Written by Todd DePastino
WWII veteran Joe Gortiz passed away at 102 years old after falling and breaking his hip this past summer. Until then, he lived alone in the home he bought after returning from the Pacific in World War II. He last joined a Veterans Breakfast Club event on April 16, 2024.
We interviewed Joe Gortiz in 2016 as part of our Veteran Voices of Pittsburgh Oral History Initiative. You can view it above.
Like so many of our veterans, Joe recalled the war vividly, from the time he entered the Navy in 1942 to the day he returned from overseas, four years later.
In fact, coming home was a rather dark memory for Joe. He remembered how difficult it was to reintegrate as a civilian.
“When I came home from the war, I couldn’t accept all things that had changed since I went away during the war,” Joe says. “It was a change I couldn’t believe. My neighborhood was changed! The local store was gone. The ice cream shop was gone. The butcher shop was gone. The streetcars were changed to buses. I just couldn’t understand it. And I wasn’t with the guys I served with for all that time. I missed those guys. When I see these soldiers come home today, they’re alone. I understand it.”
Joe’s military service began when he decided to join the Navy just before being drafted into the Army. His brother, already serving, had encouraged him to enlist in the Navy. He visited a recruiting office, where he was sworn in as a Navy reservist in November 1942, nearly a year after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
His official service began in April 1943 when he was activated and sent to Camp Perry, Virginia. He describes his first days at camp, overwhelmed by the chaotic environment and the harsh realities of military life.
Assigned to the SeaBees, Joe trained alongside men from various trades, most of whom were construction workers. He himself attended a trade school where he studied sheet metal and welding. This made him well-suited for the Navy’s Seabees, a construction battalion tasked with building critical infrastructure in combat zones. After completing his basic training, Goritz received further advanced training, including weapons handling and rifle practice, and even qualified as a sharpshooter.
One of the most vivid parts of Goritz’s story was his deployment to the Pacific Theater. By November 1943, he was on his way to Hawaii as part of the 95th Naval Construction Battalion. From Hawaii, he went to the Gilbert Islands and built tank farms to store oil, pipelines for transporting fuel from tankers to shore, and various other structures vital to the war effort.
Access to fresh water was a major concern in the tropics, and Joe described how they built distillation units to convert saltwater into drinkable water.
The work was physically demanding and often dangerous, but the Seabees pressed on, knowing that their efforts were crucial to the overall war strategy.
Then came Iwo Jima. Some of his fellow Seabees were tasked with delivering ammunition to the front lines. One was killed there.
The end of the war saw comrades leaving for home. It was a lonely and empty feeling, as if he lost his family.
Adjusting to life after the war proved a challenging experience. He vividly recalled returning home to a world that had changed drastically Businesses he once frequented had closed, people he knew had moved away, and the familiarity of his pre-war life had all but vanished. The contrast between the close-knit, disciplined life of the Seabees and the disconnected, rapidly changing post-war world left him feeling disoriented and out of place.
We’re grateful to Joe Gortiz for sharing his recollections, the good and the bad, which add up to another portrait of the “greatest generation.”
