Biography of Alfred Avila (1933-2001) Author/illustrator of Mexican Ghost Tales of the Southwest: Stories and Illustrations
*Above photograph of Alfred Avila first appeared in the U.S. Postal Service publication Pacific Area UPDATE (April 1996). Links checked: 8 December 2007 Alfred Avila was born in Los Angeles, California, on January 25, 1933, in the late evening to José Avila and Guadalupe Maria Arciniaga (maiden name). He would be the fourth-born of 15 children. That same year José received a letter from a Los Angeles city bureau telling him to report for repatriation to Mexico on a Mexican government boat. Mexican nationals were being blamed for the lack of jobs during the Great Depression (1929-39). Many were forced to return, taking with them their U.S.-born children. Guadalupe, who was born an American citizen, helped her husband fight repatriation. They remained in the United States with their four sons.			Alfred & father, 1933		Avila kids, late 1930s(?) Alfred is second from left.
Hidalgo del Parral, 1967		Alfred's father José was from Hidalgo del Parral, a city in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. When José was eight years old, he moved to El Paso, Texas, with his older brother Maximo who was looking for work and a better life. José went back and forth between his aunt's home in El Paso and his mother's home in Parral. When he became a father, José would tell his children about how he ran small errands for Pancho Villa and his men when they came into Parral.
Alfred's mother Guadalupe (Lupe) was born in El Paso, Texas. Lupe was known as a curandera (folk healer) in her community. People really liked her and she loved people, said one of her daughters about her. Lupe's mother Felipa Amor was from Aguascalientes (capital city of the Mexican state of Aguascalientes, trans. hot waters), and her father Romualdo Arciniaga was from Zacatecas (capital city of the Mexican state of Zacatecas). After José and Guadalupe married in 1920, they moved to Los Angeles, returning later to El Paso for only a brief time. Alfred was raised in Los Angeles, mainly in the area known to the local Mexicans as "Flats," just below Boyle Heights (East L.A.), between Soto St. and the L.A. River 1st St. Bridge (on the other side was Little Tokyo). At that time, Boyle Heights had one of the largest Russian populations residing in the U.S. There was the elderly woman caretaker of the Russian church next door who always gave the Avila family Russian pastries left over from church services the night before; Katya, a Russian girl who always picked on him; and Bonnie and Donald, a Russian brother and sister who were like family and were left behind in the neighborhood when the Avilas moved away. Little Tokyo and Chinatown in Los Angeles were Alfred's first experiences with Asian culture as a young boy. His love of the sea came from his father José who loved surf and ocean fishing. José often took Alfred and his three older brothers to the beaches of Southern California for surf fishing. Saltwater fishing was Alfred's favorite activity. He started school in 1939 at Utah Street Elementary School. The school is still there, but the old three-story brick building is long gone. The Avila family moved to El Monte, still within Los Angeles County, in the summer of 1942, just after the forced evacuation of people of Japanese ethnicity to internment camps in places like Manzanar and Tule Lake, California; Poston, Arizona; Heart Mountain, Wyoming; Topaz, Utah; and Minidoka, Idaho. Due to U.S. government pressure and Latino racism, Latin American Japanese were also rounded up and deported to U.S. camps. Japanese Brazilians were protected because their government refused to cooperate. • A Japanese American's recollections of the WWII era, Gardena Committee for Redress and Reparation packet, Gardena, California, 1981. • The Ten World War II "Relocation" Camps, Eastern California Museum Manzanar Project, Shi Nomura, Independence, California. Dates opened, dates closed, and maximum population figures. • "NCRR Marks 10th Anniversary With 'Day Of Remembrance'; Estelle Ishigo Film Will Debut," Kashu Mainichi (California Daily News)(Los Angeles), February 8, 1990. Estelle Peck Ishigo was an American of Dutch-English-French ancestry who spent 3-1/2 years with her Nisei husband at the Heart Mountain camp. Alfred's good friend and classmate Y. Yamaguchi, in the fourth grade at Utah Street Elementary School, was sent to one of the "relocation camps," as they were called. He wrote back to the class once and that was the last time Alfred heard from him. Yamaguchi had lived in a large tenement building at the corner of 1st St. and Pecan St. with many other Japanese families. Huge, bright orange koi (carp fish) banners used to fly on a flag pole at the entrance to the building on Boys' Day (May 5). After the evacuation, that section of Los Angeles died from closures of Japanese