James B. Jones was born in March 1922 in Laurel [Annotator's Note: Laurel, Mississippi]. His father worked for a white family. He had been born near Birmingham, Alabama. His father worked on the plantation his family lived on. He picked cotton. He then moved to Laurel. His mother was also born on a plantation in Alabama. Jones's grandmother had been a slave in Kentucky. She had a son by the plantation owner. The son worked as a stable boy and rode the horses. After being sold, she worked inside a plantation during the Civil War [Annotator's Note: American Civil War, 1861 to 1865]. When that war ended, her sister married a Northern soldier. They wanted her to go with them, but she refused to leave. His grandparents then met, married, and had children. His grandfather bought a cotton farm and put his kids through school. One of Jones's uncles started a grocery in Laurel. After that, Jones's parents met in the town, married, and bought the home where Jones was born. His mother had been previously married and had a daughter in that marriage. Jones grew up with two sisters. Both of his parents worked for a wealthy family. The family they worked for helped build the town. One family experienced a death in the family and converted the deceased person's home into a museum. Jones's mother worked for the curator of the house museum until she died in 1938. His father died in 1937. The house Jones grew up in was in a black community that worked for white families. The town gained a railroad offering more work. The wealthy white people built homes for their servants that were closer to their homes. There was a church and a school in the town. All of the families in Jones's community helped build a church. In the early 1920s, there was only one school for black children in the town. There was no high school for black kids in Laurel in those days. Jones attended school in Kingston [Annotator's Note: Kingston, Mississippi]. In the late 1920s, the people of Laurel told the black community they would help build them a high school if they could raise a third of the money. The community made the money, but the school was turned into an elementary school. The white families then built the high school. Jones remained in his family home until 1937, when the town started laying roads and plumbing. Because the taxes were raised, the family could not afford to live in the house, so they moved. Jones continues to live in the family home.

James B. Jones's father died not long after the move. Jones was working for a lawyer and his family in town. The family liked Jones and offered to send him to college in Washington D.C. [Annotator's Note: District of Columbia]. He finished high school in 1942 then was drafted into the Army. By that time, Jones was married with a pregnant wife. He was sent to Camp Shelby [Annotator's Note: Hattiesburg, Mississippi], where he was interviewed. Jones had a house and a car because of all the work he had done before the war. Jones was able to pay for his father's hospital bills and funeral. His Army interviewer asked him what he had been doing prior to being drafted. Jones told him about his previous work, which included working in a mail office. He was classified as a mail clerk because of that work. When he left Camp Shelby, he was sent to Camp Lee [Annotator's Note: now Fort Lee, in Prince George County, Virginia], Virginia, where he did his basic training. He was paid 21 dollars a month. Because he was married, Jones had money sent to his wife, mother, and sister, leaving him with only seven dollars a month. Jones did not drink or smoke. In his barracks, one of his bunkmates would gamble every Saturday night. Jones did not gamble, but would buy cigarettes and food, and when the guys gambling ran out of food, alcohol, or cigarettes, Jones would sell his stock, earning him extra money. He would also wash and iron peoples clothing for money. He was at Camp Lee when he heard about the Army creating a black paratrooper unit. Jones volunteered for that because they were paid more. During training, Jones was classified as a clerk. Jones was told he would not be trained as a paratrooper and was sent to Fort Dix, New Jersey.

