Hi, im debby lam, the coordinating producer on our cities tour team. This year we visited 24 cities exploring their unique history and literary life. Were going to show you several stops from fresno, california. Its the statists largest inland city and serves as a major hub for agricultural production. Theyre flying me back the Mexican Border it comes from Woody Guthries lyrics. It story goes when the plane crash happened in 1948 and the news reports went across it country Woody Guthrie was in nuvg at the time and of course one of the great sort of rebellious folk icons that he is, he heard the news reports and he really was upset at the omission of the names. He himself had traveled to the valley, so he was familiar with the plight of migrant farm works at the time. And he was upset by the omission of the names. He said thats no way to treat our brothers and sisters, and so he wrote a poem about it. And in his poem he attempts to restore the dignity of those anonymous passengers by giving them fake names, assigning them names. And he says in his poem, goodbye to my juan, goodbye, rose litta, you wont have a name, all they will call you will be deportee. That really caught my attention, and is that all they will call us . I come from a family of migrant farms, so who is they . Who is all, and what will they call you . To me that was such a poetic piece of that lyric, so i use that for the book. There were talks between the president s at the time. This was the early 40s, and the basis of the conversation was how can mexico be an ally to the u. S. During its time of need. And the result of that was what they called a settle problem, from the word brazos meaning arms, in this case workers arms. They looked to their brothers and sisters in the south here, mexico, and they began this program that started to literally bus and train people, mexican workers in. The first series of that the first sort of i guess you would say the pilot program, they imported about 4,000 workers here to the Central Valley to the town of stouktckton. It was such a success the farmers said bring more, bring more. So then within the next couple of years they had upwards of 40, 50,000 workers coming in. And now they werent only being used for the Agricultural Labor but the railroads and all kinds of things across the country of course during world war ii and while our country was off at war. So after the war is over, what do we do with all the brothers and sisters we invited to work with us and gave these work visas to . Well, its time to send them back was the idea. And in fact some of the politicians here in the Central Valley at the time would come out and state that, the kind of worker specifically that were looking for is the kind of working does great job here, doesnt look for trouble and then we can send them back when were done. They would say that publicly. And now here in 1948, a few years after the war has ended actually, in 47 they start sending back, doing mass deportations. You know, in some cases the workers contracts were up. In some cases they were here without papers, and in some cases, you know, they were just rounded up as, you know, a part of the round up. And in manies of the cases even tlut history from the 30s, 40s, and even into the 50s some of them were american citizen they were sending back. The dragnet was so wide they just rounded up people who liked like mexicans. And thats what happened in 1948. They had rounded up a group of workers and sending them back, deporting them. At this time they had just started to use the douglas dc3 airplanes. Those airplanes specifically were the workhorse of world war ii. Now they had a surplus. Lets change the name, they were actually called c 47 airplanes during and the war and they said like call them dc 3. Lets clean them up, put some seats in them and use them to deport folks. And so thats what they did. And in 1948 this plane left at 9 30 in the morning and it was heading towards tijuana to drop off reportedly 28 mexican citizens and that had a copilot, the stewardess, the pilots wife and an immigration officer also. And about an hour into the flight leaving the bay area flying over the Diablo Mountain range and the plane experienced difficulty with the engine, caught fire, torched the wing off. It tumbled in the air and crashed right into the canyon, which is you know its just actually 60 miles southwest of fresno. And it was annihilated and all the ranch owns, they saw it, witnessed it. There was a nearby county prison road camp there, minimum security place. All prisoners out in the yard all saw it happened, witnessed it. A lot of those folks who i used and interview for the book. And it changed the lives not for obviously the passengers but even the people who witnessed it. So thats what wuss happening that morning. The medias reports of the incident, you know, it was at the time it was labeled the worst airplane disaster in californias history. This was 1849, january 28. And the media, the Associated Press actually has one of the more popular ones, the 28 deportees being sent back to mexico all killed. Out of these newspapers, out of all of them there was no mention of the names with the exception of two newspapers. The prez no be made an attempt to publish the names a couple days after the accident. The names, you know, were badly misspelled erroneous. Some of them looked like they were spelled phonetically, but it was an attempt. And they only published i think a dozen of the names. The only newspaper that actually did publish the names the popular belief at the time or even now was maybe they didnt have access to the names or who were the names . Or how do they find the names . And i thought to myself as an author whos exploring this idea, i thought theres a manifest somewhere. Theres a government program. You know, someone has the names, right . And lo and behold i find an article published in a Spanish Language, independent newspaper, only published in fresno at the time, specifically published for the Mexican Community here, the farm workers. And it was called el faro. And it lists it says heres the name of all the dead campaneros who died