Islands] later at a stage show. [Annotator's Note: Colburn tells the story of this soldier's nickname and wounds.] Colburn moved up to his unit [Annotator's Note: Company B, 1st Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division] in some rocks. Colburn, Jimmy Grimes, and Paul Harrington were in a foxhole. Harrington was high-ranking corporal. If you made one stripe in the Marine Corps you were something. There was a hilly area nearby and then some rocks where the lieutenant was. The lieutenant warned that they were being attacked. Colburn got his rifle up and saw the Japanese running all over. Grimes fell over on him and Colburn pushed him back. A bullet had entered his forehead and took his brains out the back of his head. [Annotator's Note: Colburn gets very emotional.] Colburn just shot everything he could shoot. Then mortar shells starting coming in. They had to get Grimes out of the hole. They held off the Japanese. They had little can openers and they were trying to get C-rations opened. A piece of mortar shell hit between them, splitting Harrington's stomach wide open. Colburn applied bandages and sulfur to him. He could see his intestines and ants were already crawling on him. Harrington went into shock and Colburn told him he was going home on this one. [Annotator's Note: Colburn begins to cry.] Colburn called for a corpsman and was told that he had been hit. Colburn kept talking to Harrington. Colburn never got hit.

George Colburn called for a stretcher. One of the ones who brought the stretcher got hit. They put his friend, Harrington [Annotator's Note: unable to verify identity], on the stretcher. The Japanese were everywhere. They took him into where the lieutenant was. The night before that, the lieutenant had been jumped by two Japanese soldiers who he killed with his knife. Colburn did not see Harrington again until they were on Guam [Annotator's Note: Guam, Mariana Islands]. They were closer than brothers. Colburn was sent back to the CP ]Annotator's Note: command post] at night to get some C-rations for the men. It was maybe 50 yards back to Colonel Warner [Annotator's Note: US Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Jack F. Warner] in the command post. The Colonel told them to have some coffee. He was a caring man. Four Marines came in. The Colonel asked who they were. One said he was a corporal [Annotator's Note: Colburn forgets his name] and that he was the acting company commander. His unit was all gone. [Annotator's Note: Colburn pauses.] This was killing even the Colonel. He was their leader and he loved them. Colburn got the rations and returned. He and another were sent ahead as point men. They were crawling like animals. He could hear Japanese talking coming from a hole that they were on the side of. The lieutenant sent another kid up there. They were trying to stop him from coming. He got shot before he even left. The lieutenant sent another who got shot too. The lieutenant made hand signals to use a grenade. Colburn did. He does not know what happened after that. He just remembers being told to take off his shoes. His best buddy from his hometown [Annotator's Note: Medford, Massachusetts] was dead. They had not taken their shoes off since they got there. Their socks were stuck to their feet. He does not know how he got out of the mess back where he threw the grenade. They got clean socks. They must have gotten relieved because he was not in any action after that. They had cleaned out that pocket.

[Annotator's Note: This interview clip begins with a tape break then starts midsentence.] George Colburn did not go into Korea [Annotator's Note: he later corrects himself and says Japan]. Harry [Annotator's Note: Harry S. Truman, 33rd president of the United States] saved him because he dropped the bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945]. Otherwise, they would never have made it through Japan. He was on Guam preparing for the invasion of Japan when the bombs were dropped. He had been pulled off the line on Iwo Jima, Japan. They had control of the island [Annotator's Note: Iwo Jima] even though the Japanese were still running around. They felt pretty safe in the area where they were after a while. He heard some Japanese talking one night while on watch. The Japanese were starving to death by this time and were coming up. The sergeant said to let them come. They're were five Japanese who never saw them. They killed three and wounded two. He learned then that they moan and groan in the same language we do. That was the last time he fired his gun on Iwo Jima. He does not think he was more than a few feet away from the first kid. He thinks the Japanese were hurting for men. They were young. He says he has been to hell and back. At the time, you just do what you do and do not even know what you are doing.

