Joseph Richard was born in July 1923 in Sunset, Louisiana. He had 11 brothers and sisters. His father was a farmer and his mother took care of the family. He was a teenager during the Great Depression. Richard could take a bus to school but half the time they had to push it. Once the children were old enough, they had chores to do each day. The farm is how his family survived the Depression. Even though neighbors were two miles away, it was a family community. Richard went to T. H. Harris Trade School [Annotator's Note: now part of South Louisiana Community College in Opelousas, Louisiana] after hearing about it at a dance. He signed up there and started welding classes. There were only two welding shops in town and work was hard to come by, so he decided to join the Navy. He chose the Navy because he did not want to walk. His parents wanted him to be happy. He was a minor and his mother had to sign for him. He was the first in his family to join. One brother went in just as the war was ending. He went to boot camp in San Diego, California. It was his first time out of Louisiana. He was excited to find out what it was like and then he thought, "you had a good home and you left." He had a good boot camp instructor. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer talks a lot about his own boot camp experience]. Richard thinks he would have stayed in the service but with his job rating he would have spent it all at sea. He left with 11 and a half years in. He would not change a thing now though. He was in love and he was lucky and got a good job. He went into business for himself, but the Navy made him what he is today.

Joseph Richard went to T-Unit [Annotator's Note : Task Unit; unit or formation that works on a single defined task or activity] after boot camp. He was assigned to the USS Rigel (AR-11) at the old coal docks. They went from there into Pier 13 at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. This is where they were when they were bombed by the Japanese [Annotator's Note: on 7 December 1941]. They had no guns at all on the ship. He thought Pearl Harbor was beautiful. Every other weekend was spent ashore. A lot of the families there would invite the men to their homes. Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt] and Churchill [Annotator's Note: Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940-1945] knew ahead of time because Richard knew ahead of time. When the Navy destroyers would come in to be worked on, they would tell the crews that the Japanese ships were out in neutral waters. They saw everything. Richard says the USS Shaw (DD-373) sunk a Japanese submarine coming into the harbor before the attack [Annotator's Note: the USS Shaw (DD-373) was in drydock during the attack and was heavily damaged; the USS Ward (DD-139) was the ship that did so]. Richard was getting ready to go ashore when he saw that the USS Arizona (BB-39) had been hit. He went topside and watched everything going on. The Japanese pilots would wave at him as they went by. He says the United States is lucky the aircraft carriers were not in there. He did not realize it was an attack at first because every Sunday planes came in to change shifts. The Japanese knew what they were doing. He could see Ford Island and all of the ships. The Japanese aircraft had to go right over them to attack the rest of the fleet. The Rigel got hit with a shrapnel bomb. There was a whale boat in front of them that had a bomb drop and go through the boat but did not explode. Richard's job as a welding fitter made it so that he was helping to free the men trapped in the USS Arizona (BB-39). He and his team managed to save 33 sailors. They had to stop though because the ocean itself was catching fire. Three days later they saved three more men from the USS Oklahoma (BB-37). The Arizona had flipped over in just a few minutes after being attacked. Richard says they could hear someone knocking from the Arizona until the day before Christmas. He does not know if it was his mind playing tricks on him or not. They did all that they could.

Joseph Richard was a welder aboard the USS Rigel (AR-11) when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He took a small boat over to the USS Arizona (BB-39) with five other sailors to try and cut through the steel to rescue trapped sailors. He had a good crew on his ship. They often worked on 30 ships at once. He never worked on an aircraft carrier, but he worked on everything else. The Arizona was smoking, and the water was full of oil. The Arizona still leaks oil today. There were some bodies in the water as they went to the ship. Richard has a friend from his hometown of Sunset, Louisiana whose body is still in the Arizona, Russell Durio [Annotator's Note: US Marine Corps Private First Class Russell Durio]. Richard did not know what part of the ship they were cutting into. They were stopped after a time because the potential to cut into the wrong part of the ship could have caused even more damage. Richard did not go inside once he got it cut open, others did the rescues. Three days later, he worked on the USS Oklahoma (BB-37) after hearing somebody knocking. There were three men in there. 57 years later, Richard was at a reunion in Las Vegas, Nevada and a man at the table was telling the others how lucky he was that somebody heard the knocking. Richard told him that he was the one who did that. The sailor then got up and kissed Richard. [Annotator's Note: Richard tells about that man dying about three years before this interview, and gets quiet.]

