LEE NEWBY

What Lee Newby Jr. wants younger generations to know about World War II is that Americans were a fighting machine, a country that “really got it together after Pearl Harbor.”

Born in 1923 in Tennessee, Newby is a World War II veteran who served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1942-1946.

Newby, who now resides in Warren, graduated with honors from Merry High School in Jackson, Tennessee in 1941. He was drafted into the Marines at age 18 in 1942, part of the 42nd platoon. Newby was a Montford Pointe Marine- the first African Americans to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps after President Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order establishing the Fair Employment Practices Commission in June 1941.

The 20,000 recruits, like Newby, trained at Camp Montford Point in Jacksonville, North Carolina. He trained at Camp Montford Point for three months, then eventually was shipped off to the Pacific Theater of Operations.

“I went to boot camp in North Carolina, to Camp Pendleton in California, to New Caledonia, to Solomon Islands,” he said, recalling the areas he was stationed at during the war.

Newby explained that in his Marine unit as a corporal, he worked in a warehouse, where all kinds of weapons were kept.

“With the guns, I would remove the wax off them, and if a gun broke down, I would call to get new parts and they would send me the parts for that weapon,” he said.

It was at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in 1944 where Newby was injured, an incident that left over 60% of his body burned.

“There was airplane fuel and someone set it on fire and blew up,” he recalled. “It hit me in the chest and I started running and was told to hit the deck and roll over to put the flames out. The next thing I know, they bandaged me up like a mummy, and they took the dead skin off.”

It wasn’t until after the war had ended when Newby recovered from his injuries. He was discharged from the Marines in January 1946.

After the war, Newby worked for the state of Michigan for 12 years, then spent nearly 20 years at the city of Detroit as a janitorial supervisor, retiring in 1986. Newby has four children, nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. His wife, Mary, passed away in 1992. The couple married in 1961.