Joseph Townsend was born in April 1926 in Shreveport, Louisiana. He grew up in Shreveport. He had two brothers and two sisters. His father was a salesman for the Shreveport Times newspaper. He worked throughout the Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s]. Townsend helped his father sell papers and he would get tips. They lived in New Orleans [Annotator’s Note: New Orleans, Louisiana] for about a year. [Annotator’s Note: Townsend discusses selling newspapers.]

Joseph Townsend developed his own newspaper route. [Annotator’s Note: Townsend talks about selling newspapers.] Townsend was a Catholic altar boy. When he heard about Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941], he wondered when he would be going to war. He learned in high school to be a military band drummer. They had 30 people in the band. When he joined the Navy, the chief petty officer asked Townsend to help him teach the others to march. By the time he left boot camp, he was an expert in training others. They had to figure out what to do with the Marines and sailors after the CBI [Annotator’s Note: Chine-Burma-India Theater of Operations] was de-theaterized.

Joseph Townsend wanted to join the Marine Corps. His mother objected. His father had served in the Army in the First World War [Annotator's Note: World War 1, global war originating in Europe; 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918]. His father had friends, and he knew that he could get him signed up. His aunt was a Marine in the Pentagon. His aunt signed for him to join when he was 17 years old. He got to the Marines Corps and was offered the rank of PFC [Annotator’s Note: private first class] for 77 dollars. He went into the service on 2 September 1944. He was assigned to the USS Ticonderoga [Annotator’s Note: USS Ticonderoga (CV-14)]. The skipper told him he had one job and that was to protect him. He told Townsend to think about switching to the Navy because they paid more. Townsend could type and he had taken one radio course. They wanted him to be a radioman. Townsend had to take a typing test in front of the chief. He got the job. He went from 77 dollars to 187 dollars. The skipper wanted him to get more expertise on the radio. The other men in the radio shack were teachers. They taught him about the radio and the parts of the radio.

Joseph Townsend was being trained as a radioman and radio technician. They wanted him to become an aviation technician. They needed men who could fix the radio and put it into the planes. He was an aviation technician second class. They were planning for Iwo Jima [Annotator's Note: Battle of Iwo Jima; 19 February to 26 March 1945; Iwo Jima, Japan]. On 21 January 1945, the sun was bright overhead. They were at lunch in the mess hall. The ship lurched. A bomb went off on the hangar deck of the USS Ticonderoga [Annotator’s Note: USS Ticonderoga (CV-14)]. People were falling from the hangar deck as they were climbing up the ladders. They were trying to get those men to the sick bay. Then another explosion happened. The kamikaze [Annotator's Note: Japanese suicide bombers] that hit them had two bombs. As Townsend got his head above the hangar deck the second explosion happened. His nose was bleeding. They took the men down to the sick bay. The skipper was alright. Townsend was told he would be in sick bay when they got to Pearl Harbor [Annotator’s Note: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii]. Seven of the men survived their injuries. In those days, if the Japanese came right out of the sun the radar could not pick them up.

Joseph Townsend went to the sick bay in Pearl [Annotator’s Note: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii]. Townsend was x-rayed and they could not find anything. He never found out what happened. They did not like the idea of the kamikazes [Annotator's Note: Japanese suicide bombers]. They also knew that American gunners were the best in the world. Most of the time the kamikazes never made it to the ship. The first kamikaze they got was at Saipan [Annotator’s Note: Saipan, Mariana Islands]. When the USS Ticonderoga [Annotator’s Note: USS Ticonderoga (CV-14)] was hit, the captain knew they had to head to Pearl for repairs. It was dark below deck, but the light was coming down from the ladder hole. As soon as they knew some of the men were injured, they got them to the sick bay. The guys who had the flashlights shined the light for them to pick up the guys and get them to sick bay. There was no fire. The bomb hit the flight deck and burned the wood. The second explosion was in the back of the ship. As soon as the ship got hit, they got the gas out. They had seven burials to make at sea. Townsend had to unfold the flags. They had to get the flags ready first and then dump the bodies. They took as much as they could and put it into a box on the hangar deck. They put the bodies in the box, put the flag in, and then dumped the boxes overboard.

Joseph Townsend started to lose his teeth in 1955. The dentist told him that all his teeth were cracked at the ridge. He went almost 10 years with teeth he should not have had. They only lost one radioman when the kamikaze [Annotator's Note: Japanese suicide bombers] hit the ship [Annotator’s Note: USS Ticonderoga (CV-14)]. They were given a 22-day leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time]. Townsend took the train from Washington state to Shreveport [Annotator’s Note: Shreveport, Louisiana]. He thinks he had a small case of PTSD [Annotator's Note: post-traumatic stress disorder; a mental health condition triggered by a terrifying event either experienced or witnessed]. He heard the explosion and everyone knew exactly what it was. The second explosion was not as loud. He lost some friends. Some of them did not hear about it until after the ship was repaired. They wanted to transfer Townsend to another ship, but he wanted to stay with the USS Ticonderoga. He was stationed in Washington state for a while and then he went to a naval air station in Dallas, Texas. He was a radio technician. He made sure all the aircraft had good radios and they were working well. Right after the war, they sent small ships with medics to different countries. Townsend was on one of the ships that went to Morocco [Annotator’s Note: Morocco, North Africa]. He remembers the Japanese surrendered after they dropped the two bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945]. He never wants to go back to Morocco.

Joseph Townsend remembers the other port city he went to was Alexandria [Annotator’s Note: Alexandria, Egypt]. There were a lot of sick people there that needed to be treated. The medics would get off at the city and they would get picked up on the way back. The trip took almost a month. Alexandria was in much better shape than Morocco. Then he returned to the United States. They were released and able to stay in the Navy. They wanted to discharge him, but he was signed up for six years. He got a 500 dollar bonus for signing up for six years. He was not discharged until 1955. He went to Korea [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953] one time. He helped install a radar set there on the airstrip. They were bombing the airstrip so they could not land there. When they got it installed, there were no more bombs dropped on the airstrip. He was an aviation technician first class when he got out of the Navy. He took advantage of the G.I. Bill [Annotator's Note: the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts, and unemployment] and got a job with the government. He wanted to take courses in economics and business administration, but he did not have the prerequisites. He remembers the bombing of the USS Ticonderoga [Annotator’s Note: USS Ticonderoga (CV-14)] the most. He learned how to ski in Washington state.

Joseph Townsend joined the service because his aunt who was a Marine convinced him to join. He is military-oriented and knows where things are supposed to belong. He knows what it is like to be shot at. He is 88 years old and has been through two wars. People come up and thank him, and back then he did not realize how much they did for the world. The guys that went to Vietnam [Annotator's Note: Vietnam War, or Second Indochina War, 1 November 1955 to 30 April 1975] got spit on. People do not appreciate the war like they used to. He thinks museums are great. He has not been to New Orleans to see the museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana].