"All of a sudden San Francisco drops off the horizon. I thought, 'What the hell happened to San Francisco?' he says with a broad grin. "I didn't know. I was unaware that the world was round."
Lanier's modesty means he'll likely be the last person to tell you that he's come a long way since then, but it only takes a few minutes with the 86-year old Iwo Jima survivor to realize the grandson of a former slave has indeed come a remarkably long way since his early days in the military.
"Up until I was 17, 'patriotic' was not one of the words in my vocabulary. It never occurred to me I was an American, because I was never treated as such," he says from the living room of his Highlands Ranch home.
He grew up in Columbus, Mississippi. "It's about 15 miles west of the Alabama state line," he says. "We were not treated - for lack of a better term - as humans."
He only decided to join the Navy after a series of seemingly unrelated circumstances. "We were so poor that I had dropped out of high school.
It was after my mother died. My father didn't have a job and was taking care of my sisters. That's when I inadvertently saw an advertisement to join the Navy," he says.
Joe Lanier's story is one of many that make up this weekend's hour-long documentary "8 Square Miles: The Fight for Iwo."
Recently 9News reporters Chris Vanderveen and Dave Delozier traveled to Iwo Jima with the help of the Denver-based Greatest Generations Foundation.
The foundation routinely brings World War II veterans back to the battlefields where they once served.
The documentary will air on Saturday on 9News at 6pm.
For more information on supporting The Greatest Generations Foundation, or learning more about their programs please visit www.tggf.org or, call 303.331.1944
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