James “Joe” Kennedy was born July 9, 1925 in Newry, in County Down, Northern Ireland.  He grew up there in a Catholic family with 7 children, attending school until age 14 and coping with the Great Depression and then the war.  Several family members were involved in the war too, and Joe remembers an uncle who made it back from Dunkirk.  Joe ended up joining the RAF because there were no jobs available, and he ended up spending his war in the Far East.  Joe was stationed in India and Burma, and he spent time in the Dutch East Indies and Singapore too.  The main bases where he served were Chittagong and Ramree Island, and he did general duties, everything from meal preparation to moving casualties.  At the end of the war he was involved in efforts to repatriate displaced nationals to their respective countries, as he was attached to RAF 13th Casualty Evacuation.  That included many freed Allied POWs who had survived the brutal conditions of the Japanese camps like Changi in Singapore.  With the fighting over, Joe returned to Ireland, where he found work and met a young lady.  The two of them decided to emigrate to Canada in the early 1950s, where they built their life and family together.  Joe Kennedy was interviewed by Scott Masters and Zach Dunn at the Sunnybrook  Veterans’ Wing in June 2025.