in this plane crash, not only the names but the town theyre from and the surviving family members. It lists all of them and when i found that article, it was the jackpot. It was a Spanish Language newspaper that did them justice and gave them their due of just saying their names, which was a basic human right. It wasnt about like, you know, trying to, you know, spew some bias or anything like that. It was just here are their names, here are their family members, they lived. And that newspaper published it. That newspaper came to me by way of the family members. When i first found one of the families, and they knew the story, and he said to me when i first met him at his restaurant he said do you have a list of the names, and i said yes, i do, but the list i have is sort of inaccurate. And he said well i have a list, too. And i said what list do you have, he says hangs on and pulls out this old tattered stained wrinkled newspaper from 1948. According to him the Mexican Consulate had sent his family this newspaper as evidence of his family members death. And that family had kept it for 60 years. I havent found another copy of that newspaper. I didnt feel like i needed to embuit with any overtly political agenda, because the story was such a human story. And it already had metaphor, imbued with metaphor. Here was this one vehicle transporting, you know, 28 mexican peoples. Four of them caucasian, you know, the pilot, world war ii hero, the copilot also a world war ii hero. You wouldnt want any other pilot flying that plane. If you were going to fly that plane, thats the pilot you want flying. You had crash landed that same plane before during world war ii during the burma india hunt, and he crash landed out of that safely. He had over 2,000 something hours in that specific airplane. Thats the pilot you wanted. And he was a newly wed, and 30 years old. His wife was bobby atkinson. They had only be married the year before, you know . And they were just starting their lives. And in fact this was going to be his last flight and then he was going to retire and go back to working for the military again on some other duty. And so his wife was not a stewardess, in fact. Im not sure what she was doing, but she wasnt a stewardess. She had no business being on the airplane, in other words. And what happened was the stewardesses couldnt make it that morning. According a family she called in sick, and i guess at the time you couldnt fly one of those planes without having a stewardess onboard. And i guess he said do you want to come with us, and she said sure ill go, and she jumped on the plane with them. And oorg oo the family only two weeks before that accident, frank, i guess had experienced difficulty on another airplane. And so his wife had made a comment to some friends and family, if something ever happened to frank, i would want to be with him. That was just two weeks before she actually would be with him when that plane crashed down. I was able to interview the atkinson family, and i learned other than being newly weds frankly oz franky that blew my mind, you know. One of the grandsons of a migrant farm worker who also had tastrugg to struggle and make it here on his own, i said what makes you identify, and he said as a young man i could relate to what he was doing. Frank atkinson during the depression would go out and cut rail ties and make 50 cents and bring it back to his parents and help them survive. He said i remember doing that same thing for my mother. Id go out and bring her back the change i was making. So all i knew was i had to talk about the humanity of each of the people. All 32 passengers, frank atkinson, his wife. The last love letter actually, it wasnt the last one but he the love letter he wrote home to her in preparing for their wedding. And i put that side by side with one of the last love letters that a passenger sent home to his wife about he struggled trying to work for one farmer, working with another farmer. And hes telling his wife back home i know we have a few garbanzo beans back home, sell them, and well make it. And when you see those side by side all the glaring humanity is illuminated in it. I dont have to spew any of that political rhetoric around that. The humanity is palpable. You read those letters and you cant deny heres two men who loved their families working hard for their families. So january 30, 1948, the Funeral Services happened right here. And the founder people were here, and the service had 28 coffins lined up. And on that day, january 30, while they were doing the services, they actually only did a fewf the caffens. So before the audience and the crowd they entered a couple of coffins. And once everyone dispersed and went about their lives, the coffins were put underground, buried over. As i understand it wasnt initially but years later someone donated a placard. And that part is uncertain, but years ago someone donated a placard and the placard said it was anonymous still. It said 28 mexican citizens died in a plane crash january 20, 1948, rest in peace. It doesnt say buried here, but just 28 people died, rest in peace. Kind of ambiguous like that. And its a small little placard and set there. And thats all it had for years, and its a large patch of green grass where they dont like any other head stones nearby anymore. Some people walk by and they say that looks like a good spot, and they cant. It wasnt until i came upon the story in 2010 and i learn of it, this was the first place i came to i i said ive got to find out where theyre buried. It was astonishing they were also buried what was considered at the time the largest mass Burial Ground in history. I knocked on the doors of the cemetery here and i said do you have the names, and they said, well, well look up the file. And they looked up the file. And they said actually we dont have the names. We have the file, but on that file where every name should be tip cloe goes, it just says Mexican National or it says Mexican National, Mexican National, Mexican National 28 times and that was it. And even they were kind of astonished by that. In fact one of the cemetery directors new here at the time, he