Joseph Haines was drafted in April 1944. He was sent to Camp Lee, Virginia. He got off the train and there were two waiting rooms. He was called to go down to the hospital. His left eye was burned badly, and his eyelid and eyeball had grown together, and he had an operation. They wanted to see the result of his operation. Even though he had only one eye, they did not send him home. When he arrived in Virginia, it was the first time he had encountered segregation and he had not known about it beforehand. He was shocked by it. He was taken to the base and stayed there about a month. He boarded a passenger train where they were segregated as well. When they would have meals, the white troops would go to the dining car and the black troops would be served their food. One day he was going to breakfast, and the waiter made a racial slur. Haines stopped dead in tracks. The soldier behind him pushed him and told him not to start anything down here. Most of the men in his outfit were from the South, so they schooled the others. They then went to Camp Crowley, Missouri. He had no doubts about serving. He had been in a CC camp [Annotator's Note: Civilian Conservation Corps] which was similar. He was not afraid of anything. He was assigned to his platoon in Missouri. After about two months, he was told he would be putting up 90 foot poles. He had to learn to climb them. They were told not to slip and fall because the sudden stop would kill them. [Annotator's Note: Haines laughs.] They learned to put cross-arms on the poles. Later he installed the poles around the airbases in Okinawa with wire in between as air defense. He was assigned to Company B, 81st Heavy Construction Battalion. They were all black soldiers with white officers. The battalion commander did not like black people. He called them everything but a child of God. They broke out every window in the orderly room. The MPs [Annotator's Note: Military Police] would not even come down in their area. The base commander came down and Haines asked him if the white officers had been trained how to treat the black soldiers. The commander said "yes", and Haines told him that their commander had not gotten the message. Two months later they were informed they were going overseas, and their commander went AWOL [Annotator's Note: Absent Without Leave]. Haines thinks he figured he might be going on a one way trip. Haines never heard any anger about the situation. They were used to white bosses and there was not much difference. His lieutenants were alright. The commander was a West Point [Annotator's Note: United States Military Academy, West Point, New York] man and he let them know that he did not care for black people.

Joseph Haines was born in March 1922 in Reading, Pennsylvania. He had one older sister. He was raised by his mother who did domestic work her entire life. He quit school to help her out. She was a strong mother and he loved her. Haines' grandfather, his mother's father, was the founder of the Zion Baptist Church in town. He attended Reading High where he was the only African-American student for three years. He had no problems there and played soccer and basketball. He has good recollections of growing up. Haines was working in highway construction when the war broke out. When Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] made his speech [Annotator’s Note: Day of Infamy Speech made by Roosevelt to Congress on 8 December 1941], he quit there and went to work in the steel mill to help out. He figured it was doing more to help the war effort. He was drafted while working there. After the war, he returned to his same job.

Joseph Haines was not worried about going overseas. Everything was new to him and he got to see things he had never seen before. After arriving in Seattle [Annotator's Note: Seattle, Washington], the Salvation Army band was playing "I'll Be Seeing You". They were getting on the ship which was the first one he had ever seen. The worst thing in his life was when they went into a storm and he got so sick he thought he was dying. He was seasick for days. His lieutenant came to his bunk and ordered him to go eat some eggs. He told the lieutenant to leave him alone. When he arrived in Honolulu [Annotator's Note: Hawaii], he was walking down the gangplank and the lieutenant was laughing. Haines found out seasickness was the worst sickness in the world. He spent three months training in Honolulu. He looked out and saw a lot of ships and he knew they were going someplace to "hell-raise." They went to Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Japan]. He did not know Okinawa was invaded 1 May [Annotator's Note: 1945]. He arrived 9 May in Buckner Bay, so named after General Buckner [Annotator's Note: US Army Generl Simon Bolivar Buckner] who had been killed there [Annotator's Note: on 18 June 1945]. The air raid siren went off and they were ordered below deck. He did not want to go because it was kamikazes and they were dropping bombs. He later came back up and boarded a landing craft to the beach. He knew they were in the war then. They bivouacked near Ishikawa airfield. They were not far from a 90mm gun [Annotator's Note: 90mm antiaircraft gun]. When they heard that gun fire, they looked for a hole. One man would not get out of the bunk. The one time he did, a bomb came through the tent and the bunks where he would have been. From then on, he would go for cover.

Joseph Haines wrote home. The letters were censored. He could not say more than he was doing fine. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks if their quarters on Okinawa were segregated. They were not.] They bivouacked near the airport. They had some skirmishes with the Japanese. Haines ran and asked for hand grenades and started throwing them like baseballs. Once, some guys were shooting at them from the woods and they had to take cover. They could not see fire from the rifles ,so they did not where the shots were coming from. Haines left in December and even after the war ended they were still fighting in the north of the island. The Japanese did not know the war was over. They were committing suicide by jumping off a cliff called Shuri Castle. He heard it through his buddies. The Navy had the best food and Haines would go there to eat. White soldiers would be there too. That is how he got a lot of news. Haines and his outfit [Annotator’s Note: Company B, 81st Heavy Construction Battalion] would patrol the area and make sure the poles and wires were up [Annotator's Note: lines to the antiaircraft batteries]. The only struggles they had was when the Japanese would come close and fire on them. Only one guy got killed and that was by horseplay. Haines told them to stop but they just went out of his sight. They were playing with a rifle when it went off. The man who had not been killed went to jail. Grabbing a rifle and pointing it at someone was a crime. Most of the soldiers were from the South. A good friend of Haines' was from Mississippi. He only met one guy from Pennsylvania.