Joseph Richard tries to forget the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese but he cannot. He can see it as plain as day. It is sad for people to fight over nothing. He feels terrible about the Vietnam War. It was not like World War 2. There were too many rules now about what can or cannot be done. Richard made all but about the first three invasions after Pearl Harbor aboard the USS Rigel (AR-11). They spent the first days afterwards working to repair ships in the harbor, but after that it was different ships at different islands in the Pacific. In Pearl Harbor, there were three destroyers tied alongside the Rigel, including the USS Cummings (DD-365). He had made friends with sailors aboard the Cummings and the night before the Pearl Harbor attack he saw them putting ammunition out near the guns. He asked them why they were doing that, and the men told him their captain had ordered them to. A barber on the Rigel got a phone call where he was asked what the weather was like and if the carriers were in the harbor. He told Richard about the call, thinking it was strange. Richard feels lucky that we had Nimitz [Annotator's Note: US Navy Fleet Admiral Chester William Nimitz, Sr.], who helped win the war. MacArthur [Annotator's Note: US Army General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] was more of a bragger than a fighter. President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt] was nobody's fool either. When Roosevelt died, he did not think much of Truman [Annotator's Note: Harry S. Truman] but when he dropped the bomb [Annotator's Note: the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan], he became their buddy. If he would not have dropped that bomb, we would have lost more people than were lost to the bomb. Even the kids were prepared to kill Americans.

Joseph Richard was a welder assigned to the USS Rigel (AR-11) when it was attacked at Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. He lived aboard ship. They would go into town on liberty. The weather was nice. It was warm during the day and cool at night. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer describes Richard's story to him.] On the morning of 7 December 1941, Richard looked out the port window of his room and saw the USS Arizona (BB-39) on fire. He came out to see what was happening and he watched the ship roll over from the blasts. He stayed up top until the last Japanese aircraft came through. They came in waves. They did not shoot down many of the planes. The Japanese caught them sleeping. When the battle was occurring, he could not really tell what was going on. It was all over before he got scared. Richard did not talk about his story for years. He did not know how it got out to his neighbors until they started asking him questions about it. He had not joined any organizations. He wanted people to leave him alone about it. The hardest part for Richard was, and is, the ones he could not save and knowing about the ones are still there. [Annotator's Note: Richard gets emotional.] They did not have a chance. Being in their shoes must have been something but it happened fast.

Joseph Richard stayed assigned to the USS Rigel (AR-11) throughout the war until the invasion of Okinawa. He then transferred to the USS Kittson (APA-123) and was sent back to Camp Pendleton, California where he learned demolition. He returned to the Pacific and landed on the beach at Okinawa to clear the beach before the invasion. Once that was finished, he was done. There were 52 destroyers that were damaged or destroyed in the invasion. A lot was done by kamikazes. Some of the men had just come out of boot camp and he made friends with some of them. He would watch them go ashore at ten o'clock in the morning, and by six o'clock in the evening, he would learn that they were dead. They did not have a chance. Gets quiet. They were going to go into Japan within the next 30 days, but the bombs [Annotator's Note: the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan] were dropped and that was it.

After the invasion of Okinawa, Japan and the dropping of the atomic bombs, Joseph Richard was eligible for discharge, but it would take another few months to get a replacement for him. He was a ship fitter so he could not just leave. He had decided not to stay in the Navy. He went back home, and his girlfriend was working for the Veterans Administration in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He took some time off. A company went to the VA looking for someone to build Quonset huts and his girlfriend recommended him. He worked for them for three years. He then opened a gasoline service station in Baton Rouge for 18 years until highway construction took his property, so he opened a welding shop and has been with it ever since. During farming season, he works on all kinds of farm tractors. He also worked in the oil fields. The war made a man of Richard. He feels that all boys coming out of high school should serve for two year. But now, the way we are fighting wars, he does not like the idea. He hopes it does not get worse. If something does not change, we are in deep trouble. He now believes that his service during the war did not make things any better. He used to think his sacrifice was worth it, but not any longer.

Joseph Richard feels that the war means more now to the younger generation than it did after he left it. He meets kids on the street that shake his hand and thank him for his service. Before this, people did not do that. He knows two others in his area that are survivors and they get together every 7 December. At 92 years old, Richard is the youngest of the three. He feels that The National WWII Museum, New Orleans, Louisiana, is doing a good job. He has been to visit twice and each time there is even more information being given. It feels good to him and he likes that the schools are bringing kids there. He thinks all schools should do it. Richard finds it hard to explain experiencing the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He was only 16 years old. [Annotator"s Note: The interviewer repeats his story back to him.] After the attack, and during the war, he patched up a lot of ships. It did not matter what they looked like, as long as they could float and fight. He was called back to service for the Korean War. He received an apology letter from Forrestal [Annotator's Note: James Vincent Forrestal; Secretary of the US Navy; first United States Secretary of Defense] but he sent it back to him unanswered. His parents had always wanted him to succeed. Be honest, do a day's work, and help the neighbor, that is what got him through the war.