{"id":73793,"date":"2025-03-28T21:16:37","date_gmt":"2025-03-28T21:16:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/marinecorpstimes\/uncategorized\/2025\/03\/28\/joe-harris-believed-to-be-oldest-surviving-wwii-paratrooper-has-died\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T16:37:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T16:37:19","slug":"joe-harris-believed-to-be-oldest-surviving-wwii-paratrooper-has-died","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/marinecorpstimes\/news\/your-marine-corps\/2025\/03\/28\/joe-harris-believed-to-be-oldest-surviving-wwii-paratrooper-has-died\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe Harris, believed to be oldest surviving WWII paratrooper, has died"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sgt. Joe Harris, believed to be the oldest surviving World War II paratrooper and a member of the U.S. Army\u2019s first&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.armytimes.com\/news\/your-army\/2022\/11\/14\/clothing-company-pays-homage-to-first-all-black-paratrooper-regiment\/\" target=\"_blank\">all-Black parachute infantry battalion<\/a>, has died. He was 108.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Harris died March 15 in a hospital in Los Angeles surrounded by family, grandson Ashton Pittman told The Associated Press. He will be honored with a full military funeral on April 5.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cHe was a very loving, loving, loving man,\u201d said Pittman. \u201cThat was one of the things that he was very strict upon was loving one another.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\t<aside class=\"smg-interstitial-link wp-block-smg-interstitial-link\">\n\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/militarytimes\/news\/your-military\/2025\/02\/11\/a-look-into-the-remarkable-life-of-tuskegee-airman-harry-stewart\/\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__inner\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__media\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"198\" src=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP25035799696461.jpg.jpg?w=300\" class=\"smg-interstitial-link__image wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" \/>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"smg-interstitial-link__content\">\n\t\t\t\t<span class=\"smg-interstitial-link__kicker\">Related<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<h3 class=\"smg-interstitial-link__title\">A look into the remarkable life of Tuskegee Airman Harry Stewart<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p class=\"smg-interstitial-link__excerpt\">Harry Stewart got all three of his aerial victories on one sortie.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/a>\n\t<\/aside>\n\t\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Harris was among the&nbsp;last surviving members&nbsp;of the historic 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, nicknamed the Triple Nickles. The battalion helped protect the U.S. from deadly Japanese balloon bombs, according to Robert L. Bartlett, a retired Eastern Washington University professor who specializes in the 555th. In 1944 and 1945, the Japanese launched thousands of balloons to be carried by the Pacific jet stream to the U.S. mainland to explode and start fires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">During World War II,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.militarytimes.com\/military-honor\/black-military-history\/\" target=\"_blank\">Black Americans<\/a>&nbsp;were often relegated to more support-level jobs in the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.militarytimes.com\/news\/your-military\/2025\/03\/24\/one-of-last-surviving-tuskegee-airmen-criticizes-trumps-dei-purge\/\" target=\"_blank\">racially segregated military<\/a>&nbsp;and President Franklin Roosevelt faced pressure to put them in combat units. As a result, the military recruited Harris and hundreds of other Black men, trained them and sent them into blazes on the West Coast, where they fought fires, Bartlett said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Throughout their time in the military, they faced overt racism, including being barred from going to the base commissary and officer\u2019s clubs unless they were specifically for Black people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThis unit had to fight to be recognized as human beings while training to fight an enemy overseas, fight in their own country for respect even within the military,\u201d Bartlett said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That was not lost on Pittman, who said his grandfather was brave enough to serve the U.S. \u201cduring a time when the country didn\u2019t love him, honestly, didn\u2019t care about him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"4284\" height=\"5712\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP25087434138163.jpg.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-110084\" srcset=\"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP25087434138163.jpg.jpg 4284w, https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP25087434138163.jpg.jpg?resize=225,300 225w, https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP25087434138163.jpg.jpg?resize=768,1024 768w, https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP25087434138163.jpg.jpg?resize=1152,1536 1152w, https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP25087434138163.jpg.jpg?resize=1536,2048 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 4284px) 100vw, 4284px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">This April 2024 photo shows Sgt. Joe Harris&#8217; original uniform on display in Pendleton, Oregon. (Tracie Hunter via AP)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Harris was born on June 19, 1916, in West Dale, Louisiana, according to Tracie Hunter, spokesperson for WWII Beyond The Call, a nonprofit organization that works to document veterans\u2019 accounts. After filling out his draft registration card, he began his military service in 1941 when he was 24.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By the time he was honorably discharged in November 1945, he had completed 72 parachute jumps, according to Hunter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After the war, he worked for the U.S. Border Patrol. He also spent more than 60 years in Compton, California, where Pittman said he was the neighborhood patriarch, a man everyone on the block knew and gravitated to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cHis life is to be celebrated,\u201d Pittman said. \u201cObviously people are going to morn because he\u2019s not here anymore. But ultimately what I know from conversations that I\u2019ve had with my grandfather is that he wants to be celebrated. He deserves to be celebrated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He is survived by his son, Pirate Joe Harris Sr., and two daughters, Michaun Harris and Latanya Pittman, along with five grandchildren, according to Hunter. His wife, Louise Harris, died in 1981, and a sixth grandchild has also died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Pittman said that his grandfather would sometimes ask him if he would ever jump out of a plane. In October, Pittman had the opportunity to follow in his grandfather\u2019s airborne footsteps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For a week, he did paratrooper jump training in Corsicana, Texas, through the Liberty Jump Team, an organization that works to preserve the memory of veterans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhen I got my wings, I actually broke down and started crying because everything in that moment just resonated with me,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was like, dang I\u2019m literally doing what my grandfather did.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Shortly before Harris\u2019 death, he got a landing zone, in Tuskegee, Alabama, dedicated in his name. Pittman said he plans to be the very first person to jump in the Sgt. Joe Harris Dropzone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sgt. Joe Harris, a member of the U.S. Army\u2019s first all-Black parachute infantry battalion, has died at 108.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":110080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":69,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[101,91,12,25,19,69],"tags":[],"coauthors":[7216],"class_list":["post-73793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-military-history","category-news","category-newsletters","category-veterans","category-your-marine-corps"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"VHKV344XHBG7JC7AOBVGB4EZRY","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/your-military\/2025\/03\/28\/joe-harris-believed-to-be-oldest-surviving-wwii-paratrooper-has-died\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.0 (Yoast SEO v28.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Joe Harris, believed to be oldest surviving WWII paratrooper, has died - Marine Corps Times<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sgt. 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