Sammy Ray was born in the small town of Mulberry, Kansas. His father sold dry goods to African-American sharecroppers, so the family moved around a lot until finally settling in Rosedale, Mississippi where his father bought a BBQ stand. During the Great Depression, Ray sold popcorn and peanuts outside the town's movie theater to help support his family. When he was still a junior in high school, Ray was offered a job with the US Postal Service for 60 dollars per month. While trying to decide if he was going to drop out of school and take the job, which his parents encouraged him to do, he was approached by a man who ran a Works Progress Administration, or WPA, sponsored ornithological study. The man offered Ray 38 dollars per month to collect and stuff birds. Ray took the job to contribute to the family and remained in school. He learned how to collect, skin, preserve and mount birds of all sizes.

After graduating from high school, Sammy Ray started college at a junior college [Annotator's Note: Sunflower Junior College] in Moorhead, Mississippi. Ray took 21 hours of school in addition to working 40 hours a week. While at school, Ray met his wife, Charlotte, by convincing her to hold a chicken snake. They married outside Norfolk in Little Creek, North Carolina while he was stationed there for the Navy. Ray despised the white uniform. Ray was given orders to report to Camp Lejeune, South Carolina shortly after their wedding to train as a medic with the Marines.

While in training at Camp Lejeune, Sammy Ray would visit his wife [Annotator's Note: Charlotte (Parr) Ray] in Norfolk on his weekend passes. One evening, he was standing in line to get on a transport back to base. Ray saw a woman Marine lieutenant, who he later learned was named Price, and asked her if she would like his place in line. As they are traveling on the transport, one of the Marines was acting inappropriately towards Price. The event made Ray uncomfortable but he decided to stay quiet and mind his own business. When they arrived in Newburn, he was stopped by a Military Police Officer and asked for his identification. During the middle of the week, Ray was ordered to report to the office of Major General Larson [Annotator's Note: US Marine Corps Major General August Larson], and Price was present. She identified Ray as present during the incident. General Larson ordered Ray to remain on base because he would be a witness for the trial. Ray had to report to the Provost Marshall where he was charged for not maintaining order because he was the senior noncommissioned officer, or NCO, on the public conveyance at the time and charged with laughing and making comments at an officer of the Marine Corp. Ray asked Price if she remembered him making comments about her on the transport. She said "no", so the Provost made her sign a statement for that. The General gave Ray another chance to tell his story, and Ray said he already told the truth so the General decided to charge Ray with perjury. [Annotator's Note: A glitch in the video occurs around 0:33:40.] During the proceeding, Ray was put up as a witness and lied to the court when they asked him if he thought the Marine Corp men had clean minds. After the trial, Ray found out that the Marine was found guilty and was given ten years of hard labor.

Sammy Ray was sent by train to a tent camp in the mountains outside of the Marine Corps Air Base in Miramar, California. Ray recalled the days being hot and the nights being cold. After a short stay there, he boarded a US Merchant Marine manned troopship and steamed to New Caledonia. Not even two hours into the trip, Ray became terribly seasick and stayed sick for about six days. When he was able to finally eat something, he ate raw rutabaga and potatoes.

Sammy Ray was born in February 1919. After two years of courses at a junior college [Annotator's Note: Sunflower Junior College, now Mississippi Delta Community College, in Moorhead, Mississippi] Ray transferred to Louisiana State University, LSU. He was at LSU when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. While he was working on Sunday morning, 7 December 1941, he heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. He knew things were going to change quickly. Ray recalls the following day his professor cancelled their test for that day and turned on the radio to hear President Franklin D. Roosevelt deliver his famous speech. In the spring of 1942, Ray was recruited by the Louisiana Department of Public Health to assist in a study on mosquitoes and mosquito control in the New Orleans area. He worked this job for about two months until he was informed that he would have to request his own deferment. Ray underestimated his education and experience while trying to enlist in the military. He enlisted with the Navy but later transferred to the Marine Corp. He considered himself a Marine rather than a Navy man.