When James B. Jones arrived at Fort Dix, New Jersey, he was assigned to the first black armored unit in the Army. The unit had one officer and ten enlisted men. They had no duties except handling mail. During that time, the Army was planning for the D-Day landing [Annotator's Note: Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. Jones did not have to do guard duty or physical training there. He heard a rumor that this unit would be attached to a hospital. By that time, Jones's wife had had their second child, so he was given leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] to see the family. He ran into some friends and they started playing football at the school. During the game, Jones was injured in the mouth. He was not able to eat and was spitting blood. He saw a dentist, who told him there was damage. During his train ride home, Jones bit into some food, which broke his jaw. It took two days to make it back to Fort Dix where he was immediately put into a hospital. Jones's captain came to visit him. Jones was a corporal at the time. The captain told him the unit would be moving out soon and Jones decided to go with the unit. Jones was in a concussion ward. One day, Jones watched an ambulance convoy pull up to the hospital. He visited one of the men who was injured and found out the men had been in a troop carrier that was sunk by a German submarine. Jones did not know how to swim, so the story worried him. He told his commanding officer he wanted to stay in the hospital. After the invasion of France, he was shipped overseas to England. He had to clean the hotels the invasion troops stayed in prior to the invasion. He was sent to France and sat in a replacement depot for two days before he was sent to the 761st Tank Battalion, which had taken casualties after going into battle with Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.]. Jones did his tank training five miles behind the front lines, where he learned how to load and fire a tank gun. He joined the unit near Nancy [Annotator's Note: Nancy, France] then went to Metz [Annotator's Note: Metz, France], and on to the German border.

On Christmas Eve [Annotator's Note: 24 December 1944], James B. Jones had finished a skirmish with Germans. That evening, he was guarding some roads when he received orders to ship out the next morning. Later that night, his unit [Annotator's Note: Company D, 761st Tank Battalion (Colored)] began moving under the cover of darkness. They were not allowed to use lights, so Jones's tank had to keep very close to the tank ahead of his. He went through Nancy [Annotator's Note: Nancy, France] towards Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France], then started seeing signs for Verdun [Annotator's Note: Verdun, France]. The tanks arrived at their next station on Christmas morning. After eating Christmas dinner, some of the men wanted to go to a brothel, but other soldiers would not allow them to go. General Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] heard about the incident and allowed Jones' unit to go to the brothel. The unit moved off again, driving through Metz [Annotator's Note: Metz, France], finally arriving in Luxembourg that afternoon. The Ardennes Forest [Annotator's Note: forest that goes through Belgium and Luxembourg] was hilly and dense with trees. It was difficult to drive through the forest because of all of the hills. The following day, Jones came in contact with a German panzer unit [Annotator's Note: armor or tank unit]]. The Germans were trying to reach a gasoline depot south of Bastogne [Annotator's Note: Bastogne, Belgium]. Jones thought the German panzer was better than the American tank. The biggest problem with the German tank was its stationary turret. It was easier to kill the tank by hitting it in the back or the side. Jones fought in the Sherman tank [Annotator's Note: M4 Sherman medium tank] but at this time he was in the light tank [Annotator's Note: M5 Stuart light tank] which fired a 37mm shell, which would bounce off of the German tanks. He would aim at the tank tracks to knock it out. His tank would hit the enemy tank and try to out run them. Jones started his tank career as an assistant driver and would operate a machine gun in his position. He would shoot his machine gun at enemy tanks to make it easier for the gunner to aim at the enemy armor. That would also help the larger tanks take out the Germans. When his tank hit a landmine, he would have to get out of the vehicle quickly.

