As part of our Chicago Metro History Day program, Josue Contreras, a history teacher at H.B. Stowe Dual Language School, worked with Joshua Mendez, a student at Wheaton North High School, to research and produce a Silent Hero® profile as part of Sacrifice for Freedom®: World War II in the Pacific Student & Teacher Institute, a National History Day® program.
You know why people love war series like Band of Brothers? It’s not the action or the history of it all (though that doesn’t hurt), but rather the stories of the real-life heroes portrayed in these shows. We are awestruck by how ordinary people rose to the extraordinary challenges of their time to seemingly become Marvel superheroes in their own right, and we ask questions like “Why didn’t I learn about this in school?” Well, it’s the mission of the National History Day to answer those questions through their Sacrifice for Freedom®: World War II in the Pacific Student & Teacher Institute.
Joshua Mendez (left) and Josue Contreras (right) at the USS Missouri, Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, Hawai‘i, 2023. Photograph by Josue Contreras
Each year, National History Day takes 16 teacher-student teams from across the country through a six-month genealogical research project where each team chooses a World War II serviceman or woman to research their life, service, and sacrifice and ultimately share their extraordinary accomplishments with the world. The project culminates in a week-long stay at Pearl Harbor with each team reading a eulogy for their chosen hero at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.
Joshua Mendez (right) and Josue Contreras (left) reading PFC Felipe Sanchez’s eulogy at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, Honolulu, Hawai‘i, June 25, 2023. Photograph by Westin Saito, Education and Interpretation Research Coordinator at Pacific Historic Parks
Representing Team Illinois, Joshua and I really wanted our unsung hero to represent the Latino experience during the war―a perspective that we felt had been lacking in the general retelling of WWII history. We landed on Private First Class Felipe Sanchez (1907–45) and little did we know how inspiring his story would be. At the start, all we had to go on was his draft card. During the next six months, we would pull at every little thread we could find to piece together the life of a Mexican national who immigrated to the United States by uncertain means and happened to be living in Chicago and working at an Indiana steel mill on the national draft day in 1941.
Ancestry.com. US, World War II Draft Cards Young Men, 1940–47 [online database]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011.
The program taught us historical and genealogical research skills that aided us in reconstructing PFC Sanchez’s life 80 years after his passing. It required days in Chicago-area museums and library archives, multiple requests for records, reading dozens of WWII-era books, and learning how to interpret historical documents to make educated assumptions about PFC Sanchez’s life before and during his service, as well as the circumstances of his death. In the end, we put together the best retelling of his life, service, and sacrifice we could given that: we were never ever able to find any next-of-kin, his official Army personnel file was burnt in the 1973 National Personnel Records Center fire, and any documentation from his early life by the Mexican government archives had not yet been digitized.
Army deceased personnel file of PFC Felipe Sanchez – National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, Missouri
All in all, the time we spent uncovering PFC Sanchez’s story was worth it. We now have a greater appreciation of the sacrifices of “The Greatest Generation” and the contributions of Latinos during the war, as well as increased understanding of the hard work film studios and historians undertake to reconstruct the stories they tell in their war dramas. Stories of heroes once thought lost to history, but no more.
Joshua Mendez (left) and Josue Contreras (right) at PFC Felipe Sanchez’s memorial at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, Honolulu, Hawai‘i, June 25, 2023. Photograph by Westin Saito, Education and Interpretation Research Coordinator at Pacific Historic Parks
Additional Resources
- Read the Silent Hero® profile on PFC Felipe Sanchez
- Learn how you can take part in Chicago Metro History Day as a student, educator, or volunteer judge
- Visit CHM’s Abakanowicz Research Center to help with your genealogical research
- See more of CHM’s ongoing research on Latine communities in Chicago as part of Aquí en Chicago
