By Roberto Leal
During World War II, over 500,000 Latinos served in the US military. Of that total 350,000 were Mexican Americans. Additionally, 15,000 Mexican nationals also served in the American war effort, often with the promise of citizenship. All those Latinos served in every branch of the service: Army, Navy, Marines, Army Air Corps. Many fought and with many dying in North Africa, Europe, and the Pacific. By the time V Day rolled around in 1945, Latinos were the most highly decorated ethnic group of the war. Twelve Mexican Americans were awarded this country’s highest military award, the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Given those staggering, overwhelming, and patriotic statistics of Latino participation in World War II, it is unfathomable how Hollywood managed to marginalize, dismiss, and totally overlook that fact in the war movies of that era and long afterward. If you watch any Hollywood war movie from the ’40s and ’50s, you would think every American GI was named Joe, Mac, Smitty, or Pete, and they all hailed from the Bronx, the South, or some farm in the Midwest. Consider the case of Guy Gabaldon.
Guy Luis Gabaldon was born in East LA, in 1926. The diminutive Gabaldon grew up a poor, tough, streetwise kid, who shined shoes to make a few pennies and got into too many fights. He became friends with many of his Japanese American schoolmates. During a difficult period in his youth, when his family life was in crisis, he was “adopted” by the Nakano Family, a loving Japanese American family. They welcomed Gabaldon into their home, providing him with much-needed love and stability. During this time, Gabaldon learned how to speak Japanese, as well as Japanese culture and customs, a knowledge that would prove fruitful.
The Nakano family was sent off to the American concentration camps, posing as “re-location centers”, after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the start of America’s entry into World War II. Gabaldon at the age of seventeen, joined the Marines and at the age of eighteen, found himself in the vicious, bloody Battle of Saipan.
His first night on the island, Gabaldon took off by himself and came back with a Japanese prisoner. His captain warned him not to do it again. But the following night, the stubborn Gabaldon did it again and this time came back with twelve more captured Japanese soldiers. As the Battle of Saipan raged on, Gabaldon used his knowledge of the Japanese language and culture to convince 1,000 enemy soldiers and 500 Japanese civilians, to surrender.
According to the U.S. Department of defense Gabaldon has the distinction of capturing more enemy soldiers than anyone else in the history of military conflicts of the U.S.
The intelligence gathered from these captured Japanese soldiers and civilians provided valuable information to the Marine’s ultimate victory on the island. Gabaldon is credited with saving the lives of countless GIs in that campaign. Gabaldon’s commanding officer nominated him for the Medal of Honor. He was awarded a Silver Star and returned home after suffering wounds in subsequent combat action.
In 1960, Hollywood decided to make a movie about Gabaldon’s battlefield experiences on Saipan. But true to Hollywood form, the studio heads and producers homogenized the project to make it more marketable and palatable to White America.
From Here to Eternity (1953), and To Hell and Back (1955), had already been released and enjoyed critical praise and box office success. So, Hollywood did a clumsy, obvious mash-up of those two previous war movie titles and came up with Hell to Eternity for the Gabaldon story. Perhaps the studio chiefs thought movie-going audiences would buy tickets to Hell to Eternity, anticipating a war movie starring both Montgomery Clift and Audie Murphy.
At the time there were “no Latino stars with significant box office star power,” Hollywood would say (and are still saying it), who could play Guy Gabaldon, the 5-foot, 3-inch Chicano from East LA. So, the studio cast the 6’1″ Anglo actor, Jeffrey Hunter (The Searchers, King of Kings) for the part. Gabaldon is called “Gabby” in the film. Perfect. Gabby, meet Joe, Mac, Smitty, and Pete.
The white-washing of Gabaldon’s story continues with the opening credits with an intertitle that informs us “the story begins in the melting pot of East LA.” Aside from the Japanese American characters, in the early scenes, the so-called “melting pot” landscape of East LA portrayed in Hell to Eternity, is whiter than a slice of Wonder Bread. East LA comes across more like “the potato salad” of East Des Moines, IA.
There is no hint of Gabaldon’s Mexican American heritage in the film. The final scene shows Hunter, as Gabaldon, leading several hundred Japanese prisoners back to Marine headquarters. That is when a fellow Marine, nicknames him “The Pied Piper of Saipan”.
There is no mention of his nomination for the Medal of Honor, his winning the Silver Star, or that medal being upgraded to the Navy Cross when the movie was made. Why all the omissions? How is it that Gabaldon captured 10 times as many prisoners as World War I, Medal of Honor winner, Sgt. Alvin C. York, and was overlooked for the medal? How is it that of the twelve Medal of Honor recipients of Mexican American heritage, only one, Harold Gonsalves, is a Marine?
In Hollywood war movies like Force of Arms, The Battle of the Bulge, The Longest Day, Midway, and Saving Private Ryan, just to name a few, the absence of Mexican Americans contributions to those iconic battles of World War II, has turned them into invisible war heroes. We celebrate Audie Murphy, but forget Joe Gandara, the son of Mexican immigrants, who fought and died, during the D-Day Invasion and won the Medal of Honor posthumously, for valor and self-sacrifice, while under heavy enemy fire.
Following the war years, Gabaldon received many awards from various organizations and cities, honoring his heroism in the Battle of Saipan. He was featured on the PBS series Latino Americans and a documentary titled East LA Marine: The Untold True Story of Guy Gabaldon, chronicling his wartime exploits. Despite all this positive media exposure, he never received the Medal of Honor, he so richly deserves.
Guy Luis Gabaldon died in 2006. There have been efforts by military organizations advocating for Gabaldon to get his Medal of Honor posthumously. The President of the United States, through the Congress, awards the Medal of Honor.
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Our current, draft-dodging, anti-immigrant occupant of the White House, who made his hateful, racist views on Latinos perfectly clear the day he announced his candidacy for the presidency, is not likely to grant Guy Gabaldon his long-overdue justice.
Twelve Mexican Americans won Medals of Honor in World War II. Let us hope a new, more enlightened administration will do the right thing and make Guy Luis Gabaldon the lucky number thirteen member of that hallowed, elite and honored club.