Joseph Orlando was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in January 1922. He was the 11th child born but four of his siblings had died during the flu epidemic before that. This made him the seventh child with two brothers and four sisters. Their neighborhood was very nice, but his father could not buy the house they lived in because he was Italian. His father's partner and Orlando bought the house and then sold it to his father. Their neighbors loved them because his father made wine at home. His father was a stone mason and worked on the house and made it the best on the block. Orlando's father retired because his workers went out and outbid him. He was very proud of his father, who emigrated to the United States when he was 19 years old. He sent for his wife two years later. He says his father kissed him twice in his lifetime. Once when his mother died after he turned 12 and again when he left for the service. They were aware of the rumblings of war after the Depression. They did not discuss it much, but he and his brother wanted to go in the service right away. Orlando was 20 years old when the war began. He was working and decided to enlist on 7 December 1941 [Annotator's Note: Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor]. He did not get into the service until May 1942. All of his friends wanted combat, so they chose the US Marine Corps. Orlando weighed 140 pounds and was six feet and one-half inch tall. He worried he did not weight enough to get accepted so he ate a lot of bananas and went to the recruiting office. He was told to get his two cavities filled and then they would take him. After he arrived at Parris Island [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, Port Royal, South Carolina], he was told to get the same two teeth fixed again.

Joseph Orlando enlisted as a Marine and describes Basic Training as six weeks of close-order drill and pure nonsense designed to make one miserable. The goal of that kind of training is to make one instantly react to orders. He then spent two weeks at the rifle range. As soon as he graduated from Basic, Orlando and another man in his platoon were made Drill Instructors. They did not receive any special training for this, so he told his Drill Instructor that he did not want to be one and asked to see the unit commander. The commander asked him what he wanted and Orlando told him he was honored to be a Drill Instructor, but explained that his voice would not carry, and he would not be good at it. The Lieutenant told him to get out, he was a Drill Instructor. So, Orlando became a Drill Instructor. The intent is to teach instant obedience to commands as well as making the soldiers physically fit. The Drill Instructor was not doing his job if the recruits did not hate him more than they hated Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] and Tojo [Annotator's Note: Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo]. Men came from all walks of life and were made equal there. Rifles were not even designed for left-handed people, so they had to learn to shoot right-handed. He made a pest of himself with his superiors because he wanted combat. He was moved from base to base until finally he was sent to fight.

Joseph Orlando was assigned to Hingham Naval Ammunition Depot, Hingham, Massachusetts to be a Drill Instructor but it was only guard duty. Then he was a Drill Instructor at Camp Peary, Williamsburg, Virginia for Seabees [Annotator's Note: members of United States naval construction battalions]. He finally went to New River, North Carolina [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Air Station New River, Jacksonville, North Carolina] and then to Pendleton [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, San Diego County, California]. Orlando was then sent to Saipan, Marshall Islands aboard the SS Mormacdove cargo ship. The sleeping quarters were stacked six bunks high and he took the top bunk to avoid being hit by anyone getting seasick. The ship broke down after a few hundred miles at sea and was left behind. They finally made it into Pearl Harbor, Hawaii for two weeks of repair. The enlisted men did not get liberty, but the officers did. On the next convoy, they broke down again and limped into the Marshall Islands. In the meantime, the first and second waves of American Marines had gone into Saipan. Getting off small ships meant going in the water and those waves took an awful beating from the Japanese guns. Orlando feels that he had a guardian angel that crippled those ships so that he was not in the landing parties. By the time he arrived at Saipan, there was no question that the American forces would win. His squad patrolled every day and would do frequent pushes to stop Japanese aggression when it occurred. There were still thousands of Japanese dug in. Mount Tapochau [Annotator's Note: highest point on Saipan] had caves. During a push, a squad was sent to put explosives in the caves. They had no grenades. The Japanese had steel plates that covered holes that two Japanese would hide in. The explosive would kill the men in the caves but not the two who would then come out and kill the squad. Knowing this, he would place his squad with weapons trained on the cave. Two would run up and throw the explosives in. They would then wait. If no one came out, they would throw another explosive in and wait. As the squad leader, Orlando would be the first to go in the cave. He would take one other Marine and this method kept his squad from harm. The men were never closer than five paces apart so snipers could not hit them all at once. They also did not advance at night and never dug foxholes. They spent the night against rises in the ground – not conducive to sleeping but conducive to thinking. Orlando would think about everything imaginable and became anti-war. He thought about what he was doing there to begin with. He thought about the Japanese kid on the other side and how they were both trying to kill each other when they should have been drinking together and having a good time. The Japanese weapons were not as good as the American's, but they made good booby-traps. Land mines continue to be a problem in many places.

When Joseph Orlando arrived at Saipan, part of his job was to bury the Marines that had been killed. Duties varied and once he had to take his squad to guard some equipment. When the atomic bomb was being stored over on Tinian Island, his company [Annotator's Note: Company I, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division] was sent to surround the airfield. They did not know why at the time. At one time, everyone but him caught dengue fever so he was put on guard duty around a water tower. That was the only time he was really afraid. The water leaked and toads would jump and hit the water, making a sound. It sounded like footsteps to him and he thought he was surrounded. When they buried their Marines, they did not have body bags and could not dig deep, but they did the best they could with what they had. Orlando did not like that duty. He had only seen dead Japanese soldiers to that point. One of his squad was wounded. [Annotator's Note: Orlando laughs and indicates he will tell that story later.] He had a unique squad. One soldier and he were very close. The Marines were trained to kill people twice, to put a bayonet into dead soldiers to be sure. Orlando and his buddy were going up to a cave when Orlando passed a dead Japanese soldier. He saw that the soldier was already decomposing so he went past. He heard eight shots behind him and thought they were surrounded. It was his friend shooting the same dead man. Later at the camp, Orlando decorated him with a medal they made of bent eating utensils for his bravery in combat. [Annotator's Note: Orlando laughs.] They did not have many ways to have fun, but his squad did what they could.

