Valley veterans put wars into words

Veterans Day is rooted in a ceremony held 90 years ago today, when an unknown World War I American soldier was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

What started as Armistice Day to mark the end of World War I – “the war to end all wars” – soon became a day to honor all veterans.

On this Veterans Day, The Bee presents the stories of six of them who now call the Fresno area home.

Their experiences are among more than 200 collected by students at California State University, Fresno, for the Central California War Veterans Oral History Project.

Jim Jacobsen, 64: Navy, Vietnam

Jacobsen was attending Fresno City College studying architectural design when the possibility of being drafted led him to enter the Navy Reserves. In 1967, he was called to active duty with the Seabees. His time in Vietnam included construction work and combat.

He lives in Fresno and has spent the majority of his time since Vietnam working in architecture and design.

Jacobsen’s Seabee battalion was building a pipeline to a U.S. air base near Hue, when the Tet Offensive broke out in January 1968. He recalled the atmosphere before the surprise attack:

“There was this one day we went up there and something wasn’t right. We felt it. The people weren’t talking to us, the kids weren’t running up to us asking for candy or whatever. It just felt kind of weird. Everybody felt it, and then on the way back to the base, we noticed no one was out in the street, everybody was gone … I went down to the enlisted men’s club, which was this little shack where they served some beer and pretzels and had a couple beers and went back to our hut and went to sleep. Well, that night all hell broke loose. We had a rocket attack, they had us dress up in military gear, with our weapons. Around the whole perimeter of the base there was a trench that we jumped in and were waiting for the invasion. We were in the trenches for that night, for the following night, for a good week.”

Jacobsen said it was difficult to cope with the casualties and devastation day after day:

“I became numb. I went numb. Because it’s what happens. You know you’re like in shock. To save, so you don’t go crazy, your mind just shuts down, OK. It was, you know, you were like a zombie walking around.”

– Evelyn Demirchian

Robert Lee McCracken, 70: Navy, Vietnam

McCracken, an Arkansas native who grew up in California, was attending San Jose City College when the threat of the draft and a broken engagement led him to join the Navy. He became a medical corpsman and served on the aircraft carrier Yorktown during Vietnam.

He worked as a construction office manager for PG&E for 34 years before retiring in Madera. He is junior vice commander for Veterans of Foreign Wars, Post 198 in Madera.

He recalls flying a helicopter rescue mission into Vietnam from an aircraft carrier:

“We got a radio call that an Air Force reconnaissance plane had gone down, a two-man reconnaissance plane. They said go in and pick up whatever’s left or if they’re alive, bring them back. Soon as we got in the area, we started receiving small arms fire from the ground. I had a .50-caliber machine gun out the side window. My radio man had a .50 out the door and we opened up and strafed the whole area as best we could. And soon as we set down, I jumped out, ran to the site. The co-pilot had a broken clavicle, broken arms and some broken ribs. The pilot had caught an artillery shell under his seat and part of his left cheek of his rear end was gone and he had shrapnel up his back. And I told the co-pilot, you get on my six, which means you get on my butt. I’m gonna pick up the pilot on my shoulders and we’re heading back to the chopper. I says, if you’re not with me when I hit that chopper, he’s gonna lift off. Fortunately for all of us, we got back on board and as soon as we started lifting off, the Viet Cong opened up with mortars. They never hit us, but the concussion was causing the chopper to go up and down. That was the hairiest, the scariest part of Vietnam that I encountered.”

War sometimes had its lighter moments:

“We did have a Russian trawler that was out there with us, that was bugging us all the time. It was a spy ship and they were keeping tabs on us constantly. The USO show came on board – Ann-Margret, Johnny Rivers and Ben Hogan. Our rear admiral, he radios this Russian trawler and tells them we have this USO show and they’re welcome to come and see it. And the skipper of the Russian trawler radioed back and says, sorry, we can’t make it this time, but when you have the Bolshevik dancers on board, he says, we will be there.”

– Keelyn Hanlon

Jack Schwartz, 96: Navy, World War II

Schwartz, a native of San Francisco who grew up in Los Angeles, was sent to Pearl Harbor then to Guam. He was captured by the Japanese on Dec. 8, 1941, and was sent to Zentsuji camp in Japan as a prisoner of war. He spent 3 years, 9 months as a POW.

When he was released, he continued to work for the Navy and retired from the Navy Civil Engineer Corps. He worked for the city of Hanford as public works director and city engineer from 1962-80.

When Schwartz was in Guam, he heard that Pearl Harbor had been bombed:

“We thought maybe they attacked the Philippines or something. We found out in a few hours. They issued each [of us] a .45-caliber pistol. I had never had a pistol in my hand in my life. I didn’t know what to do with it.”