George Colburn does not believe in bravery. The last thing on your mind is getting a medal. Medals counted for points to get home, that is what mattered. If he had one medal, he could have gone home, but he had to go to China for a whole year. A girl had been in love with him from high school. All the guys from Europe came home and he was still in China. He got home in June 1946, called her, and she said she was engaged. He went back to Guam [Annotator's Note: Guam, Mariana Islands] after Iwo Jima [Annotator's Note: Iwo Jima, Japan]. Guam was great. He had light duty. He was on officer's mess in the kitchen. They were cooking fried eggs. He asked the cook if he could have some. He gave him two eggs on a plate but told him he had to take them to the enlisted mess. On the way he dropped them face down in the sand. [Annotator's Note: Colburn laughs.] Back on Iwo, when things were quiet, Father Lonegan did a mass. Lonegan was a Catholic priest, but he was an "anybody's priest." When they got back to Guam, shows were coming in after the bomb [Annotator’s Note: Nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] dropped. Gene Autry [Annotator's Note: Orvon Grover "Gene" Autry, nicknamed The Singing Cowboy] brought a show in. They sat on their ponchos. Colburn was close to the stage. Autry was in the audience talking to the men. During the show, a girl would come to look for her boyfriend. At the end of the show, she pointed at Colburn and said he was her boyfriend. She hugged and kissed him under the spotlight. She told him to hold her hand and that the show was over. He thanked her. That was one of the outstanding things. He kept his handkerchief with the lipstick on it for years.

Shows were important to George Colburn. Eddie Bracken [Annotator's Note: Edward Vincent Bracken, American entertainer] did a show on Guam [Annotator's Note: Guam, Mariana Islands]. He pointed out empty seats and was told they were for officers. He said the men were on the sides and in trees. He looked at the colonel and told him if he wanted the show, he had to let the kids in. The colonel did. He had a girl on the show who could dance the jitterbug. She pulled soldiers up to dance with her. He never saw Hope [Annotator's Note: Bob Hope, born Leslie Townes Hope] there. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Colburn how important chaplains were to them.] Chaplains were not out in the field in combat. They were usually in the first aid area. Colburn was brought up Catholic and was religious. He was taught it was sinful to curse and when he got to Parris Island [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, Port Royal, South Carolina] they were swearing at him. They were training on Guam to invade Japan. After his experiences on Iwo Jima, Japan, this made him know he was not going home. [Annotator's Note: Colburn gets very quiet.] They never would have made it through that, if we had not dropped that bomb [Annotator's Note: Nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945]. His granddaughter was in the third grade when she told the class her grandfather was in World War 2. He was asked to come talk to the class. The class had been told that this was the worst thing we ever did [Annotator's Note: dropping the atomic bomb]. He spoke for about an hour to the kids. The principal asked him to save time for questions. He made it very clear that we would have had to kill every person in Japan, and he would not be here. A little boy told him that listening to him speak made him guess that the Manhattan Project [Annotator's Note: program that produced the first nuclear weapons] was a good thing. The Japanese were desperate at the end. Colburn and the men partied when they heard the Japanese had surrendered. He remembers the company commander broke open beers. That meant they were not going to die. Harry Truman [Annotator's Note: Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States] saved him.

