United States Coast Guard
Many Hispanics also served in the United States Coast Guard. Joseph B. Aviles, Sr., the first Hispanic to be promoted to chief petty officer in the Coast Guard was also the first Hispanic to be promoted to chief warrant officer. He spent most of the war in St. Augustine, Florida training recruits.
Valentin R. Fernandez was awarded a Silver Lifesaving Medal for "maneuvering a Marine landing party ashore under constant Japanese attack" during the invasion of Saipan.
Louis Rua was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for "meritorious achievement at sea December 5–6, 1944, while serving aboard a U.S. Army large tug en route to the Philippines. His craft went to the rescue of another ship which had been torpedoed by enemy action and saved 277 survivors from the abandoned ship." Rua was the first known Hispanic-American Coast Guardsman to be awarded with a Bronze Star Medal.
Gunner's Mate Second Class Joseph Tezanos was awarded a Navy & Marine Corps Medal during World War II for "...distinguished heroism while serving as a volunteer member of a boat crew engaged in rescue operations during a fire in Pearl Harbor, Oahu, T.H. on 21 May 1944. Under conditions of great personal danger from fire and explosions and with disregard of his own safety he assisted in the rescuing of approximately 42 survivors some of whom were injured and exhausted from the water and from burning ships." He was also the first known Hispanic-American to complete OCS training at the Coast Guard Academy.
Not everyone served aboard ships during the war. Some men like Jose R. Zaragoza served on missions on some lonely atolls. When 19 year old Zaragoza, a native of Los Angeles, California, joined the Coast Guard, he was sent on patrols in the Pacific coast of the United States defending against sabotage and invasion from the Japanese. Later he received instructions in the then-emerging and secretive field of Loran navigation and sent to Ulithi atoll, located between Guam and the Philippines where he worked in Long Range Aids to Navigation, which is akin to radar work. He served on Ulithi Island for 15 months.
Read more about this topic: Hispanic Americans In World War II
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, coast and/or guard:
“... it is probable that in a fit of generosity the men of the United States would have enfranchised its women en masse; and the government now staggering under the ballots of ignorant, irresponsible men, must have gone down under the additional burden of the votes which would have been thrown upon it, by millions of ignorant, irresponsible women.”
—Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815–1884)
“A sincere and steadfast co-operation in promoting such a reconstruction of our political system as would provide for the permanent liberty and happiness of the United States.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“I cannot say what poetry is; I know that our sufferings and our concentrated joy, our states of plunging far and dark and turning to come back to the world—so that the moment of intense turning seems still and universal—all are here, in a music like the music of our time, like the hero and like the anonymous forgotten; and there is an exchange here in which our lives are met, and created.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“What do we want with this vast and worthless area, of this region of savages and wild beasts, of deserts, of shifting sands and whirlwinds, of dust, of cactus and prairie dogs; to what use could we ever hope to put these great deserts, or those endless mountain ranges, impenetrable and covered to their very base with eternal snow? What can we ever hope to do with the western coast, a coast of 3,000 miles, rockbound, cheerless, uninviting and not a harbor in it?”
—For the State of Kansas, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Let us guard against saying that there are laws in nature. There are merely necessities: there is no one who commands, no one who obeys, no one who transgresses. Once you understand that there are no purposes, then you also understand that nothing is accidental: for it is only in a world of purposes that the word “accident” makes sense.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)