John Edward Campbell was born in August 1920 in Porterville, California. His mother died in 1930 when he was ten years old, leaving his father to raise him and his four brothers. Campbell had two younger and two older brothers. He started working at a young age to earn money for the family. He mowed lawns and washed windows as a young boy before getting a job setting pins in a bowling alley which doubled as a speakeasy in the basement below a bakery. As he got older, he worked as a driver at a hotel he later learned was a brothel. One day, a Marine dressed in his blues came to the hotel and encouraged Campbell to enlist. He promised Campbell three square meals a day and the chance to see the world. Seeing no future in what he was doing, Campbell took the advice and enlisted at the Los Angeles Marine Recruiting Center [Annotator’s Note: Los Angeles, California] in November 1939. He was aware of the war talks going on between President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] and Prime Minister Churchill [Annotator's Note: Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill; Prime Minister, United Kingdom, 1940 to 1945] during the 1930s. Campbell felt there would be a war with Germany at some point, but he knew nothing of Japan. He arrived at boot camp in San Diego [Annotator’s Note: San Diego, California] where he was given a haircut and was shocked at being woken up early for reveille [Annotator's Note: reveille is a signal sounded on a bugle or drum to wake military personnel]. The one thing that did not bother him was the poor quality of the food, as he was used to eating very little during the Depression [Annotator's Note: the Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States]. The discipline was severe but effective and he describes some of the physical exercises and marches he participated in. After finishing boot camp, he tried to join the Marine Corps Band to avoid having to fight in any impending wars. At the first rehearsal he attended, the band leader told him he was not a good enough trumpet player. Soon after, he found himself on a ship to Honolulu, Hawaii. Stationed in Pearl Harbor [Annotator’s Note: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii], Campbell was given a rifle with no ammunition and placed on guard duty at night protecting the fuel tanks on base. In the evenings, he attended classes at the University of Hawaii and did odds and ends at the base throughout the day. He picked up a job walking the colonel’s dog and befriended the colonel in the process. Campbell told him he wanted to join the Air Corps, so the colonel arranged a transfer into Marine Corps Aviation. Campbell took a demotion in rank and became a mechanic at the airfield.

On 7 December 1941 [Annotator's Note: The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941], John Edward Campbell, serving in the Marine Corps, was awakened by the sound of machine guns firing outside along the flight line. His sergeant yelled to the still-sleeping Marines, “Get the hell up, this is the real thing!” Campbell watched as 40 or more Japanese Zeros [Annotator's Note: Japanese Mitsubishi A6M fighter aircraft, referred to as the Zeke or Zero] strafed the planes sitting on the runway, destroying all but one in the squadron. There were explosions all around as Campbell and two other men ran to hide in a thicket of bushes and shrubs. One guy was shot in the foot and the other was shot in the buttocks. Campbell helped the man shot in the butt to the sick bay where the doctor warned him the iodine swab would hurt when he jabbed it into the wound. The Marine played tough and said, “Don’t worry Doc, I can take it” before fainting and wetting his pants when the iodine was applied to his wound. The attack on the airfield was the first of several phases of the attack and took place to eliminate any opposition to the bomber attack on Pearl Harbor. Throughout the attack, Campbell and the Marines had no ammunition for their weapons because the armory was locked and no one knew where the man with the key was. The Japanese planes flew so close to the ground that he could see them smiling in the cockpits as they repeatedly strafed the runway. Fires burned for days on the airfield and in the harbor. Campbell recalls watching black smoke billow into the sky. That night and for several days after everyone was tense and expected an invasion, but it never came to pass. Because the lowly privates did not receive much intelligence on the situation, rumors were rampant. One rumor said that that Japanese soldiers had been living in caves along the Hawaiian coast. A second rumor said that the Japanese-Americans in Hawaii had supplied fresh baked bread to some of the Japanese submarine crews found nearby.

[Annotator’s Note: Construction vehicles can be heard in the background throughout the segment, as well as someone in the background.] With no aircraft remaining with which to train on after the events of Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941], John Edward Campbell, serving with the Marine Corps, was sent back to the United States to join the Navy’s V-5 program [Annotator's Note: V-5 US Navy Aviation Cadet Program, 1939 to 1943]. After attending universities in California, Minnesota, and Washington, he began flight training at various air stations in the United States. He began advanced training at Corpus Christi Naval Air Station [Annotator’s Note: Corpus Christi, Texas] where he served as captain of the cadets because of his past Marine experience. He received his wings there and was commissioned as a second lieutenant of the United States Marine Corps. He was then stationed in Jacksonville [Annotator’s Note: Jacksonville, Florida] where he began flying real airplanes, notably the F4U Corsair [Annotator's Note: Vought F4U Corsair fighter aircraft]. While there, he learned to take off and land aboard aircraft carriers. It took him nearly 13 tries to successfully land, but it was a very exciting time. From Jacksonville, he flew to Santa Ana, California to a staging area for overseas squadrons. When he first arrived in the Pacific, his missions included bombing bypass islands, or those designated as unimportant to the defeat of Japan, but still held by Japanese forces. He recalls strafing these islands and making diving bombs on them. On his first mission, he was to pull out of the dive at 500 feet and drop his bomb. He became nervous, pulled up too soon, and sent his bomb flying harmlessly into the Pacific. His flight officer came over the squad radio and chewed him out for it. Campbell continued to go from island to island throughout the war. He was shipped home on a freighter in August 1945 and was aboard ship on 6 August when the first atomic bomb was dropped [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945]. When the war was over, Campbell was discharged from service. He had a difficult time finding a job initially. Campbell found work through a friend for a pharmaceutical company.

After joining the Marine reserves following World War 2, John Edward Campbell found work for a pharmaceutical company before being recalled for the Korean War [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953]. While working for the pharmaceutical company, he traveled all over the world including to Nagasaki [Annotator’s Note: Nagasaki, Japan]. He also graduated from night school in Los Angeles [Annotator’s Note: Los Angeles, California]. Campbell flew the F4U Corsair [Annotator's Note: Vought F4U Corsair fighter aircraft] and he flew in several squadrons during the war, but only remembers one, VMF-111 [Annotator’s Note: Marine Fighting Squadron 111]. He recalled several flights when he encountered Japanese Zeros [Annotator's Note: Japanese Mitsubishi A6M fighter aircraft, referred to as the Zeke or Zero], but the Japanese never gave chase because the wings would fall off while trying to keep up with the Corsairs. He had no kills to his name that he knows of.

After joining the Marine reserves following World War 2, John Edward Campbell found work for a pharmaceutical company before being recalled for the Korean War [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953]. He flew helicopters for General Homer Litzenberg [Annotator’s Note: Lieutenant General Homer Laurence Litzenberg] in Korea. While in Korea, he flew several rescue missions in Japan rescuing people effected by typhoons. This was rewarding work because he was not shooting at anyone. He was discharged with the rank of captain.

John Edward Campbell’s most memorable experience of World War 2 was machine guns waking him up during Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He fought in World War 2 because he was already in the Marine Corps, and he was a fighter. The war made him understand he needed more education in his life which helped him have a successful career. His service taught him to make decisions and to appreciate friends and family. He also learned to help people. He does not know what Americans think about World War 2, and he worries about the future of the country. Campbell believes there should be institutions like the National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana], and that we should continue to teach World War 2 to future generations.