said, that blows me awas. And he i i started talking and i said im looking for the names. I said im looking through the halls of Fresno County here, and they wont give me the names because you have to pea related. But you guys can go on official business. And he said i have a list of names a names. And we looked at the list of names together, and we were excited because it was a first, middle and last name. And we could tell some of them were still wrong, but it was a start. And it was actually that list of names that led be on the search. I asked him that day. I said, you know, what would it take, im way out of my league here, but what would it take if these are the correct list of names what would it take to put them on a headstone here, a marker. Well it would take two things, permission from the bishop and money. And i said how much money, and he said at least 10,000. And i said you work on getting permission from the district and ill work on raising the money. And about a month prior to that i was with a local musician and he and i had first said to ourselves i said once we find a list, we should figure out how to put that headstone here. So that day stand ing with the cemetery director, hes a beloved musician here so i knew if we had artist power and musician power, were going to raise the money. Within three or four months we raised 14,000. Carlos got permission from the bishop, the bishop agreed. So we installed a headstone right here behind me, and that headstone is now a 4 by 8 granite slab that is actually used to bury the bishops. And on that slab in english and spanish, it tells you the story of what happened and has the names of every passenger onboard including the crew as well. And then it has 32 leaves around the stone. Because its got these lyric. Well, theyre not just deportees anymore. And one of the beautiful things of this headstone behind me is weve still included in that show how it went from anonymity to having the names today. All the talks around immigration today is has become a vast sea of noise. You know . You know, some of it of value. Some of it for creates for valuable dialogue but a lot of it, specially today as we enter this new administration, we start to hear everywhere, not just from politicians but people in general, we start to hear sort of the ramped up you know, polar of us versus them or you know, immigrants versus americans. That kind of rhetoric is out there. I feel like what gets lost in that, and i think part of that is intentional gets lost in those kind of abstractions i was mentioning earlier is the human face behind it. I feel like this book really provides the opportunity for us to look through that rhetoric to, cut through it and to just look at one situation, one isolated situation, 28 mexicans, four american citizens, all crashed and all regardless of race, regardless of social status, regardless of spiritual beliefs or background, they all met the same fate together. None spared. None. In the end, they were in one vehicle transported or deported to that great other place in the sky. You know . Thats what i hope people take from it is that were all in this together. Goodbye rosalita, goodbye juan adios mi amigos. We wont have a name when we ride the big airplane hollywood called us dirty deporties cities tours journey of the literary world in fresno, california, continues with author of the book harvest sun, planting roots in american soil. The author recounts the story of his childhood, race and identity in californias Central Valley. And one of my books ive written is called harrest son, a journey into my familys past and looking at the immigration of my grandparents from japan to america and trying to plant roots in american soil and, of course, facing the contradictions of america, the racism of it, and the struggles to try to establish themselves. Historically, japanese americans had a very vibrant Agriculture Community partly because when the immigrants first came, this was the only entry point for a lot of them in American Economy and american communities. Certainly relocation and interment during world war ii shifted that so it concentrated even more the stronger sense of being japanese american. My generation has shifted. Its very classically immigrant story. My generation we call ourself sansi, Third Generation in america. The time, spring and summer of 1942. The place . Ten different Relocation Centers in unsettled parts of california, arizona, utah, idaho, wyoming, colorado, and arkansas. The experience of my parents during relocation and world war ii interment of japanese americans i think was very common. There was crisis, there was turmoil. Theres hysteria and they didnt know what to do. So i think like many of them, they realized they had to just accept what was happening through their own type of civil disobedience but really accept had broader frame of this history that was unfolding along with all the chaos and uncertainty. So they growing up they rarely talked about it. And i only started piecing together stories i heard here and there, reading about it and understanding what a traumatic moment it was when youre trying to establish yourself here in america and trying to literally plant roots here but also at the same time, understand, this is a country that didnt want them. That told them they were the enemy, that told them they needed to go back home. Of course, the irony for my parents, they were born here. Back home was here. And it was that struggle i think that as i grew older and began to understand part of the idea of struggle, i think of the struggles that i went through were dwarfed by that moment in history. And how they had the resilience to work through that and then come back and literally plant roots here in the valley in our farm. My parents did not talk about it. My dad was this traditional stoic farmer, hardly said anything. My grandmother who lived with us only spoke japanese and my japanese wasnt very good but they wouldnt talk about it. I think its because had he carried within them a kind of a shame, a guilt thats embedded whether he youre accused of being something that youre not. So as a wri