George Colburn went to China with the 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division [Annotator's Note: in September 1945]. He went into Tientsin, China [Annotator’s Note: Tianjin, China]. They stayed in the same barracks the British had during The Boxer Rebellion [Annotator's Note: or Boxer Uprising, or Yihetuan Movement, 1899 to 1901]. He got a job in the jeep pool. The chaplain called him for a jeep and a truck on Good Friday [Annotator's Note: Christian holiday]. He went with them to a mission by a river. The truck was left out in the road. A little Chinese girl came in and said the jeep was in the river. It was the truck. A Chinese man tried to steal it. Colburn really liked China. The Americans were rounding up Japanese soldiers and sending them back to Japan. The drinking got going and they had a great time. He could have stayed there. There was a café with a combo unit playing American tunes. He would give the band cigarettes and they became friends. When the Americans left, Mao Tse-Tung [Annotator's Note: Mao Zedong, Chinese communist revolutionary] was up in the woods. He lobbed some mortars once in a while but did not want to mess with the Marines. One Japanese soldier asked to speak with Colburn. In perfect English, he said had been a rug salesman in California before the war. He told Colburn a lot of Japanese did not like what went on in the war. Colburn met a Chinese girl there who, while he was on guard duty, told him she wanted to learn to speak English. He would talk with her. He thinks that was one of the greatest things he had ever done. They had taken over a theater in the fall and winter of 1946. He took her to the movies there. She never got over it. [Annotator's Note: Colburn gets emotional.] The movie was in color. She did not understand the dialogue, but was blown away. He never forgot it.

The Chinese would grab people on the streets and hand them over to the Americans if they were Japanese. George Colburn was in the jeep pool. His mother was in the hospital dying. He was very close to his mother. [Annotator's Note: Colburn gets emotional.] He was running the jeep pool as a Corporal. A couple of buddies came by with bourbon. He was pissed that he was so far from his mother. He went for a ride by himself. Somebody turned him in for taking the jeep. He went up before the colonel. A colonel in Marine Corps was a little higher than God. This one thought the world of himself. Colburn told him the story. The Colonel threw him in the brig for a week. That was the only bad part of China. He got thrown out of the jeep pool. He came home shortly after that. He came into the Treasure Island Naval Base, San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] and got a 30 day leave. He would hang out after war with other veterans. He was discharged in September or October 1946. He did not give any thought to staying in. He was told that Reserve duty was an easy 100 dollars, but he had had enough. The guys who told him that all ended up in Korea [Annotator's Note: Korean War].

George Colburn used the G.I. Bill to attend the Franklin Institute of Boston [Annotator's Note: Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology, Boston, Massachusetts] and learned architectural drawing. He loved building. He got a job as a draftsman in Boston. He sat at a drafting board all day long. He did that for four or five months and had to quit. His father was still working on the railroad and asked him to join him on the transit system in Boston. He liked it and stayed there for 30 years. Colburn got into drinking a little bit too much getting back into civilian life. It was just that he had been told what to do and now he had to think on his own. His father told him to cut back on the booze. He got married young and had six children. He built a house from the ground up without electric tools. People helped each other in the old days. He got away from the booze.

Being in a hole with Jimmy Grimes when he got shot through the head, and Harrington got his belly split open stands out more than anything else to George Colburn [Annotator's Note: these events took place during the Battle of Iwo Jima, Japan]. He thought he was next. Two Japanese jumped over the hole because they thought Colburn was dead too. He is 92 [Annotator's Note: at the time of this interview] and he could have been dead at 18. He was divorced at 42. His next girl and he have been together 50 years. Love is number one. He signed up for World War 2 because the country was at war and he was not afraid. He was not scared at all until he got hit with a piece of a mortar shell. They were not going to take our country away. He was told at Parris Island [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, Port Royal, South Carolina] they were going to make a man out of him. They took them from high school kids raising hell and made men out of them. They taught him what it was all about. The Drill Instructor was absolutely right. He had more respect for that man than anybody. His service means that he hopes the children of today will defend our country and put our country first in their lives. He does not know where we are going today. As a kid he sang an Irving Berlin [Annotator's Note: American composer] song, called "God Bless America". Berlin was a small, Jewish man. Colburn saw him once on stage. [Annotator's Note: Colburn sings part of Berlin's "Oh How I Hate To Get Up In the Morning"]. Jack Kennedy [Annotator's Note: John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States] was assassinated in 1963. He had said he would not put troops in Vietnam because it was a civil war. Colburn thinks it had a lot to do with the assassination. LBJ [Annotator's Note: Lyndon Baines Johnson, 36th President of the United States] had only been in office some months and sent troops. It should not have been fought. World War 2 was the one where we could have lost our country.