Description:
Joseph Trasatti was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1927. His father came from the Abruzzo region of Italy and his mother was a South Philadelphia native. His mother was a seamstress and his father was a tailor who ran a large menswear shop in Philadelphia.
In 1940, the Trasatti Family moved from Jessup Street in South Philadelphia to Magnolia, New Jersey. America entered the Second World War while he was in high school. By his senior year, he and several friends had resolved to join the US Navy. On his seventeen birthday, he boarded a train for boot camp at the United States Naval Training Center Bainbridge (Perryville Naval Air Station) in Maryland.
He became a naval corpsman and was assigned to the USS Westmoreland (APA-104) as it moved from island to island in the Pacific. He then served in a mobile hospital unit in Mindanao and Cebu in the Philippines and, at the end of his tour, Tsingtao and Tsinan in China.
Joseph returned to the US in August 1946 and was discharged at Lido Beach, New York.
He picked up his education by using the GI Bill to attend the Gibson Institute of Accounting and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He spent his career as a corporate accountant before becoming a comptroller for a law firm.
The Rutgers Oral History Archives received an operating support grant from the New Jersey Historical Commission, a division of the Department of State. In the 2024-2025 cycle, this grant assisted the ROHA staff in making this oral history available to you for your use.