James Rodney Anderson was  inducted into the US Navy on Jan. 18, 1943, in Memphis, Tennessee.  After receiving his boot training at Great Lakes, Illinois, he was transferred to San Francisco, California, before being shipped out.  Rodney served two years and five months in the Pacific aboard the U.S.S. Dixie and was wounded by a Japanese bomb attack while working below decks.

Rodney was discharged March 1, 1946 in New Orleans, Louisiana.  He died at the V.A. Medical Center in Memphis on October 7, 1994.