After graduating from J. B. Young High School at Bemis in May 1945, Joe turned eighteen years of age on July 7 and was drafted for military service immediately. He requested no deferment, which he could have had since all his brothers were in the Armed forces at that time. He was inducted in the U.S. Marine Corps in early August and sent directly to Parris Island for twelve weeks of intensive boot camp training.
About Dec. 1st he left by train for Norfolk, Va., and went on board the U.S.S. Wakefield, formerly the luxury liner S.S. Manhattan. This ship was fitted out to carry fifteen thousand troops, but only loaded about five thousand when Joe was on it. He sailed from Norfolk to Balboa, Panama, and through the Panama Canal. They got off the ship for a few hours in Balboa. From the Canal they went to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. At Pearl Harbor they permitted the men to get off the ship but they were restricted to the dock area.
From Pearl Harbor they sailed for Tsingtao, China, where about two thousand men of the 1st Marine Division disembarked in early January, 1946. Joe did not disembark there but was put on an LSM landing ship and went to a little port nearby where they caught a train the next day to Tsientsin. They were based in Tsientsin the rest of his stay in China. Their work there had been to repatriate the Japanese Army which was in that part of China. The Marines were in China to receive the Japanese Army's guns and troops. The U.S.A. wanted to get the surrender of arms of the Japanese Army before the Red Army of Mao Tze Dung got them. At this time Chiang Kai Chek was still in control of parts of China but in this coastal area the Japanese were in control, and the Red Army was in control of much of the country side throughout China.
When they first got into Tsientsin, some of the troops went by trucks into Beijing (Pekin) for recreational purposes. However, Red Army guerrillas began operating in the countryside and made such trips very dangerous. The Armies controlled the ports and cities but not the countryside.
As a draftee, Joe and others were permitted to leave their units in September, 1946 and return by a small ``Liberty Ship'' directly to San Diego, Ca. Joe was discharged there in September and was able to visit with Aunt Clara Harton and family in Los Angeles before returning to Tennessee by bus. He visited his brother Herman and Lynn in Memphis, then continued on to Jackson. The U.S.S. Wakefield on which Joe C. went to Tsientsin, China, was the same ship on which Ulrich Mack Watlington went from Boston to England in 1944. Joe C. was the only one of the Watlington kin to have duty in China during the World War II period. Paul was in the Philippines, Sam was in Korea, Mack in Okinawa, and Elton and John W. saw occupation duty in Japan proper. Elton served in Niigata Perfecture and in metropolitan Tokyo while John's duty was mostly in the northern island of Hokkaido. John later went to Korea, landing at the port for Seoul as allied troops entered the Korean conflict in great numbers in September 1950. James Leonard Watlington served with the U.S. Army Air Corps in India which helped supply military supplies by air to the Chinese forces of Chiang Kai Shek.