Sammy Ray considers himself a Marine but he began his service with the Navy. Ray tried unsuccessfully to get a deferment. He already got in trouble with the draft board because he did not respond to the notice they sent him. He was researching in Mexico at the time. In June 1942, Ray went to the Army recruiting office in New Orleans and attempted to volunteer to be a glider pilot. When informed that he could not, he left and went to the Navy recruiter and enlisted. He joined as a Pharmacist Mate 3rd class. He was sent to the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida for corps school [Annotator's Note: training as a hospital corpsman or pharmacists mate, the Navy equivalent of an Army medic]. Most of the training was first aid medical training. They would train on air crash patients. He never received boot camp training. He was what the service men called a "Feather Merchant". He ran into some trouble in the beginning because he did not know the military lingo, courtesy and rank structure. Ray never cared for the rank of service. After corps school, Ray went to Norfolk, Virginia for Medical Technical School. He learned to take blood and analyze blood. He had to test sailors for venereal diseases. He developed a friendship with a doctor at the school. During his experience throughout life he had developed a disdain for hierarchy of the academia world, as well in the military service. Ray was given some military training at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. He trained with the Springfield [Annotator's Note: M1903 .30 caliber bolt action rifle, also referred to simply as the '03] and .45 pistol [Annotator's Note: M1911 .45 caliber semiautomatic pistol]. He recalled doing gas warfare activities as well.

In early January 1944, Sammy Ray boarded a ship to New Caledonia. Ray was only on New Caledonia for short time when he received orders to report to the island of Pavuvu, Solomon Islands, where he was assigned to Headquarters Battery, 2nd Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division. Pavuvu was a rest camp. Ray and his unit set up a sick bay. That afternoon, he and a Marine friend wanted to go into the mangrove to collect birds. They got separated and Ray couldn't remember the password to return back to camp, so he slept on a log with a pack of feral dogs circling him. He also recalled large lizards crawled all over him. In the morning, he headed back to camp where he was reprimanded for leaving to look for birds. During his time on Pavuvu, Ray had to bribe his battalion commander with alcohol from the sick bay alcohol supply in order to be allowed to travel outside of the Marine perimeter to collect bird samples. The battalion executive officer caught on to what was happening and by the time they left Pavuvu for Peleliu, the battalion commander had been rotated back to the United States and retired. About a month later, Ray received a letter permit to shoot behind the lines thanks to the battalion commander.

Prior to shipping out, Sammy Ray's professor and advisor from Louisiana State University, Doctor Lowry, put him in touch with Alexander Wetmore, then the Director of the National Museum of Natural History, part of the Smithsonian Institute, and a fellow ornithologist. Whetmore provided Ray with a Marble Game Getter gun and ammunition to collect exotic birds in the South Pacific, in addition to a .38 caliber revolver and a .30 caliber carbine. Ray remembered that Whetmore sent him a copy of Birds of the South Pacific by Ernst Mayr but he did not receive it until he was on Okinawa. Ray would go shooting at every free moment he could, and when he was not allowed to shoot, he would use a sling shot to collect birds. He would store them in a cigar box and would skin the birds between movements. Ray found the military boring. He commented on how on pay day, he would wait in line for hours to get paid. To beat the boredom, he would collect birds or play chess with a peg board.

Sammy Ray remembered his first night on Peleliu he was stuck down hill with two wounded Marines but the sick bay was up the hill where he would have rather been. During heavy fire, a gas officer by the name of Hickerson [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling], offered Ray his foxhole. While sitting there, Ray noticed a Japanese soldier climbing a tree, then a Marine blew up the tree. When he saw another figure coming his way, he was about to shoot, but did not. Someone else shot at the figure and they found out that it was Hickerson. [Annotator's Note: Phone rings in the background around 1:50:00.] During the Peleliu operation, most of the men he was treating weren't wounded, but were suffering from dehydration and heat exhaustion. The problem of the heat was compounded by the fact that the water that had been brought ashore for the men to drink was tainted with fuel which caused even more casualties. At some point during the second day of the battle, Ray succumbed to the heat and passed out. When he regained consciousness, he was on a hospital ship offshore. The sound of taps playing woke him up. When he got up he saw the bodies of men killed in action being slid over the side of the ship. [Annotator's Note: Tape change at 1:56:10.] In between fire, Ray kept extensive notes of the birds he collected. When he collected the birds, he would place them in a cigar box and then ship them straight to Alexander Wetmore at the Smithsonian Institute. He had a permit that allowed him to send the specimens that did not need to pass the censors. During the run in to the beach, Ray saw several amtracs [Annotator's Notes: Landing Vehicle, Tracked or LVT, also referred to as amtracs or alligators] in the line ahead of his hit by Japanese mortar and artillery fire. Seeing those amtracs exploding made him sick with terror. To make matters worse, when the amtrac Ray was on reached the beach, the ramp on the back didn't drop so the men were forced to go over the side. Ray was wearing an inflatable life belt in addition to his gear and when he went over the side of the amtrac he somehow activated the Co2 canisters in the life belt causing it to inflate. When he hit the beach, he was rolling around like a donut for several seconds before he was able to get the belt off. When he went down, he landed in the sand right in front of a concrete emplacement where he was supposed to set up an aid station. He had been told prior to landing that the emplacement had already been cleared out. While Ray was rolling around in the sand, a sergeant nearby threw a grenade at the bunker. The grenade was tossed back at him. The grenade detonated, seriously wounding the sergeant. After getting the life belt off, Ray was able to tend to the sergeant's wounds.

