Description:
George Aiello, born in 1925 in Brooklyn, New York, grew up in the Borough Park neighborhood in a large Italian American family of nine children. His parents emigrated from Calabria, Italy, in the early twentieth century. His father operated a small mattress manufacturing business in Brooklyn, where Aiello worked as a youth delivering goods and assisting with production. He attended New Utrecht High School, excelled in commercial coursework and graduated early in 1942. At age seventeen, he worked at the Brooklyn Army Base handling contracts and administrative duties, gaining organizational experience before military service.
Determined to serve after Pearl Harbor--especially as two brothers had already enlisted--Aiello joined the US Marine Corps in 1943. He completed boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina, and trained briefly in North Carolina before transferring to Camp Pendleton, California, where he helped form the newly created Fourth Marine Division under General Holland "Howling Mad" Smith. Rejecting an office assignment, he secured reassignment to a combat unit and trained as part of a forward observer team responsible for directing artillery fire near front lines.
Aiello deployed directly into combat in the Pacific, beginning with the invasion of Roi‑Namur in the Marshall Islands. He then participated in major campaigns at Saipan and Tinian, where increasingly fortified Japanese defenses, particularly cave systems, intensified combat conditions. After periods of retraining on Maui, his unit advanced to the Battle of Iwo Jima. Serving alongside infantry units, Aiello directed artillery, communicated strike positions and operated in exposed positions near enemy lines.
Following Japan's surrender, he returned to the United States and was discharged at Bainbridge, Maryland. Using the GI Bill, he briefly pursued cosmetology before building a long-term career in the sporting goods industry.