After his Christmas day [Annotator's Note: 25 December 1944] fight, James Jones went on to Bastogne [Annotator's Note: Bastogne, Belgium] to help the 101st Airborne [Annotator's Note: 101st Airborne Division]. The airborne had been protecting an ammunition depot. He traveled back to the German border, where the Germans had a secret underground rail line. They would raise a telescope to view troop movements and shoot. Jones would try to take the guns out when they came up. This was along the Maginot Line [Annotator’s Note: a series of defensive fortifications roughly paralleling the Franco-German border built by France in the 1930s]. The guns emplacements were some distance apart. The Germans had depots and hospitals on the underground rail line as well as the guns. Jones had to wait quietly and patiently for the telescopes to come up. He would hide his tank until the gun appeared. After the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945], Jones attacked the Siegfried line [Annotator's Note: a series of German fortifications along the German border], where the Americans went up against 29 German divisions. The Americans broke the line after two weeks of fighting, allowing for the breakout into the Rhur District [Annotator's Note: the Rhur region in west Germany where much of the German war industry was located] where the arms factories were located. Jones captured some German scientists who had worked on the German atomic bombs. He led Patton's [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] army through Germany and Austria, liberating three concentration camps along the way. The people in the camp were so thin, Jones could almost see their bones. The Germans killed the people and made lampshades out of the skin before putting them in crematoriums. While heading to Stuttgart [Annotator's Note: Stuttgart, Germany], Jones saw Germans in an open field and some train cars. A group was sent to investigate and found train cars stacked to the top with dead bodies. Jones did not think it was possible. When he got to a camp near Munich [Annotator's Note: Munich, Germany], a person asked him for chocolate. Jones could see his bones. He saw bodies hanging, waiting to be put in an oven to be burned. The German resistance was almost non-existent. Jones went into Austria, but was told not to cross a river. The next day, Germans were trying to cross the river so they would not be captured by the Russians. The Germans and Italians surrendered to the Americans and Russians. Jones did not have much interaction with the Russians. They stayed on their side of the river. He remained there for about a week while the peace treaty was signed. Jones was brought back to Germany to prepare for the invasion of Japan. Before he was sent out, the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, ending the war.

The racism James B. Jones experienced was bad. He thought it was worse for northerners who went to the south. In 1935 and 1936, Jackie Robinson [Annotator's Note: Jack Roosevelt Robinson, a famous African-American baseball player] attended the University of California, Los Angeles [Annotator's Note: often shortened to UCLA, located in Los Angeles, California]. While there, he played several sports. In those years, Robinson's school and the University of Alabama [Annotator's Note: Tuscaloosa, Alabama] were both invited to play at the Rose Bowl [Annotator's Note: American college football game in Pasadena, California]. When the University of Alabama found out the California team was integrated, the university decided not to play the game. In the end, the game happened. Three years later, Jackie Robinson graduated and started playing baseball for an all-Black team [Annotator's Note: the team played in one of several segregated baseball leagues collectively called the Negro leagues] in Kansas City [Annotator's Note: Kansas City, Missouri]. When the war started, Joe Lewis [Annotator's Note: Joseph Louis Barrow; professional heavy weight boxer] and Sugar Ray Robinson [Annotator's Note: Sugar Ray Robinson; professional boxer] were drafted into the Army. They were put into the special service, allowing them to entertain the troops. When Jackie Robinson was drafted, they told the Pentagon to look at Robinson for an officer's commission. Robinson went to OCS [Annotator's Note: Officer Candidate School] and became a second lieutenant and was assigned to the 761st Tank Battalion. One weekend, all of them met up in Texas. While waiting for a bus, a lady sat down next to Robinson. The two got onto the bus and sat in the colored section. A white man got on the bus and accused Robinson of sitting and talking with a white woman. Robinson got in trouble with the bus driver, even though the woman was not white. The police were called, but because Robinson was in uniform, they called the military police. They finally believed the woman was a black woman, but Robinson was arrested anyway. They tried to court martial Robinson. The unit was still in training while the invasion happened. Robinson was left in prison while the battalion went on to Europe. They decided not to go through with the trial, but Robinson remained in jail until the end of the war when he was discharged. Jones experienced some racism from other troops in Europe. Sometimes when he would pass white troops in his tanks, the white troops would complain that the black troops had rides across Europe. While in Texas, if a bus came by with German POWs and white soldiers, they would say nasty things to black soldiers. If there were no seats in the back of the bus, the bus driver would make POWs [Annotator's Note: prisoners of war] get off of the bus. They would then wait for the next available bus. Jones had to experience those things and accept them.

