Person

Joseph James Barnes

Born on April 27, 1917, Joseph J. Barnes grew up in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents and seven siblings lived near the corner of Wolf and South Bouvier Streets in 1920. The 1940 census states Barnes worked as a blender in a local distillery and had moved to Yocum Street in Ellwood Park, about five miles from the central city.

Barnes enlisted in the Navy on September 23, 1942 as an Apprentice Seaman (AS). At the time, he and his wife Eva were living in Colwyn, Pennsylvania. Barnes trained in Newport, Rhode Island, and then at the Service School, Great Lakes, Illinois, where he studied to be a machinist. He earned good grades in Machine Tools (92%) and Mechanical Drawing (86%). Barnes graduated as a fireman 2nd class.

From April 15 to September 9, 1943, Fireman Barnes served on USS California (BB-44), while the ship was being repaired in Puget Sound Navy Yard. California had been greatly damaged during the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. Barnes contributed his mechanical skills to repairing and modernizing the ship.

After a short trip home, Barnes reported for destroyer training in San Francisco, November 1943. He became a plank owner on USS Cassin Young (DD-793) December 31, 1943 (meaning he was part of the original crew). With the crew of Cassin Young, Barnes crossed the equator on April 23, 1943. He traveled through much of the South Pacific. His ship supported the Marianas Operation (Saipan, Guam, and Tinian Islands), Philippine Liberation and the Iwo Jima landing by providing picket duty, screening, and rescuing pilots and sailors from the ocean. During the Okinawa Campaign on April 12, 1945, a kamikaze attacked Cassin Young, killing one shipmate and wounding 59 others.

All the while, Barnes worked his way up the ranks. On June 1, 1945 he was promoted to machinist mate 3rd class (training) (MM3c (T)). After a second, and more severe, kamikaze hit on July 30, 1945, MM3c(T) Joseph Barnes was nowhere to be found.

His wife, mother and sister were all sent telegrams informing them that Barnes was missing. In December, Mrs. Eva Barnes was sent a letter explaining a little more. It reads in part:

Information has now been received in this Bureau that your husband lost his life on 30 July 1945 while serving aboard USS Cassin Young. Early in the morning of that date, the Cassin Young, while acting as a screening ship outside the entrance to Buckner Bay, Okinawa, was attacked by one or two enemy suicide planes. At 3:25 a.m., one plane succeeded in eluding the ship’s anti-aircraft fire and crashed into the right side, at the main deck level, causing extensive damage. Your husband was observed coming down the ladder from the searchlight platform, a few seconds before the suicide plane struck. The ship’s structure in the vicinity of the ladder was subjected to extreme blast damage, and your husband’s Commanding Officer considers chances of survival under those conditions highly improbable. A thorough search of the area was conducted until daylight of 30 July 1945 and a life jacket was found in a condition which indicated it had been blown overboard, but no trace of your husband could be found.”¹

MM3c(T) Joseph Barnes is commemorated on the list of those Missing in Action in the National Cemetery in Honolulu, Hawaii. The Navy sent his personal items back to the states, which included his uniform, a pipe, as well as three pieces of shrapnel. Perhaps Barnes had saved them from the April 12 kamikaze attack.²

Heart-breakingly, Joseph Barnes had planned on meeting up with his brother Albert George Barnes at Okinawa. Albert Barnes had enlisted in the Navy three weeks after Pearl Harbor. In early June, machinist mate Albert Barnes had come aboard the USS Vestal, the same ship that Commander Cassin Young saved at Pearl Harbor. Vestal was moored at Buckner Bay after having repaired destroyers in the area for weeks. The reunion, of course, never happened.

Footnotes:

Official Military Personnel File of Joseph James Barnes, National Personnel Records Center, National Archives and Records Administration, St. Louis, MO.
Ibid.