Zentsuji was broken up in 1945 and he was sent to a camp on Honshu Island:

“It was way above six- or seven thousand feet. If the war hadn’t ended, we would’ve probably froze up there. Then the war ended and we didn’t know it for a few days. One day the Japanese officer in charge said ‘hostilities have ceased.’ He didn’t say the war had ended. He and the guards just walked off and left us. So we painted a big POW on the roof, and eventually a plane found us.”

– Megan Letson

Joel Hinojosa, 85: Marines, World War II; Army, Korean War

Hinojosa served in the Marines near the end of World War II, participating in the surrender of Japanese troops stationed in China. Less than a year after his discharge from the Marines in 1946, he joined the Army. While serving in the Korean War in 1950, he was taken prisoner after a violent battle with the Chinese, and spent 33 months as a prisoner of war.

After leaving the service in 1967, he worked as an accountant for the state of Maryland. He now lives in Clovis.

Hinojosa had a brush with death when POWs were kept inside a frigid cave:

“About the second week I was there, I became semi-paralyzed. From my waist down I could not feel my legs. I could not even stand up. But some of my buddies would come and pick me up and I would put my arms around their shoulders. Two of them, one on each side [would] kind of drag me to get my blood circulating. That saved my life.”

Hinojosa remembers a day when a truck arrived to supplement the skimpy meals:

“It was boxes of fish heads. So when they were dumping them from the truck into the hard ground, the boxes would open up. Maggots were crawling out of the fish heads. Now I know people make all kinds of faces. Listen, when you’re hungry you eat whatever you’re gonna eat. What they would do is take the fish heads and put them in big pots of boiling water with the maggots. You cannot see the maggots, they dissolved, but you know they’re there.”

– Ezra Romero

Cruz Rios, 92: Army, World War II

Rios wanted to join the Army Air Corps, but he figured his lack of education would hold him back. He ended up as an Army infantryman with the 87th Mountain Regiment. He served on the island of Kiska, then later saw his first combat as a member of a mortar crew in Italy.

A native of Colton near San Bernardino, he managed his own service station and taught mechanics before retiring in Fresno.

Rios said that basic training was hard but led to his assignment on a mortar crew:

“I didn’t care much for armaments. I didn’t care for pistol shooting or rifle shooting. I couldn’t even kill a bird! And here I’m supposed to kill a man. I don’t think I could point a rifle at a man and pull the trigger. So that’s why I chose the mortars. Hits somebody or doesn’t, I don’t see it, you know?”

Later, landing in Italy, Rios recalled Americans were treated as liberators by the Italians. He found Italy more hospitable than Texas, where he had undergone training:

“When I was training in Texas, good thing I wasn’t there too long because I hated it! I couldn’t go to a regular restaurant. Big sign in front, it said, No Negroes, no Mexicans and no dogs allowed. And Italy, what a difference. The kids come running as we come off the ship. Give me something, give me something, always asking for something. And I said, you hungry, you hungry? They come and greet you not with a handshake but with an embrace and a kiss.”

– Gladys Garcia

Lawrence Valdez, 85: Army, World War II

A Stockton native, Valdez was working as a farm laborer when he was drafted into the Army at 18. Trained in jungle fighting in Hawaii, he served with the 17th Infantry Division in the battle of Okinawa.

After the war, Valdez used his military benefits for schooling as a plasterer. He’s retired and lives in Hanford.

At one point, his culture was his salvation:

“I was point man and all of a sudden we ran into an ambush and I fell to the ground and started trying to find a place to hide. The rest of the squad went back and I couldn’t move because I was trapped. If I got up, I was afraid I would be shot. So I waited until dark and then I crawled back, and to get to my lines – maybe a hundred yards, but at night it looks like it’s a mile – [I saw] zoot suiters. In Spanish we call them Pachuco. And I was a zoot suiter, a Pachuco, and I knew the language. And I knew I had met some Pachucos that were in a company next to mine. Instead of crawling back to where I knew my company was – I didn’t know the password and I could be killed – I crawled to the right where I knew there was a lot of Pachucos. And when I approached them at a distance, I hollered at them in Pachuco language and they answered me back in Pachuco language. And I got through, I got back to my lines safely.”

On Okinawa, Valdez helped bring life instead of taking it:

“On one patrol, we encountered some civilians in a group. As we were bringing them down the mountains, we found one native woman who was pregnant. A woman called out to us and motioned that she was about to give birth to a baby. We didn’t know what to do as we were all young with no such experience. My sergeant and I helped her give birth to a baby boy. After it was all over, we bundled her up and the baby. She got up and walked down the mountain trail. It was a good feeling. For here we are in the war taking lives and now we had taken part in giving one back.”

– Shannon Williams

The Fresno Bee