"If man had it, I'd have been dead, but God's got it, and he's keeping me well," said Overton, believed to be the oldest known American veteran of the war.
And in his more than century of life, he's seen both the good and bad.
"He was there at Pearl Harbor when the battle ships were still smoldering. He was there at Okinawa. He was there at Iwo Jima, where he said. 'I only got out of there by the grace of God,' " President Obama said Monday during a Veterans Day ceremony at Arlington National Ceremony honoring Overton.
Overton volunteered for service in 1942, becoming a member of the Army's 188th Aviation Engineer Battalion, an all-black unit that served on various islands in the Pacific.
He doesn't enjoy thinking or talking about it, telling CNN he "forgot all that stuff."
