[Granville-Hough] 13 Jan 2010 - Latinos in WW II

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2010 08:45:43 -0800
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: Latinos in WW II - 13 Jan 2010

 
> There was considerable discussion of the Ken Burns presentation of WW 
> II, and the fact that he seldom mentioned Latinos. 
Yet we all knew they were there with us.  This is what I wrote Mimi Lozano
about them:

> Mimi, as I watched "The War" I saw plenty of Latinos represented. 
> It worked out in the draft that Latinos were not segregated but were
> mixed in with all other draftees, so that there was by happenstance
> Latinos in almost every platoon, certainly in every company or battery. 
> That is the way I remember it.  How do we tell them?  As we do not see
> many names on the uniforms, the simple way to identify Latinos is to
> watch for those with the mustaches.  Nearly everyone was clean shaven in
> those days, and those with mustaches were typically blacks, identified
> as well by color, and Latinos, who clung to their mustaches and were not
> otherwise distinguishable in the dirt and grime of the battlefields.
>   Another comment I can make is that Latinos were disproportionally
> infantry.  Anyone with a strong accent was assumed to be only marginally
> functional in written English, so they were not offered jobs as company
> clerks, supply sergeants, or even cooks, so they became riflemen in
> squads, or grunts, as the Marines called those positions.  In the actual
> fighting, those were the people who met the Germans or Japanese on the
> ground and took the casualties.  The high ratio of Latinos who received
> decorations reflects the fact that they were in the front lines in
> higher numbers.  They had to fight to survive, so they did, and they who
> survived got the decorations.
>   That is how I saw it, and I was expecting to become an infantry
> platoon leader in the invasion of Japan.  I can give thanks, along with
> all the Latino grunts who would have been with me, for the atomic bomb. 
> It saved our lives.  Granville Hough.