businesses in the area. Alfred's father and his three older brothers spent many hours picking vegetables for the local farmers, on farms that had been formerly owned by Japanese Americans who had been evacuated to the internment camps. He recalled, "I hated those farms. We worked so long out in the fields, sometimes as long as 10 hours a day. I was young, and it was very difficult for me. The summer sun was unmerciful, and the winter cold froze my fingers where I could hardly move them. That was a traumatic time of my life, changing from a city boy to a country boy, to live much poorer than we did in the city." In April to May 1943, conditions for the Zoot Suit Riots ripened in Los Angeles. Many Mexicans were beaten simply because of their ethnicity. Alfred's oldest brother Bill was about 12 years old and selling newspapers on Main St. and was chased, but he arrived home safely. Local press encouraged the situation—the "racial madness"—with inflammatory and racist journalism. Alfred experienced some of this racism while attending Temple Elementary School and the racially segregated Lexington [Grammar] School (for Mexican and Japanese children) in El Monte in the 1940s. • "Analyzing Segregation in El Monte: The Lexington School," by Olga L. Gutierrez. 30-pg. EDAD 554 class paper, (Name of college?), July 20, 1981. (Kat Avila's note: I obtained a copy through the El Monte-based La Historia Society.) "The grammar school I attended was filled with prejudice against the Mexicans. Some of the rules were stupid," he remembered. "They would not allow us to speak Spanish, but we did anyway, even with the threat of a paddling by the principal. We fought back in any way we could. They only made us stronger to survive as Spanish-speaking Mexicans." He graduated from grammar school as an honor student in 1947. As a child, Alfred spent much of his time exploring and hiking the grassy fields, rivers, and marshes in the El Monte area with his brothers and their dogs. There were many empty grassy fields and marshes in that area in the 1940s. The huge cottonwoods and their seeds blowing in the wind like a snowstorm and the beautiful red-winged blackbirds in the marshes left lasting impressions on his mind. He hiked the local La Puente hills. Flat Top, the highest hill, had a very tall electrical tower. He and his friends climbed the tower and wrote their names on the girders. The area between the San Gabriel and Rio Hondo rivers was his youthful playground. This was years prior to the building of the Whittier Narrows Dam. Legg Lake now covers the locale.
Alfred attended El Monte Union High School and Rosemead High School. About two weeks after his high school graduation and with the prospect of attending Pasadena City College on a football scholarship, he joined the U.S. Navy. The Korean War was about a year old. He entered Navy boot camp at USNTC San Diego in 1951. Upon completion of training, he was assigned overseas (1951-53) to the Korean Theatre (area around Japan and Korea). While Alfred was en route overseas, one of his best and closest barrio buddies G. Aguilar was killed in Korea. Aguilar was only 18 years old and a member of the California National Guard activated for Korea.			Alfred, Seaman Guard, Yokosuka, Japan, 1952	Alfred & Japanese boys at sandbag filling detail out of Totsuka Radio Facilities at Shichiragahama Beach, Kamakura, Japan, 1952.
Two of José and Guadalupe's children passed away in 1952. Both were very young. Yolanda died of a brain tumor, and Lorenzo died of cancer of the lungs only a year after having had his leg amputated. In a local newspaper article, Lorenzo was described as "the lad with a brave smile, who told the family priest [Irish American, civil rights activist priest John V. Coffield] that it would be all right to amputate his leg…if it would help teach other persons bravery." • "Honoring the father who raised city spirits; El Monte to celebrate the Rev. John Coffield," San Gabriel Valley (CA) Tribune, January 7, 1999. • "Priest's book [Memoirs of Juanote] describes civil rights struggles," San Gabriel Valley (CA) Tribune, January ?, 2000. Page 2.
Alfred with two of his sisters, El Monte, California, Dec. 1953		Upon his return to the United States in December 1953, Alfred reenlisted and was assigned in February 1954 to the attack transport USS Montrose (APA-212). He remained in the U.S. Navy as a Gunner's Mate (GM), working on guns and ordnance, until his release to the Fleet Reserve in September 1974. He participated in Operation Passage to Freedom in 1954 to pick up Vietnamese and Chinese refugees in the northern Hanoi and Red River delta areas of a dying French Indochina and to transport them to South Vietnam. North Vietnam was emerging under Ho Chi Minh. Operation Passage to Freedom is described in a recollection by a USS Telfair (APA-210) crewman as "the largest evacuation operation by sea in military history."
