Harris Is July’s Veteran Of The MonthA World War II U.S. Navy veteran – Joe Lyle Harris – is the Kosciusko County Veteran of the Month for July 2021.
While he was being honored by the Kosciusko County Commissioners Tuesday, he and his wife of 74 years sat next to each other at the front of the courtroom in the old county courthouse.
Before reading Harris’ biography – which was pared down from 10 to four pages – County Veteran Affairs Officer Rich Maron said, “I know I make a big fuss over this every month, but this one is really amazing to me, it’s special.” He said everything he was going to read Tuesday came from a huge biography that Harris had written. “The most detailed bio I’ve ever read in my life – he had dates, times, moments, the time it happened, in details. It just showed me the picture of a man’s life while he was in the service” like I had never seen before.
When Pearl Harbor was bombed Dec. 7, 1941, starting the United States’ involvement in WWII, Harris was 16 years old and a junior at Rushsylvania High School in Ohio. He thought the war would end before he got out of high school, according to the biography Maron read.
Harris graduated in May 1943 and most of his buddies were signing up for the Navy to join the war effort. Harris told his dad he wanted to join the Navy before he got drafted.
Boot camp took Harris to the Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Great Lakes, Ill. After eight weeks of basic, Harris was accepted to quartermaster school, also at Great Lakes. He graduated March 20, 1944, in the top 10% of his class. Harris was assigned to Solomons, Md., to join the crew of the LCI Landing Craft Infantry 600. With an initial crew of 24 enlisted and four officers, the LCI 600 was commissioned at the New Jersey Shipbuilding Corp., Barber, N.J., on April 29, 1944.
From there, the ship head to the Pacific, with a stop in San Diego, Calif.
On July 21, the ship left San Diego with 21 others, headed for Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. They arrived at Pearl Harbor on Aug. 4.
On Aug. 13, 150 Marines were brought aboard and they headed for Maui. These Marines would be a part of the invasion of Iwo Jima on Feb. 19, 1945.
Reading the biography, Maron said, “Jan. 12, 1945, started out as an uneventful day until about 10 a.m. when two Japanese two-man subs got into the Ulithi Anchorage. About noon, we got orders to head underway to pick up a sailor on a destroyer that was patrolling the entrance to Anchorage, and transfer him to the hospital ship for appendicitis. I started steering in the pilot house. Our radio man, Glen Dequasie, was with me. I requested the commanding officer (CO) to come up to the conning tower to steer because I had a better view and wanted to see if the Japanese subs would do any damage to the fleet that was in Anchorage. The CO confirmed that I could come up and I believe that saved my life.”
The ship had been underway for about 20 minutes when they noticed that the water ahead was changing colors and the crew on the back of the ship radioed up to the tower that they were getting very close to some coral. Harris’s CO ordered him to turn hard right rudder, and the second Harris did that, the ship exploded.
“That would be the last thing I remembered until I felt myself swaying in the air and being hoisted up to the hospital ship Solace,” Maron read from Harris’s biography.
Later on, Bob Newell told Harris they had hit a mine and the crew on the back of the ship were not injured so they ran up to the conning tower and saw the CO, another officer, the signalman and Harris laying on the deck. Harris was the first one off and was put on a life boat from a destroyer that came to help.
Everyone of the crew and officers were able to get off the ship before it sank. The radioman had hit his head on the steel overhead in the pilot house and he died. One of the crew that was just picked up in Pearl Harbor before the ship left was standing near where the explosion occurred; while his shoes were on the deck, his body was never found. In all, three crew members lost their lives and almost all of the crew suffered some form of injuries. Harris lost a front tooth, had a broken nose and a gash above his eye. Harris spent 13 days on the Solace recovering, then onto the carrier Hoggart Bay, which took the crew back to Pearl Harbor.
While in Pearl Harbor, Harris was called to officers headquarters and received the Purple Heart.
Harris’s train ride home took 3-1/2 days. His first day home on a 30-day survivor leave was March 5, 1945. His folks drove him to Columbus on April 5 and he stayed at the Norwich Hotel, waiting on his new orders. On April 10, 1945, Harris received his orders, sending him to Shoemaker, Calif., a receiving station for overseas departures.
The next destination for Harris was Leyte, Philippines, arriving on June 30, 1945. From there, he went to Samar Islands, and on July 4 went ashore to celebrate.
A day Harris will never forget is Aug. 15, 1945. They had movies twice a week that the soldiers could watch. Halfway through the movie, they could hear voices chanting something, but they couldn’t make it out over the sound of the movie. The chant coming from the ships out in the harbor was, “The war is over! The war is over!”
“When we heard that, we all got up, starting yelling and clapping. From that time on, everything changed,” according to Harris’s biography. The stress and worries were over.
Those who had the most points would be able to go home first. Since Harris had been in the Navy longer than any of the others at the chart depot, except the officer in charge, Harris finally got to go home.
He got a train to Kenton, Ohio, and didn’t tell his folks that he was coming home because he wanted to surprise them. He knocked on the front door and when his mother came out, she was all smiles and they hugged each other.
During WWII, according to information Harris provided to Maron, the Navy lost 11 carriers, two battleships, 10 cruisers, 71 destroyers, 10 escorts and 53 submarines.
For 24 years, Harris taught math and coached golf at Warsaw High School. He married Joan on Jan. 1, 1947. They have five children, 11 grandchildren and many great-grandchildren.
“I thank God today, that in his providence, he allowed Joe Harris to come back home to us,” Maron stated.
After a standing ovation for Harris and the presentation of the framed certificate, he said, “I thank all of you that’s here. We thank you for that. And I love all of you.”
