James Salerno was born in Summit, New Jersey, in 1918. Before the war he worked as a clerk in a store. Salerno chose the Marine Corps because he and a buddy were at the YMCA and they saw two Marines walking towards them. The two Marines were dressed in blues and Salerno thought the uniform looked sharp. That was enough to convince him to join. Salerno went to Parris Island for boot camp. Boot camp was very rigorous. Life in basic was an endless stream of parade marching, drilling, marksmanship training, and weapon maintenance. Before the war broke out they were able to take liberty quite often. That all changed when the war broke out. Salerno spent three months training at Parris Island then he was sent to Quantico, Virginia where he joined the 5th Marines [Annotator's Note: 5th Marine Regiment]. Salerno was in Washington D.C. one weekend when he heard an announcement telling all Marines to report back to their base as Pearl Harbor had been attacked. Back at the base everything had kicked into high gear. Salerno volunteered to join the 2nd Raider Battalion. Originally he was in the 1st Raider Battalion with Colonel Edson [Annotator's Note: US Marine Corps Colonel Merritt A. Edson]. When the call went out for 200 Marines to start the 2nd Raider Battalion on the West Coast Salerno raised his hand. Salerno volunteered because he liked the West Coast. Salerno was one of Edson's troops when he created the 1st Raider Battalion. The 2nd Raider Battalion was headquartered in Camp Elliot, San Diego. They went to be interviewed by Colonel Carlson [Annotator's Note: US Marine Corps Colonel Evans Carlson] and Jimmy Roosevelt. Salerno answered their questions and they chose him for the battalion.

James Salerno stayed in San Diego for about four or five months. From there they went to Pearl Harbor where they saw all the wrecked ships in Pearl Harbor. They camped in Honolulu. From Honolulu, Company A and Company B [Annotator's Note: Company A and Company B, 2nd Marine Raider Battalion] went to Makin Atoll. Two other companies went to Midway. Salerno was in Headquarters Company and stayed in Honolulu. Salerno was a police sergeant there and he took care of the camp. When the Marines returned they all went to Guadalcanal. They arrived at Guadalcanal on two old converted destroyers. They landed on the beach but there was no action there. They were given some K rations and a sack of rice and took off. They used to cook rice in their helmets. They had to walk 100 miles or more over 30 days through that jungle. Each of the four companies had its own doctor. They crossed the Lunga River about 100 times. Everything was always wet. It rained every night. Salerno and a couple of other guys had a native who would help carry some of their equipment. At night he built them tents out of banana leaves. The Raiders occasionally came under fire from snipers. Their mission was to knock out the guns that were shelling Henderson Field. One day they caught some Japanese soldiers in a swimming hole and fired on them. Their native guide, who the Marines called Jack Sam, tricked Salerno into believing he could fill an eye dime full of gold dust every day. Salerno and his buddies talked about going back after the war to get some gold. A native, Sergeant Major Vouza [Annotator's Note: Sergeant Major Jacob Vouza], and an Australian guide knew Guadalcanal better than most of the men knew their own neighborhoods. They always knew where the Japanese would be. At one spot in the jungle Colonel Carlson [Annotator's Note: USMC Colonel Evans Carlson] gave the men a speech then had them sing the Marine Corps Hymn. Before Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt sent Colonel Carlson to China to observe China's fight against the Japanese. While there he learned a lot about jungle warfare. While searching for the Japanese guns they shot on sight. They were constantly behind enemy lines but the troops they encountered behind the line were more of a nuisance than anything else. They continued through the jungle until they reached the edge and then went through it again on a different line.

James Salerno cannot remember a lot of things that happened during the war. He does remember that there was a lot of fighting when the Raiders went to Bougainville. They were up in a mountain range and they could see the bay where the ships were moored. Around Christmas time [Annotator's Note: of 1943], the Navy took containers of turkeys up to the Marines on the ridge. Salerno volunteered to deliver the turkeys. In the jungle they had to be aware of the critters roaming the jungle floor in addition to bullets. There were some nasty centipedes on that island. There was no action when the Raiders landed at Torokina. They arrived after the Marines had been there for a while. The Raiders spent at least two months on Bougainville. The Raiders were always operating behind enemy lines. They scouted areas before other Marine units moved through. The Japanese were not very nice. Salerno had seen what they did in the Philippines. The Marines were told to take no prisoners. The Raiders were attached to the Marine units that landed on the island, the 2nd Marine Division and the 3rd Marine Division. The entire battalion [Annotator's Note: 2nd Marine Raider Battalion] went out on these patrols. They would not split up. Salerno's commanders were Colonel Carlson [Annotator's Note: USMC Colonel Evans Carlson] and Jimmy Roosevelt. As he was in Headquarters Company, he worked closely with Carlson and Roosevelt. While on Guadalcanal the Raiders never worked with the Army. Malaria did not affect the Raiders too much. Salerno saw flamethrower tanks on Guadalcanal. He also met a Marine who was also from Summit, New Jersey. This Marine drove a half-track and took Salerno to lunch in his half track. Salerno was expecting a decent lunch but the guy just gave him a K ration and that was it. Salerno did not see much of the operations on Guadalcanal because he and the Raiders were always deep in the jungle. In there, everybody they saw was Japanese. Salerno was on Guadalcanal when it was secured.

