| NAME: Joseph Ambrose Barrette |
NICKNAME: Wicker |
SERVICE NUMBER: 836675 |
|||||
| HOME OF RECORD: Schoolcraft, MI |
NEXT OF KIN: Parents, Ulric & Eva Barrette |
||||||
| DATE OF BIRTH: 12/3/1924 |
SERVICE DATES: 3/4/1943 – 12/13/1944 |
DATE OF DEATH: 7/22/1959 |
|||||
| CAMPAIGN | UNIT | MOS | RATE | RESULT | |||
| None Served | HQ/1/24 | 745 | Private | ||||
| INDIVIDUAL DECORATIONS: — |
LAST KNOWN RANK: Private First Class |
||||||
Joseph Barrette was born and raised in Schoolcraft, Michigan, one of the youngest children of Ulric and Mary Barrette. The family industry was iron work in copper mills, and had he not enlisted in the Marine Corps, Joseph would have followed in the footsteps of his father and older brothers. As fate would have it, young Joseph joined up at the age of nineteen and gave up the blast furnace for the drill fields at MCRD San Diego.
After completing boot camp, Private Barrette was sent north to Bremerton, Washington where he stood duty as a guard at the Puget Sound Navy Yard. However, in September 1943, Barrette himself came under scrutiny – and unfortunately for youthful private, the officers of the Navy Yard were thorough in their examination.
Whether Barrette had stolen the clothing is not known; it was not unheard of for Marines to loan their comrades pieces of uniform, especially for liberty purposes, but the possession of underclothing – from two different sources, no less – was itself suspicious. Private Barrette was summarily transferred from Puget Sound to the Fourth Marine Division; he wound up with the 4th Signal Battalion for a brief period before being assigned to Headquarters Company, First Battalion, 24th Marines as a rifleman in February 1944.
Barrette’s tenure with 1/24 was very brief. He was hospitalized in March of 1944, and never returned to the battalion. After recuperating in a Seattle hospital, Barrette was advanced to the rank of Private First Class and stood guard duty at the Naval Ammunition Depot in Hastings, Nebraska and an aviation training base in Corpus Christi, Texas. He was finally discharged for reasons of disability on December 13, 1944.
Following his release from the service, Joseph Barrette returned to Michigan. He eventually settled in Alpena, married, and like his father and brothers, found employment as an ironworker. He died unexpectedly in 1959, at the age of 34.
Joseph Barrette left behind a widow, Eva Barrette. He is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Alpena.