In the same year, he did Operation Flaghoist which turned out to be the largest amphibious operation since World War II. Over 100 ships and several thousand men converged on the still-scarred island of Iwo Jima. Some of the men who spent hours on the boats—landing and retracting, loading and unloading—will never forget what Iwo Jima and Mt. Suribachi looked like from the surfline. Another remembered naval operation is Operation Sailor Hat. "Sailor Hat" was the code phrase for the first major U.S. Navy investigation since Operation Crossroads in 1946 of the effects of high-energy air blast on naval ships. Using 500-ton TNT charges to simulate the blast effects of a nuclear explosion, three separate tests were conducted in 1965 on the shore of Kaho'olawe Island in Hawaii. The converted USS Atlanta was the main target ship. After decades of bombing, Kaho'olawe Island is now in the process of being reclaimed and restored to its former condition by the indigenous Hawaiians for use as a cultural reserve. Bombing was halted in 1990, and the cleanup of the unexploded ordnance was expected to take 10 years.
Alfred (rear right), the lone American in a Japanese tour group, Choin Temple, Kyoto, Japan, 1958			Most of Alfred's naval career was spent in the Far East, ashore or aboard ship. He had the opportunity to visit Hawaii, Korea, Japan, Okinawa, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Australia, Samoa, Midway Island. He saw those countries grow during his 23-and-a-half years of service in the Navy. He especially enjoyed Japan, having spent his youth among the Japanese Issei and Nisei in Los Angeles. His parents had had many friends in that community.
One of his younger sisters remembers the descriptive letters and wonderful knickknacks Alfred would send home to California from abroad. Alfred served in Vietnam in 1954 and in 1968. His three older brothers and two younger brothers served in the U.S. Army at various periods during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.
Alfred married Sachiko in Tokyo, Japan, in 1957. They had three children. Upon his release from active duty to the Fleet Reserve in 1974, he attended Santa Ana College and Orange Coast College in California, earning an A.A. in Liberal Arts and an A.S. in Business and Industrial Management. He last worked for the U.S. Postal Service. He passed away on February 1, 2001, and is buried at Riverside National Cemetery in California. "I have been blessed to have seen so much in my life, and I thank the Blessed One who has brought me through the years," he would later write.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION The Passage to Freedom, 1954 by Alfred Avila (NOTE: The article is halfway down the page after the Hong Kong Standard article. He wrote this in December 2000, just before he passed away.) "In January 1954 I reported aboard the U.S.S. Montrose (APA-212) in San Diego, California. We deployed to the Far East in February 1954. August of 1954 found us in Kobe, Japan, for R & R after amphib ops with the Korean Marines in Chinhae, Korea. The next morning found us in Pusan, Korea, where we loaded pallets and pallets of life jackets." Alfred Avila's artwork for U.S.S. Alamo cruise book, WESTPAC 1974 La Historia Society From Web site: "La Historia Society was formed as a result of the La Misión, Hicks' Camp Reunions and persons wanting to preserve the rich cultural history of both El Monte and South El Monte's nine historical barrios, as seen through the eyes and experiences of former residents for the benefit of future generations of Americans." Interview with Alfred Avila "Preserving 'things that go bump in the night'," U.S. Postal Service Pacific Area Update, vol. 3, no. 4 (April 1996): 7. MGTS Book Reviews MGTS has been used in the following school programs: Denver Public Schools. Secondary Literacy Program (2006-2007). Unit 3. Grade 9: What Is a Monster? A Study of Monstrous Antagonists in Literature II. El Alma de la Raza Project, in partnership with the Denver Public Schools and Metropolitan State College of Denver, Goals 2000 - Partnerships for Educating Colorado Students, El Alma de la Raza Curriculum and Teacher Training Project Our Stories, Our Families, Our Culture, by Joanna Vincenti, Grades 7-9. Included in "Instructional Materials and Resources." Arts Midwest World Fest, Student Resources, Mexico, III: Mexican Culture, Folk Tales.

Original copyright © 1994 Alfred Avila. Final version copyright © 2008 Kat Avila. All rights reserved.