The 35th Infantry Regiment Association salutes our fallen brother, PFC Joseph Tatsey III, 19054571, who died in the service of his country on August 15th, 1943 in Vella Lavella. The cause of death was listed as KIA-Enemy Air Raid. At the time of his death Joseph was 23 years of age. He was from Montana. Joseph's Military Occupation Specialty was Infantry.

The decorations earned by PFC Joseph Tatsey III include: the Combat Infantryman Badge, the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, the Asiatic-Pacific Service Medal, and the World War II Victory Medal.

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Joseph died when an LST was attacked by Japanese aircraft.

PFC Tatsey was a native American who enlisted specifically for the Infantry and the Hawaiian Division of the Army. He was an enrolled member of the Piegan Blackfeet Tribe,and a distant relative of Sitting Bull.

In 1918 John Tatsey married Belle Alveraz Racine, half-Sioux, whose maternal grandfather was a brother to Sitting Bull. Her father was a Spaniard and served as a cook on the steamboats that went up and down the Missouri between St. Louis and Fort Benton. The couple had two sons and a daughter. The older son was killed in the South Pacific during WWII. The pair also raised seven children by her former marriage.

Joseph is buried in Saint Ann Catholic Cemetery, Heart Butte, MT