Hispanic Americans in World War II - Home Front

Home Front

Some Hispanics in the entertainment business served in the United Service Organizations (USO), which provided entertainment to help troop morale. One notable USO entertainer was Desi Arnaz, the Cuban bandleader who starred opposite Lucille Ball in the television show I Love Lucy. When he was drafted into the army in 1943, he was classified for limited service because of a prior knee injury. As a result, he was assigned to direct the U.S.O. programs at a military hospital in the San Fernando Valley, California, where he served until 1945.

Hispanic Americans who lived in the mainland benefited from the sudden economic boom as a result of the war, and the doors opened for many of the migrants who were searching for jobs. After the war, many Puerto Ricans migrated to the United States to find work.

Hispanic women were discouraged from working outside the home prior to World War II, even more than other American women. During World War II, the broad changes in the role of women caused by a need for labor on the home front affected the role of Hispanic women, who worked as secretaries and nurses, helped build airplanes, made ammunition in factories, and worked in shipyards.

Isabel Solis-Thomas and Elvia Solis were born in Veracruz, Veracruz, Mexico. The Solis family immigrated to the United States and moved to Brownsville, Texas. When World War II broke out, both sisters volunteered to become "Rosies", welding pipes and repairing cargo ships by the war's end with women of all races from all over the country. Mrs. Solis-Thomas said recruiters wanted women who were small, short and thin for crawling into dangerous places in the ships. She said she worked nine-hour days, six days a week, striking and sealing steel rods with precision and purpose.

Josephine Ledesma, from Austin, Texas, was 24 when the war broke out and worked as an airplane mechanic from 1942 to 1944. When her husband, Alfred, was drafted she decided to volunteer to work as an airplane mechanic. Even though the army waived her husband's duty, she was sent to train at Randolph Air Force Base, Texas, where she was the only Mexican-American woman on the base. After her training, she was sent to Bergstrom Air Field. There were two other women, both non-Hispanic, at Bergstrom Air Field, and several more in Big Spring, all working in the sheet metal department. At Big Spring, she was the only woman working in the hangar. She worked as a mechanic between from 1942 to 1944.