When Sammy Ray and the 1st Marine Division [Annotator's Note: Ray was a pharmacist's mate assigned to Headquarters Battery, 2nd Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division] was sent to Okinawa, he was expecting the landing to be like what he had experienced on Peleliu. He was absolutely terrified the first night on Okinawa and did not sleep because he was waiting for the attack to begin, but nothing happened. In fact, there was only one casualty of a Marine due to self-infliction. His unit was first supporting the 5th Marines [Annotator's Note: 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division], but then turned to support a National Guard unit. Ray's unit received a presidential citation for plugging a hole with artillery fire. Ray recalled his executive officer scalping his own head one night by running into a tomb. Ray tended to the officer and sutured his scalp back in place. During the campaign, Ray remembered that it rained non-stop for about a month. This flooded the Japanese out of their caves. Since the Japanese could not retrieve their dead, Ray recalled the horrific sight of the bloated Japanese bodies. Ray did not see much action on Okinawa, but he did have a close call. He went into a thatch hut to collect a bird that was in there. When he came out, a couple of Marines said a Japanese soldier was hiding in the hut. Ray said he did not see anyone. The Marines set the hut on fire anyway, and to Ray's surprise, a Japanese soldier came out. [Annotator's notes: A glitch occurs at 2:14:43.000.] Ray remained on the island until shortly after the Japanese surrender.

In late August or early September 1945, Sammy Ray shipped out with the 1st Marine Division [Annotator's Note: Ray was a US Navy pharmacist's Mate attached to Headquarters Battery, 2nd Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division] to Northern China where he spent roughly two months before returning to the United States. On his way to Northern China, passing Korea on the Yellow Sea, the Marines would spot mines. During the two months in China, Ray treated men that had venereal diseases. Ray reflected on his survival chances if he would have had to go and fight war in Japan.

Sammy Ray recalled storming the beach of Peleliu in the afternoon [Annotator's Note: of 15 September 1944] and that everything was chaotic. He was told to just move in and get off the beach as fast as he could. Ray witnessed the wave before his being wiped out and was waiting for the same thing to happen to his unit [Annotator's Note: Ray was a US Navy pharmacist's Mate attached to Headquarters Battery, 2nd Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division]. His most vivid memory on Peleliu was rolling around the beach when his Co2 canisters went off and inflated his life belt. In regards to Okinawa, one of Ray's most vivid memories is the long and unbelievable wait for hell to break loose. He also recalled a memory of driving in a truck with his superior officer and others, and Ray knew that the Japanese were about to attack, so he got out of the truck. His superior officer told him to come back, but Ray refused. Finally everyone got out of the truck just before a mortar hit it. That night, he was in a storm shelter with his outfit and a round came in, but it was a dud. Ray also remembered that the men would use pterotic acid to heat water, and one time he was near a guy heating water when it blew up. Ray reflected on the civilians on Okinawa. After Japan surrendered, they found a girl and her father in a cave. The girl was badly wounded and Ray wanted to treat the wound. The father was hesitant at first, but Ray convinced him that he just wanted to help her. [Annotator's Notes: There is a microphone mishap at 2:36:28.] Ray also remembered that many of the local women had fleas in their hair.

In November 1945, Sammy Ray was discharged from the Navy in New Orleans, Louisiana. It took him about a year to adjust to civilian life again. He remembered that fireworks would set him off, and he would have nightmares of a Japanese soldier jumping in his foxhole. Ray wanted to go to medical school, but his mother and sister wanted him to stay home. He worked at a service station for about a year but then decided to take a chance on medical school. An offer of a fellowship funded by Gulf Oil, and the opportunity to attend Rice University and work with the parasitologist Asa Chandler, diverted him from medical school to oyster biology. After the discovery of a parasite that caused the death of oysters, Ray developed a technique to easily identify and quantify it.

[Annotator's Notes: Ray takes a long pause.] Sammy Ray felt that he had to fight in World War 2. The United States is a better place because people fought. The war changed the direction Ray was heading in life. Before the war, he was on his way to becoming a museum curator. After the war, opportunities opened for him that took him in a whole new direction. Ray absolutely agrees that institutions like The National WWII Museum should exist. He thinks people need to know the sacrifices people made and he is worried that we are forgetting that. Ray always wanted to excel, and he believes in integrity and honesty.