Joseph E. Flowers was preparing to finish his last year of high school at Emerson, but when he arrived, he was surprised to see so many of his classmates had dropped out to serve in World War II.
"I was the only senior in my shop class, so I figured I'd do a volunteer induction with the Army," he said.
When he arrived at the recruiting station, a Navy recruiter made a hard pitch to enlist Flowers, but Joe explained that he got seasick and did not believe he could be of much service to the country's seafaring forces.
"I used to get seasick going on the boat over to Crystal Beach amusement park. So he said to me, 'Why don't you join the Marines,' and I told him, 'They go too fast for me.' Then when he realized he couldn't change my mind, he said, 'Go to the Army,' and I said, 'That's what I wanted to do in the first place.' "
When he arrived at Fort Knox, Ky., to serve with the Army's armor and took a look at all the tanks, half tracks and Jeeps, he remembered that he got carsick, too.
But to lift a phrase from an old-time song, Flowers was "... in the Army now," and there was no turning back.
He did not make waves, not even when he arrived on the West Coast at Fort Ord, Calif., to serve with a newly formed amphibious tank group.
"We were 'sail-diers,' both sailors and soldiers, and I was sorry I never did join the Navy," he said. "The Navy recruiter had told me I'd get three good meals a day and learn a trade."
Flowers somehow managed to stomach his motion sickness and was soon on his way to the war that raged in the South Pacific.
"I was in Hawaii first, and I loved it, but after that, it was hell the rest of the way. I was in the first wave at Leyte in the Philippines, and I was lucky to be in that first wave. The P-51 fighter planes were strafing the beaches, and the battleships were bombing it. They stopped just as we hit the beach, and the Japanese in the hillside didn't have enough time to get their artillery going, and we were able to get past the beach, inland, before they started shelling. The third and fourth waves of troops really got it coming in. I've always said I was lucky to be in that first wave."
After Leyte, the Americans fought on other Philippine islands and liberated that country from the Japanese before moving north to Okinawa, Flowers said.
"I looked at a map we had and saw that Okinawa was just a dot in the ocean, and yet we would fight there for three months. I thought we would be there forever. I'm either going to spend the rest of my life here or get killed, I thought. If it wasn't for them dropping the atomic bomb to end the war, I don't think I would have been here today."
The Japanese, he said, were fearsome fighters.
"They'd rather commit suicide than surrender," he said.
But what shook him up were the suicides he witnessed among Japanese civilians.
"I saw people grab their kids and jump off cliffs into coral reefs by the shore," he said. "There was blood all over the place. The Japanese government told them that if they got caught by us, we'd torture them. It was unbelievable. I'd see the bodies floating all over the place.
"I'll tell you what, I seen a father with his wife and two kids, and he was trying to push them over the cliff. One of our sharpshooters took aim and hit the father. He turned around and fell over the cliff."
What Flowers saw next, troubles him to this day.
"We thought we'd saved the mother and two kids," he recalled, "but she grabbed the children and committed suicide."
Flowers returned home with the wisdom of how fragile life is.
He married Rita T. Brendel in 1951, and they raised four sons. He is a retired facilities engineer from the former Buffalo Westwood Pharmaceuticals plant. His job title, he explained, was a fancy way of saying maintenance man.
A few years ago, he received his high school diploma and says he is now considering going to college at age 87.
"I might get a couple degrees," he says, with a chuckle.