Remembering Pearl Harbor and NM's role in the war

Imposing headlines blazed across the top of the Dec. 8, 1941, Albuquerque Journal and other state newspapers, reporting the devastating Japanese attack the day before on the United States Naval Base at Pearl arbor in Hawaii.

Another story high up on front pages that day told how members of New Mexico’s National Guard, as well as Air Force units that had been stationed in Albuquerque, were in the war zone in the Philippines.

One article noted the New Mexico guardsmen had been in the Philippines about two months.

“Despite their short time in the islands, the members have informed relatives here that they were ready for any eventuality.”

That eventuality was America’s entry into World War II.

This week, as we remember American military personnel and civilians killed at Pearl Harbor, as well as those who survived the attack, we should also remember that New Mexico affected the war and the war reshaped New Mexico.

Start to finish

A month after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invaded the Philippines, launching the Battle of Bataan, which would continue until American and Filipino troops were forced to surrender on April 9, 1942.

Among those battling the Japanese on the Bataan Peninsula were more than 1,800 New Mexicans, state guardsmen serving in the 200th Coast Artillery and the 515th Coast Artillery. Killed in the fighting or captured and subjected to a harsh captivity, fewer than half of these New Mexicans survived the war.

Fast forward to July 16, 1945, and the detonation of the first atomic bomb at Trinity Site on what is now New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range.

New Mexico and its residents were in the thick of the fight from start to finish.

According to “New Mexico in World War II” (Arcadia Publishing, 2021) by New Mexico authors Richard Melzer and John Taylor, the state provided more servicemen and servicewomen per capita than any other during World War II — and also suffered the highest casualty rate per capita.

Melzer and Taylor report that more than 2,200 New Mexicans died in the war. They also write that eight New Mexicans received the Medal of Honor for valor displayed during World War II.

Navajo code talkers from our state developed a code based on their language and culture that the Japanese were never able to break, thus providing the U.S. with a distinct advantage during key battles in the South Pacific.

New Mexico resident Ernie Pyle and New Mexico native Bill Mauldin boosted morale among servicemen and servicewomen and their families on the home front with newspaper columns and cartoons respectively.

Pyle, a traveling newspaper columnist for Scripps-Howard, was living in Albuquerque when the war started.

At first he sent back columns about Americans serving in the various military branches in the European Theater of war. Then he did the same from the South Pacific before he was killed by Japanese gunfire during the battle of Okinawa.

Mauldin was with the 45th Infantry Division during the war.

His cartooning skills eventually got him transferred to Stars and Stripes, the U.S. military newspaper, where his cartoons depicting ordinary dogface soldiers Willie and Joe put smiles on the faces of servicemen confronting the many horrors of war.

Mauldin, who survived the war and lived until 2003, and Pyle won Pulitzers for their work during the conflict. You can learn more about Pyle by visiting his Albuquerque house, which is now the Ernie Pyle Public Library, 900 Girard SE.

Remembering and learning

Like most states, New Mexico had prisoner of war camps for German and Italian soldiers.

According to Melzer and Taylor, there was one near Roswell, another near Lordsburg, 19 smaller camps near cities including Albuquerque and Las Cruces and one at Fort Stanton for German merchant marines rescued from a sinking passenger ship.

One of our country’s darkest moves was the establishing of relocation camps for Japanese-Americans because it was feared they may be loyal to and willing to assist Japan.

Japanese-American men considered especially suspicious were separated from their families and sent to internment camps, two of which were in Santa Fe and Lordsburg.

But likely, especially with the recent release of the movie “Oppenheimer,” about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, New Mexico will be thought of by most as the state in which the weapons that ended the war were developed.

Oppenheimer directed the Manhattan Project, which created the atomic bombs, at Los Alamos. And the first atomic bomb was exploded during a test in New Mexico.

Because of that, a state that was mostly rural in 1941, with many of its slightly more than 500,000 people living without electricity, indoor plumbing and paved roads, is now home to nuclear research facilities — Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque.

World War II’s fighting never reached New Mexico, but the state was changed forever when the attack on Pearl Harbor ushered the United States into the war 82 years ago.