• Total US Veteran Population 23,443,000 (Per US Dept. of Veterans Affairs 9/08)
• Army – 44.4%, Navy- 22.7%, Air Force- 18.2%, Marines- 10.3%, Non-Defense- 1%, Reserve Forces- 3% (Approx. Figures Per US Dept. of Veterans Affairs 9/08)
• Total US Female Veteran Population 1,802,000 (Per US Dept. of Veterans Affairs 9/08)
• Veterans in California account for 9% of all US Veterans (Per US Dept. of Veterans Affairs 9/08)
• Veterans make up roughly 8.6% of the civilian population 18 years and older in Fresno County (census.gov 2005) Roughly 80,075 of 931,098 in 2007
• Regardless of the day of the week, Veterans Day is observed on November 11. This day was chosen to commemorate World War I, which ended on November 11, 1918.

Two Families

By Manuel Toledo
as told to and written by his daughter Yvonne Toledo

I have had the privilege of having two families. I was born into one on July 13, 1918, and I have served with the other since January 28, 1941. My parents were Catholic, Portuguese immigrants from the Azores Islands. We didn’t have much, but we didn’t suffer during the Depression because we grew and raised most of our food. As the oldest, I had to work the ranch with my dad, so I only went through eighth grade.

In 1934, I was at a wedding, and I saw the cutest girl. Six years later, I was introduced to that same girl, Lorry Thomas, and we were married on November 21, 1942.

I was a wet-behind-the-ears farm boy who had never been very far from home. On January 28, 1941, 53 of us local boys were on standby for the draft, and we decided to sign up for one year. At Fort Ord, California, we became part of Company B of the 17th Infantry, 7th Division. We thought we would find a little adventure, but we got more than we had bargained for. By the end of the war, most of us came back wounded, maimed, and scarred for life, but all 53 made it home alive.

We only had a few days left to serve when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. After combat training in the Mohave Desert under General Patton and amphibious training near San Luis Obispo, in April 1943 we boarded the USS Bell and headed for combat. As the ship went under the Golden Gate Bridge, I had a sick, empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. Ten miles out at sea, we learned that we were going to the Aleutian Islands, not the North African desert. We were young, scared, improperly trained, and wearing clothing unsuitable for the harsh, icy, wet climate and mountainous terrain.

After we landed on Attu on May 11, 1943, we learned to survive. We suffered frostbite. We shot at human beings for the first time. We watched our own men die. We lost 10 of the 40 men in our platoon on the first day. On the second day, our platoon leader was wounded during a banzai attack, and I took over command.

At the end of that day, I had ordered the troops to dig in, but it was hard to dig into frozen ground. After a foggy evening banzai attack, we found 18 more of our platoon slaughtered. Most of them had not dug in, and they were bayoneted or shot to death. After all these years, the image of the bloody, mutilated bodies of those 15 to 19 year old boys still haunts me.
After the first battles, after watching all those boys die, I didn’t want to get close to anyone. It hurt too much. I felt like I was in hell, but we were in hell—together. That bond kept us going as it got worse.

On October 20, 1944, during General MacArthur’s return to the Philippines, the 17th Infantry was one of the first to hit the beaches of Leyte. The Japanese were ruthless and everywhere; we were constantly under machine gun fire. On October 28, our platoon leader was killed, and for the fifth time, I took over command.

On October 29, as the 1st Battalion advanced through the swamp, we were hit hard by heavy machine gun fire, and we lost 50 troops, either wounded or killed. I was one of the lucky ones—I was only wounded. A 25-millimeter mortar shell blasted through a nearby banana tree without exploding. Both the shell and a chunk of the tree ripped through me. It left huge open wounds in my chest and back and knocked me unconscious. I was mistaken for dead and stacked with the dead.

As the troops advanced, three of my buddies from Tulare—Timmy Lopez, Tommy Fikes, and Manuel Sotelo—happened to glance at the bodies and recognized me. They checked for a pulse and yelled for a medic, who stuffed my wounds with sulfa drugs. The guys risked their lives carrying me through the swamp under heavy machine gun fire to a field hospital.

One of the doctors told the medics to leave me alone and take care of the others because I wasn’t going to make it. That doctor may have thought I was almost dead, but I was determined not to die. Eight hours later and after being in and out of consciousness, I still had a pulse, so another doctor cleaned out the wounds and sewed me up. I was critically wounded, and my right side was paralyzed. I would later learn that I had two splintered ribs and damage to the upper lobe of my right lung and to my spinal chord.

On November 1, 1944, I was placed on a hospital ship going to New Guinea, and on December 14, 1944, I was on the USS Monterey, a damaged aircraft carrier turned hospital ship, in route to San Francisco.

On January 1, 1945, I again went under the Golden Gate Bridge, this time headed home, but I was a different man. I had gone from being a strong, healthy 180-pound adventurer to a feeble 115-pound disabled soldier.
Three days after arriving at Letterman Hospital in San Francisco, I was on my way to Baxter General Hospital in Spokane, Washington, for experimental surgery. At 26, I would soon die without it, die on the operating table, or survive it and maybe have a few years to live. In February 1945, I became a guinea pig for numerous surgeries, and was told that I might have two to five years. That was over sixty years ago—I am now 87 years old.

In late June 1945, I was released, returned home for therapy at the Fresno VA Hospital, and became involved with several veterans groups. In 1947, I joined the California National Guard as a First Sergeant and 19 years later retired as a Captain.

In 1948, I met Colonel Ralph Thorpe, a retired WWI and WWII medic. We formed the Tulare AMVETS Post 56 with 30 charter members, of which only two are living—Glenn McKinney and myself. The membership has grown to more than 2500, and recently, the post was renamed the Captain Manuel Toledo AMVETS Post 56.

In March 1987, I was honored to receive the National Silver Helmet “AMVET of the Year” Award. With the dedicated help of Cliff Cates, a WWII veteran, I opened the Toledo Military Museum, which is now housed at the Tulare Historical Museum.

After my discharge on July 13, 1945, I continued rehabilitation and recovered. Then I took advantage of the GI Bill. I was trained as a watch and clock repairman and bought a business in 1947. My wife Lorry and I have owned and operated Toledo’s Jewelry in Tulare, California, for 58 years.
We have been married 63 years and have four children, Yvonne, Michael, Annette, and Michelle; 12 grandchildren; and 12 great grandsons.

My life was spared many times during the war, and I owed a debt to all those boys who died and to the ones who came home alive. I’d like to pay tribute to my wife and family, to those who saved my life, to all of those who served, and especially to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom.