After the attack on Pearl Harbor, all Japanese were seen as the enemy, even loyal …show more content…
Over 500 thousand volunteered to fight for freedom and the chance to be treated equally. People like Gabaldon made themselves into war heroes with their incredibly brave actions. The Mexican American soldiers joined the war to be treated as Americans in the eyes of the U.S and also in the eyes of the world. Mexican Americans contributed economically to the U.S and its war effort by participating in the Bracero Program. In 1944 the helped raise 432 million dollars in harvested crops (364). It came to a point where it wasn’t frowned upon to hire undocumented workers. The newspaper La Opinion, Mentions that people don’t need to be U.S citizens, just have a birth certificate. Women also helped stimulate the economy in a big way by moving their work focus from farming and maids to defense workers where they earned more money and were helping with the war …show more content…
The vastly unique language of the Navajo people were mainly used to transmit this code to English speaking people. Raymond Nakai answered when asked why Navajos enlisted, “Our Answer is that we are proud to be American” (367). The Navajo people fought on the U.S side because they were in fact Americans and wanted to defend their country like all other Americans. Unfortunately, another reason as to why the Navajos joined the armed forces was in the hopes to escape poverty and maybe even over population as takaki states that “The tribal population had reached 60 thousand in 1946, and the reservation lands could support only 35 thousand people”