29 January 1948 -- Los Gatos Canyon Plane Crash

“Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)” -- Arlo Guthrie (Lyrics by Woody Guthrie, Music by Martin Hoffman)

On 28 January 1948, the left wing of DC-3 aircraft piloted by Frank Atkinson caught fire and tore loose some 20 miles west of Coalinga, California. The aircraft went down, scattering wreckage and body parts throughout Los Gatos Canyon. Canyon resident W.L. Childers witnessed the horrific tragedy:

The plane was headed east about a mile high. I was watching it when I noticed a streak of smoke trailing off the left motor. The left wing then separated from the body of the plane and the fuselage and the right wing began to spiral down toward the earth. As I watched, I could see bodies separating from the wreckage as they either jumped or were thrown clear.

Nine-year-old June Leigh Austin was attending school when the plane crashed and so did not see the flight go down. She arrived at the site later that day. 65 years later, she shared her memories:

There were bodies scattered all over, so it took a lot to even find everybody, all the pieces I should say. I don’t know that there were any bodies totally intact, and none were identified. There were mainly just bits and pieces.

All 32 persons aboard were killed in the crash. In addition to the pilot, the victims included the co-pilot, a stewardess, an immigration officer, and 28 Latino agricultural laborers -- some in the United States illegally, the remainder guest workers imported to fill the vast demand for farm labor.

Rescuers Comb the Wreckage in the Futile Search for Survivors

Following Imperial Japan’s abruptly propelling the United States into the maelstrom of global war in December 1941, Americans mobilized for the conflict far more rapidly than anyone, even themselves, thought possible. Assembly lines that once turned out family automobiles were retooled to manufacture bombers and tanks. Shipyards floated new transports and warships at a dizzying pace that must have alarmed any sober Axis commanders. And over 12-million young men donned military uniform in the service of their nation. Almost overnight, a nation previously struggling with vicious unemployment found itself confronting an acute labor shortage. Once ostracized, African-American laborers were invited into defense plants and shipyards. When the husbands and brothers marched off to war, women replaced them on the assembly lines. And still we needed more workers. And so America, in its time of need, looked to its southern neighbor, Mexico.

On 4 August 1942, United States and Mexican representatives signed the Mexican Farm Labor Agreement. The Bracero Program, as it and its successor agreements would be called, would become the largest foreign worker program in American history. Mexican citizens, known as braceros, were contracted to work the crops needed to feed a nation at war. And when that conflict ended, the workers remained, providing food to the booming post-war population. In return they would receive serviceable room and board, exemption from de jure segregation policies, and a minimum wage of no less than 30-cents an hour. And when their contracts expired, they would be shuttled back across the southern border. The 28 Latino victims of the Los Gatos Canyon crash, 25 men and three women, were braceros being ferried from Oakland to the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service Deportation Center in El Centro, California for repatriation.

The Fresno Bee Reports the Crash (29 January 1948) Local Papers Covered the Deaths of the Migrant Workers

Far More Sympathetically Than Did the National Media

National coverage of the crash gave the names of the perished pilot, copilot, stewardess, and immigration officer, the remaining victims were collectively identified only as "deportees." Local papers did list the names of the braceros if known, but most remained unidentified. The Latino victims were laid to rest in a feet mass grave at Holy Cross Cemetery in Fresno, California. Their grave marker eschewed any individual identification of those interred. Instead, a simple plaque informed visitors that the grim repository contained the remains of "28 Mexican Citizens."

Marker Placed on Mass Grave of 28 Unnamed Victims

Killed in the Los Canyon Plane Crash

Folk music legend Woody Guthrie read the story of the crash in the 29 January 1948 New York Times. The perceived indifference to the deaths of Mexican farm workers provoked the singer-songwriter to pen a poem describing his anguish. In 1958, California high school teacher Martin Hoffman set the words to music, thereby creating one of the greatest protest songs in the American catalogue. The musical greats to cover this song over the years include Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, the Byrds, the Kingston Trio, Judy Collins, Concrete Blonde, Nanci Griffith, John Stewart, Odetta, Old Crow Medicine Show, Steve Earle, Billy Bragg, Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen,Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Dolly Parton, and Peter, Paul, and Mary to name but a few.

My preferred recording is that of Woody Guthrie’s son Arlo. I present it below. Its powerful lyrics and haunting melody evoke all the deep heartache this story merits.

“Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)” -- Arlo Guthrie

(Lyrics by Woody Guthrie, Music by Martin Hoffman)

The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,

The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;

They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border

To pay all their money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,

Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;

You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,

All they will call you will be "deportees"

My father's own father, he waded that river,

They took all the money he made in his life;

My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,

And they rode the truck till they took down and died.

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,

Our work contract's out and we have to move on;

Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,

They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,

We died in your valleys and died on your plains.

We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes,

Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,

A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,

Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?

The radio says, "They are just deportees"

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?

Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?

To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil

And be called by no name except "deportees"?

In 2013, the unnamed victims received some small measure of the dignity they had been denied 65 years previously. In 2009, American poet Tim Z. Hernandez, himself the son of migrant farmworkers, began an exhaustive search of records, discovered the Fresno County Hall of Records to be in possession of a complete list of those killed in the crash. After some prodding, the county surrendered the names. Hernandez and a host of allies began raising funding for a monument remembering the dead. On 2 September, that monument was unveiled. On the monument is the engraving of 32 falling leaves, four of which are marked with the initials of the four American citizens killed in the crash. The monument also contains the complete name of each of the 28 individuals interred in the soil it guards.

Miguel Negrete Álvarez

Tomás Aviña de Gracia

Francisco Llamas Durán

Santiago García Elizondo

Rosalio Padilla Estrada

Tomás Padilla Márquez

Bernabé López Garcia

Salvador Sandoval Hernández

Severo Medina Lára. Elías Trujillo Macias

José Rodriguez Macias

Luis López Medina

Manuel Calderón Merino

Luis Cuevas Miranda

Martin Razo Navarro

Ignacio Pérez Navarro

Román Ochoa Ochoa

Ramón Paredes Gonzalez

Guadalupe Ramírez Lára

Apolonio Ramírez Placencia

Alberto Carlos Raygoza

Guadalupe Hernández Rodríguez

Maria Santana Rodríguez

Juan Valenzuela Ruiz

Wenceslao Flores Ruiz

José Valdívia Sánchez

Jesús Meza Santos

Baldomero Marcas Torres