Joseph Orlando had two men in his squad who had been on Guadalcanal [Annotator’s Note: Battle of Guadalcanal; Operation Watchtower]. His Captain explained that the men were unhappy that they had been sent back into combat. They were both Swedish. Orlando told them he knew how they must feel but hoped they could get along. They were not very sociable, and the squad called both of them Swede. Orlando always regretted that his squad never took the time to really know each other better. He does not know their names to this day. He only knows their nicknames. The men knew the Japanese were the enemy, but they did not hate them. Once when returning from duty on Tinian Island, they were on a road and a Japanese soldier came running at them and yelling. Nobody fired at him despite their Second Lieutenant telling them to shoot him. They figured he was not firing at them and was likely starving or out of his mind. There was cliff that the troops called Suicide Cliff because the Japanese civilians would jump from it to not be captured by Americans. The US military had soldiers at suicide cliff who spoke Japanese to talk the people into surrendering instead of taking their own lives. No Japanese ever did though. They would throw their children first and then jump. Orlando and his men just could not understand it. They learned the lessons of propaganda through this example. When US troops arrived in Nagasaki, Japan after it was bombed, the children were terrified of them at first, but they gave the kids blankets and chocolate. [Annotator’s Note: interviewer asks about souvenir taking]. Orlando and his squad would come across things like shoes but not much else. The airbase personnel would come looking for souvenirs and would trade alcohol for them. Often when he and his squad were sent to guard the commissary, they would be put to work. Once on that duty, he had his men hide some cases of canned fruit and then they came back at night to get it. They lied to the Army guards that their cart was for bringing back a dead Marine. They realized they had a case of spinach that they did not realize they took. Some other soldiers traded some booze for that case – his crew lied about what it was.

Joseph Orlando knew he was a Marine immediately. In Basic Training they would be told they were better than any other squad. Once on liberty, he and a friend took the cab driver along to keep him with them the whole night. They were in one place and a young Marine came in and said to clear the bar because he was a Marine and the Navy sailors threw him out. He has a lot of respect for the Navy medics and the Seabee [Annotator's Note: memebrs of special naval construction battalions] engineers. He and his squad [Annotator's Note: Orlando served in a rifle squad in Company I, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division] were on Saipan when both atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. They had no idea of the level of destruction of the bombs. Earlier during their duty, one of his men had been shot across his buttocks. The Navy corpsman [Annotator's Note: combat medic] was dabbing at the wound and one of Orlando's squad asked the corpsman what he tells his mother he does all day. [Annotator's Note: Orlando laughs.] He counted on his squad and had full confidence in them. They patrolled nearly every day. He says the Japanese public was not informed of how many lives had been lost on their side.

Joseph Orlando was assigned to duty in Nagasaki, Japan on 23 September 1945. The war had ended on 13 August. Back on Saipan they had to break camp and they worked in six hours on and six hours off shifts for six weeks with no showers. They had so many sores that their arms would be stuck together in the mornings when they woke up. All of them got seasick when they got on the first ship leaving Saipan. There were so many Marines that they slept anywhere they could. On the way to Nagasaki they encountered bad storms and had to hold onto ropes to stay on the ship. All they saw of the town was concrete foundations for 20 square miles. They did not know they were being exposed to radiation while there. He never had any symptoms though. He was shocked by the level of destruction. A rumor got around that the bomb on Nagasaki was like a firecracker compared to what was coming. That added to his growing anti-war attitude. He is still bothered by human's tendency to go to war. He talks of a shooting in Texas and of the Congresswoman who was shot [Annotator’s Note: Congresswoman Gabrielle D. Giffords]. He feels that people who are on the fence mentally think the way they do because they are trained to settle problems with weapons by our politician's examples. His talks of our President's position that we are not trying to change cultures with war as being a good thing. He talks of the issues of Iran and seeing things from their point of view regarding nuclear weapons.

Joseph Orlando reads of our servicemen committing suicide and he does not understand it. He knew men who were bitter after the war and he was as well but none who took their own lives. He was not sure why he was bitter. After the war, he went to work for Eastman Kodak. He loved the work, but he was so bitter that he would take extra time for lunch and would be ready to tell his bosses off if they had anything to say about it. This eventually went away, and he felt that his bosses had understood. Orlando and his squad did not like their officers. When they would watch movies aboard ship, they would have to sit in the smoke, so the officers did not have to. He is glad he was a Marine. His anti-war sentiments are tempered by knowing that some men like Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] and Tojo [Annotator's Note: Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo] cannot be reasoned with. He does not recommend the US Marine Corps over the US Navy or US Army because those two have more schools and more choices. [Annotator's Note: The tape stops mid-sentence while Orlando is talking about his grandchildren.]