After Bougainville, James Salerno and the Raiders went to New Zealand for some R&R [Annotator's Note: rest and recuperation or relaxation]. After two weeks there they went to New Caledonia. Salerno hated that place. It was a French colony that had a leper colony there. The Raiders did some training there. Then, all of the Raider outfits were disbanded. Jimmy Roosevelt had the 4th Raider Battalion. Colonel Edson [Annotator's Note: USMC Colonel Merritt Edson] had the 1st Raider Battalion and Colonel Carlson [Annotator's Note: USMC Colonel Evans Carlson] had the 2nd Raider Battalion. Salerno was told that the Raiders were disbanded because they did not need those units any more. The Makin Island raid in August 1942 was their first action and helped to provide cover for the Guadalcanal landings. The Raiders landed on Makin Island from submarines. When the Raiders left Makin Island after the raid and went back to the submarines they left nine men behind. These nine men were captured by the Japanese and executed. Salerno went to Washington D.C. and saw General Jones giving flags to the families of the nine men who were captured. The military later went to Makin and found the bodies and dug them up and returned them to the United States.

As they neared Iwo Jima, James Salerno and the others were told that it would not take more than a week to take the island. Navy planes had been bombing the island and the 16 inch guns on ships were shelling the island for weeks. The Japanese had caves all over the island and they were shooting guys left and right. There was nowhere safe on Iwo Jima. Mortars, artillery shells and bullets were flying everywhere. Once they hit land the Marines had to dig foxholes quick so they would not get killed. The sand was hot enough to cook an egg on. On the first day, Salerno's platoon leader was killed. He called the captain and told him that the lieutenant was dead. The captain hung up but called him back ten minutes later and told Salerno that he was now the platoon leader. The Marines would put dynamite in the caves. When it went off they would see bodies and body parts flying all over the place. Salerno saw a Japanese soldier's head flying through the air that looked like a bowling ball. Salerno was shot in the arm but it missed the bone. As they moved in they worked to knock out pillboxes and the caves that were all over the island. After 19 days on the island Salerno was shot and that was the end of his time fighting on Iwo Jima. When they were approaching the beach Salerno saw explosions going off all over the beach. There was not much smoke but there was a lot of fire. Salerno's unit was in reserve. He landed later on the same day as the first wave. They were being fired upon as they made their way to shore. They were ordered to move up about 50 yards then dig in. Later on they were ordered to move a bit further inland and dig in again. Salerno saw the first flag raising on Mount Suribachi but there was not time to celebrate as the battle was still raging. A couple of the men who raised the flag were killed later on in the campaign. The Japanese had a lot of guns on Mount Suribachi. A lot of the caves on Iwo Jima were very small and it was not always easy to tell where the bullets were coming from. Salerno remembers leading his platoon down an embankment when the Japanese started shooting. Several of his men were hit but Salerno could not tell where the fire was coming from. He called his captain to make certain it was not friendly fire. One of his guys saw rifles coming out of holes in the embankment. At that point they realized that the Japanese were underneath them and they started putting blocks of TNT in the holes. The Marines frequently did not see the Japanese. The Japanese would frequently come out at night then dead Marines would be found in the morning with bayonets stuck in their backs. Salerno was part of the 5th Marine Division which was tasked with surrounding Mount Suribachi. The fighting was continuous. They did not get any rest. Tanks eventually arrived but they were not there at the start. Salerno saw guys he knew well just lose it and walk outside of their foxholes. The Japanese had a rocket on a track that they would fire at night. The Marines could hear them when they launched. When the Marines asked for fire from the Navy the shells landed pretty close the Marines' position but they did not suffer. Even so, Salerno was frightened.

During the war James Salerno did not like the Japanese and had nothing nice to say about them. The Japanese soldiers were tough and were willing to die for the emperor. Salerno saw kamikaze planes attack the ships while they were on their way to Iwo Jima. Salerno missed the final banzai charge by the Japanese after being wounded in the arm. The night before he was wounded Salerno was in a section of the island that had a clear view of the ocean. They thought they were done but did not realize how many Japanese there were in the caves. Salerno explored a cave once but did not go too far in because he got jittery. Salerno went to see the colonel and told him that their position was untenable. They could not stay where they were. They had to either push forward or fall back. The next day they started moving again. Salerno never took any prisoners. There were very few prisoners taken during the battle. After being wounded the corpsman gave Salerno two shots of morphine which made him sick. When he got to where the doctors were they took care of him. Everyone was taken good care of but a lot of the Marines were seriously wounded. Salerno used both an M1 Garand rifle and an M1 Carbine during the war. Salerno was a sergeant when he was made platoon commander. They offered to promote him but wanted him to sign on for four more years. Salerno was not willing to do this so he refused the offer. A buddy of Salerno's was almost in the same situation but chose the other path and eventually became a colonel. After leaving Iwo Jima the division [Annotator's Note: 5th Marine Divison] had a rest period then went to Okinawa. Salerno was not with them because he was recovering from his injury. It took several months for his arm to heal. Salerno joined up for four years and the Marines told him that he did not have to sign anything to stay in until the end of the war. While in Hawaii a first lieutenant approached Salerno and told him that the war was going to last two more years and told him to get a two year extension because it would mean an extra 500 dollars. He did so then while returning to his tent he heard some other Marines playing craps. Salerno joined the game and lost all 500 dollars in about half an hour. The war was over within six months but Salerno still had about 18 months service time left. After the war they went on recruiting duty on the west coast. Eventually his term ended and he was discharged at Puget Sound, Washington and went home.

James Salerno believes that World War 2 made him a better person. It made him feel lucky to be alive. He feels like it was a rebirth of sorts. The war did not change his values to any great extent. Salerno believes that World War 2 changed America for the better but changed the world for the worse. Everyone has such powerful bombs now that one person could end the world. He thinks that it is good thing that World War 2 museums exist to inform younger generations of what happened before their time.