Joseph Haines was on Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Japan] from 9 May to December [Annotator's Note: 1945]. Truman [Annotator's Note: Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States] came out with the red apple. Haines reenlisted for one year. Haines will never forget the smell of dead bodies. He would walk around and see an arm or leg sticking out of the ground. He heard that Naha [Annotator's Note: Naha, Okinawa] was so bad they had to take it twice because of the stench of dead bodies. He did not see any burials. They had to dig holes and rebury them deeper. The Japanese would only dig a small trench and then throw dirt over their dead. Haines does not know what was done with Americans. More got killed in his division than any other regiment in the Pacific. He would have liked to see what battle was like, but he knew it was hell and that if you went up there you did not know if you were coming back. They were thinking about putting his unit [Annotator’s Note: Company B, 81st Heavy Construction Battalion] at the front. He thanks God they changed their mind. There were only two divisions, 92nd and 93rd Infantry Divisions, that were all black. In Europe, and some in the Philippines and actually fought in the war. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks if that angered Haines.] Haines was not used to prejudice. He was used to being told where to go to work. If you were black, you got a white boss. He only had a black boss digging trenches for the city for oil pipelines. Haines never came into contact with white troops other than on the Merchant Marine ships coming home. There were air raids while Haines was on Okinawa and he always took cover. The Japanese did not do much bombing during the day. They called the night bombers "Bed Check Charlie" and "Pisco Charlie".

Joseph Haines was glad to get back home. Nobody was happier to see him than his mother. He arrived back in the United States in January 1946, after a 16 day trip across the Pacific from Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Japan] to Seattle [Annotator's Note: Washington]. He did not get seasick. A white guy would ask him to hold his wallet when he went to take a shower and vice versa. Once they were in Seattle, when this same man saw Haines, he crossed to the other side of the street. [Annotator's Note: Haines laughs.] Haines was good enough to hold his wallet on the ship, but not good enough to speak to on the street. Haines did not let it bother him. If you let it bother you, you are worse off. That is part of life. It will not be forever. Truman [Annotator's Note: Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States] was the greatest president we ever had because he integrated the whole Armed Forces. Haines said "thank you Jesus" when that happened, and "God bless Truman." Haines felt sorry for the Marines who did most of the fighting. He was talking to guys and told a Marine that they won the war. Haines was on Okinawa when Truman dropped the bombs [Annotator's Note: Nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan on 6 and 9 August 1945]. He was happy that Japan had sense enough to surrender. He got word but did not know what kind of bombs they were. Haines did not feel the explosions. The lieutenant called them all together and told them the Japanese had surrendered. The men all shouted "hallelujah." Then Truman came out with that red apple. A colonel came out and told them that 10,000 reenlisted on Okinawa just to get off the island. Truman called it a red apple [Annotator's Note: no reference to this can be found]; one bite equals one year enlistment; two bites equals two year enlistment and so on. Haines took one bite right away. He went home on leave for 90 days. He got mad because he had to go back to Fort Meade, Maryland on Easter Sunday. If you were one minute late getting back, you were busted down to Private. From there he went to Camp Stoneman, California then to Camp Knight in Oakland. He liked California. He was then sent to Fort Lewis, Washington, where he was in charge of the trash pickup crew. They almost got poisoned by some stuff on the truck and ended up in the hospital. Even the base commander came over to check on them at the hospital. He was discharged there. He returned by train to Reading, Pennsylvania. It was snowing. He got on the porch, knocked on the door, and his mother almost knocked him down she was so happy to see him. He got a 90 day furlough upon arriving home in the United States. He had to wear his uniform every day and carry his papers. An MP [Annotator's Note: Military Police] stopped him. He had a wire in his cap so he could wear it the way MacArthur [Annotator's Note: US Army General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] did. The MP made him straighten it out.

Joseph Haines did not notice that he was different when he came home. His mother got kind of scared of him. He was on the porch on 4 July, and when some kids lit a firecracker, he hit the floor. He slept in the back room and had a door that went to the roof where his mother hung her clothes. The wind blew the door open and he slammed it shut. The door came open again, he saw the sheets and then saw he had his mother by the neck. It scared the hell out of her. His nerves were still up. He hated to see 4 July coming but he got over it. He felt like nobody wanted to talk to him. He was almost ready to kill himself. He felt neglected by his friends. That mood lasted for a couple of months. He finally came out of it when he joined the American Legion. All the veterans helped him. The change was bad for him but got better. The 90 day furlough he had gotten really helped him. After he got out of uniform and things got better he got better. His mother came around then. She told him she was afraid of him when he first got home. He feels sorry for the service people of today. They do not know who their enemy is, the same as it was in Vietnam [Annotator's Note: Vietnam War, or Second Indochina War, 1 November 1955 to 30 April 1975]. A guy told him you had to be careful over there because a kid walking down the street could shoot you. Bush's war, we have no business being over there. They knocked down the twin towers [Annotator's Note: World Trade Center buildings] but why send our men over there? Haines was talking to one soldier over there and he told them they might as well be in Vietnam.