At fourteen years of age, Jobst Walter Franz Blachnitzky (Joe) arrived from Germany in Newport News, Virginia, aboard a coal freighter, immigrating to the USA while leaving his entire family behind in Hamburg.

Joe worked his way through high school on Wisconsin dairy farms in Black Earth and East Troy, and graduated in three years. He then went to see his family back in Germany for the first time in over three years.

His family wanted him to stay in Germany, but he told them, "Ich bin jetzt ein Americaner," (I am now an American) and returned to the United States. His father, who was a film and theatre director and actor (and used the name Blachy, a contraction of Blachnitzky) as a stage name, so Joe adopted Joe Blachy as his American name.