When the war in Europe ended, James B. Jones was told he would be going to Japan. The invasion was cancelled after the atomic bombs were dropped. While waiting to be shipped home, Jones remained in Germany. During the weekends, he was allowed to have beer. One holiday weekend, his unit [Annotator's Note: Company D, 761st Tank Battalion (Colored)] was given alot of beer. Jones was made a recruiting NCO [Annotator's Note: non-commissioned officer], so he had to talk people into rejoining. Jones had a lot of souvenirs he captured during the war. During the weekend, Jones was cleaning and packing some souvenirs. While showering, a soldier accidently caught the building on fire after looking too closely at an explosive with a lit cigarette. By the time the fire was put out, most of Jones's stuff was destroyed. Jones had enough points [Annotator's Note: a point system was devised based on a number of factors that determined when American servicemen serving oevrseas could return home] to be sent home. After getting to the Third Army headquarters, he received leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] to see his sister in Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France]. She served in the WACs [Annotator's Note: Women's Army Corps]. While in Paris, Jones partied for two days. He signed up to work for the government and was given his discharge papers. He gave the papers to his commanding officer and was officially discharged from the Army.

James B. Jones started working for the Graves Registration Program. He went all over Europe looking for dead soldiers to put into the American cemeteries. He worked with a black mortician identifying the American dead. They would do a sweep for the dead, disinter them, and look for identification. Jones was able to estimate the height and weight of decomposed bodies. In one case, Jones only had one bone to work with. It belonged to a pilot who crash landed in a lake. After the plane was brought out of the lake, all they found was the single bone. They identified the pilot by the numbers on the plane's tail. The Americans went through great lengths to identify bodies. Jones cannot count how many bodies he worked on. He worked in three cemeteries. There were no American cemeteries in Germany, they were either sent back to the United States or buried in France. He worked in cemeteries in France, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. He worked in that program from 1945 to 1952. Afterwards, he worked as a cleric with the quartermasters. He did that work during the blockade in Berlin [Annotator's Note: Berlin, Germany]. They started building up depots and flying supplies into Berlin [Annotator's Note: The Berlin Airlift; June 1948 to May 1949]. He helped rebuild France for about five years. When the Americans and French had a falling out, the Americans moved their headquarters from Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris , France] to Brussels [Annotator's Note: Brussels, Belgium]. Around that time, Jones' department was deactivated and he returned to the United States. After his discharge, he brought his family over to Europe to stay with him. His children learned French very quickly. His boss's wife and his wife helped each other take care of the kids. His oldest daughter did not go to an American school until she was in college. His younger child went to French school through eleventh grade. The family lived in Paris. His younger daughter enjoyed riding horses and roller skating. She was very athletic. She spent her last two years of high school in an American school. Both kids could speak English, Italian, German, and French.

During the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945], one of the company drivers in James B. Jones's unit [Annotator's Note: Company D, 761st Tank Battalion (Colored)] had to return to the headquarters to gather maps and papers. The Germans would wear the uniforms of dead Americans and try to get through American lines. Some of them spoke better English than Jones. While the commander was gathering maps, some Germans in American uniforms started cutting phone lines. The officer came up to an intersection with MPs [Annotator's Note: military police] standing guard. The MP asked for identification, but the lieutenant asked the MP if he had ever seen a black German. After the war, Jones worked in Frankfurt, Germany. He met a black man who had been in the country before the war. He also met two dark skinned women. One time, Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] traveled to Heidelberg [Annotator's Note: Heidelberg, Germany] and was told about the black man. Hitler met the man and inspected him, but he was left alone afterwards. The women were lighter skinned than Jones and did not have any trouble in Germany. The Germans were mean to the Polish, Russians, and French. In the prisons, they would hang dead bodies against walls until they could be burned. Jones thinks it is important to educate people about World War 2 because of the price that was paid. Jones believes the most important African man to be born was Hannibal [Annotator's Note: Hannibal Barca; Carthaginian general and statesman who led the main force of Carthage's army againt the Roman Empire during the Second Punic War], who almost captured the Roman Empire. He thinks the second most powerful black man who ever lived was Obama [Annotator's Note: Barrack H. Obama; 44th President of the United States]. He thinks the only land masses to not reach the current level of development are Africa and South America. [Annotator's Note: Jones discusses the Mars rover.] One night while leaving work, Jones heard the Americans and Russians were preparing a joint venture to outer space.