Joseph "Joe" Linett was born in Wilmerding, Pennsylvania in April 1924, the younger of two male children in his family. His father was a foot soldier in the Russian Army during World War 1, and later immigrated to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He soon brought his Russian-born wife and first son to the United States. At the height of the Great Depression, the family moved to another small town in Pennsylvania where Linett's father bought a gasoline station and made a living. Linett was 17 and in high school when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He said he had no idea of the magnitude of the event, and remembers joking with his friend that the United States would whip the Japanese in two weeks. Like all young men his age, Linett registered for the draft, but had started college at Carnegie Institute of Technology, studying chemical engineering and was allowed a deferment. When the war stepped up in 1944, he was notified that he was going to be drafted, and decided instead to enlist in the Navy.

The two years of college at Carnegie Institute of Technology was helpful to Joseph Linett and the Navy. Radar was the newest military technology, and after further training that consisted of tearing down and rebuilding radar sets, he was shipped out. Linett's mother cried when she saw his military haircut and sent him off to Great Lakes, Illinois for boot camp. Linett looked upon it as a great adventure. He had only been away from home once before. He was flown to California, another adventure, to Camp Shoemaker, east of San Francisco Bay. He got orders to board a transport ship, and sailed to Ulithi in the Caroline Islands. He was amazed at the number of warships assembled in the bay where they anchored. In addition to the battleships, aircraft carriers, and destroyers, there was a floating dry-dock big enough to take a battleship. Linett sees the Navy as distinctly different from the Army, in that the Army is comprised of people who primarily do combat; whereas the Navy personnel are primarily people who have technical jobs and are craftsmen. Each Navy ship, Linett observed, is really a floating city that has to take care of itself. Ulithi was a transit point, and Linett was soon underway again.

Joseph Linett continued on the same ship when it left Ulithi, and while they were underway, a "now hear this" announcement notified the crew that the United States had dropped an atomic bomb on Japan. No one on board knew what an atomic bomb was. Four or five days later, Linett said, another announcement declared that Japan had surrendered. Linett remembers saying to himself, "that must have been some bomb." The war was over. His ship landed at a replacement depot on Samar Island, in the Philippines, and in a few days Linett was transferred to the submarine base at Subic Bay. He reported to the Radio Shack, and served as a radar repairman for the rest of his tour of duty. For fun, there was a movie theater on base. On one occasion he hitchhiked to Manila and enjoyed the hospitality of the Red Cross. He witnessed the first postwar nighttime baseball game between the Army's Manila Dodgers and a visiting team called the Saint Louis Cardinals. Linett said the stadium was riddled with bullet holes, and the beautiful old town had been devastated during the war. He rotated home after about ten months.

The skills he mastered during World War 2 were helpful to Joseph Linett in his engineering career. The world was becoming more technical, advancing from a crystal radio set and a crank telephone, when "everything started to explode." He feels proud that he and others of his generation were responsible for the economic and technological boom that followed in the postwar years. Linett credits the G.I. Bill with providing the opportunities that allowed him and his contemporaries to advance themselves and the entire world. He used the G.I. Bill to finish college, and later in his life, gave up chemical engineering and got a job with an electronics company. He also became interested in history, and was pleased to learn that President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: President Franklin Delanoo Roosevelt] went ahead with plans for the G.I. Bill, ignoring the heads of the major universities who attempted to preserve the world of higher education for the elite. Linett worked in the research labs of two chemical companies, then was employed in a plant that manufactured a metal for nuclear reactors. He moved to a scientific instrument division that made electronic chemical analysis units. Later he marketed 16mm movie projectors in Hollywood. Linett said he never really retired, and continued part-time selling until he was 85 years old.

At the end of World War 2, Joseph Linett was a Third Class Petty Office, an Electronics Technician's Mate (ETM3c). Looking back on his time in the Navy, Linett said he is glad he did it. He has no regrets and feels himself fortunate. He traveled and met people from all over. He was never in harm's way, and sometimes feels a little guilty about that, because so many others got "plastered." He wishes there was still a draft, because everyone has an obligation to do something for the country. He doesn't think World War 2 means very much to Americans of today, and believes that The National WWII Museum can make a difference in educating people on the subject. He thinks the incredible part of the war was the gearing up of industry to produce what was needed to win the war, and, during times of great deprivation, the great spirit of the Home Front.