General
Joe Harris, 108, Dies; Thought to Be the Oldest World War II Paratrooper
He was a member of a segregated unit in the Pacific Northwest that fought forest fires set off by Japanese balloon bombs.
Joe Harris, who as a sergeant with an all-Black infantry unit during World War II parachuted into forest fires across the Pacific Northwest set off by bomb-laden Japanese balloons, and who was believed to be the oldest surviving U.S. paratrooper, died on March 15 in Los Angeles. He was 108.
His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by a representative of his family.
Mr. Harris was a member of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, nicknamed the Triple Nickles (the word was deliberately misspelled) after their unit designation and the three buffalo nickels that formed their insignia.
He had enlisted in the Army in 1941, and he volunteered to join the 555th soon after it was formed in 1943. The Army was still rigidly segregated, and most Black service members served in support roles; the battalion was designed as an early step toward the military’s eventual desegregation.
It never served overseas. Instead, in 1945 it was transferred from its base in North Carolina to rural Oregon as part of a confidential program known as Operation Firefly.
In late 1944, Japanese forces had begun launching hundreds of so-called balloon bombs into the jet stream, carried across the Pacific to the U.S. mainland. After three days, they dropped their explosive payloads.
Though some 300 bombs reached the United States, only six people were killed, in a single incident in May 1945. But the devices set off countless forest fires, often in rural parts of the West Coast.
