For the Garcias, World War II was a family affair. Six brothers served and their father was a civil defense warden in their Boyle Heights neighborhood.
Today, as on every Veterans Day, family members will pay tribute to their only sibling killed in action during the war. Staff Sgt. Ignacio "Nacho" Garcia, member of a B-24 Liberator bomber crew, died Feb. 23, 1944, on a bombing run over Austria.
The Garcia family was one of three Latino families from the Los Angeles area -- each with six brothers in uniform during WWII -- honored Saturday by the Latino Advocates for Education Inc. at a Veterans Day ceremony at Cal State Fullerton.
The family's ties to the war started Dec. 8, 1941, when Anthony, the first of six Garcia brothers to serve during the war, told his family he had joined the Marine Corps.
"It was the day after Pearl Harbor, and Tony left for boot camp on Christmas Eve," said his brother Alfonso.
Ignacio, Leonard, Gustavo, Joe and Alfonso followed, enlisting in different branches of the service or were drafted.
"All of us wanted to do our part," said Alfonso, 78, a Navy veteran who lives in Buena Park.
Another brother, Nestor, was in the Army during the Korean War.
But Ignacio was the hero, said Leonard, 85, who lives in Fullerton. He served in the Army's 27th Infantry Division in the Pacific.
Ignacio's plane went down Feb. 23, 1944, and he was listed as missing in action. He was declared dead Oct. 1, 1945. A farmer had found his body and buried him near Steyra, maintaining the grave until the body was sent to a U.S. military cemetery in France. In 1949, the body was laid to rest at Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles.
To honor Ignacio, the family put together a booklet that includes his wartime letters, mostly tales of bravado with occasional mentions of the loneliness of battle.
After a 5 1/2-hour mission on Dec. 14, 1943, he wrote that U.S. bombers "smashed the hell out of an enemy target," a German airfield in Athens.
Five days later, he wrote that 64 B-24s sent to bomb an aircraft factory in Augsburg, Austria, "were scattered all over hell" by a fierce storm and his ship limped back to Italy on four "bad engines."
Six days before his death, Ignacio wrote to his oldest brother, Father Ramon Garcia, hinting at his loneliness but staying upbeat.
"Dear Ray.... It is very lonesome here, but I know that at last I am in the war.... You'd be surprised how high our morale is, maybe because we're really giving the enemy hell."
