Page B-3 of the ClarisWorks 2.0 User's Guide shows a Microsoft Word translator in addition to the Microsoft Word 3, 4, 5, PC and WinWord translators. Some people might expect that this indicates that ClarisWorks will open versions of Microsoft Word other than 3, 4, 5, PC and WinWord.
To open files created by older versions of Microsoft Word, open the files in a newer version of Word and save the files in that version's format.
Alternatively you could open the files in a text processor such as Vantage, or open the file in MacWrite Pro (hold down the Option key while choosing Open in the File menu), although you will lose some formatting and there will extraneous characters that will need to be stripped out.