Seventy-five years ago, on January 28,1948, a DC3 twin-engine plane chartered by U.S. immigration authorities was flying 28 bracero farm workers from Oakland for deportation to Mexico. It crashed in a fireball in Los Gatos Canyon in western Fresno County near the small town of Coalinga. All the workers plus the crew and a security guard perished. When famed songwriter Woody Guthrie reportedly heard about the tragedy on the radio, the announcer said, “they were just deportees.” Cesar Chavez, then serving with the U.S. Navy in the western Pacific, remembered hearing about the crash.
With their names unknown, the farm workers were laid to rest by the Fresno Latino community in the local Catholic cemetery without grave markers carrying their names. Through efforts by writer Tim Hernandez, the names of the victims were finally uncovered. The Catholic Diocese of Fresno raised $14,000 for a memorial and in 2013, the workers names were unveiled in stone during a ceremony attended by United Farm Workers President Arturo S. Rodriguez.
Woody Guthrie wrote a beautiful song, “Deportees” or “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos.” It has been performed by many artists, including Joan Baez. Two stanzas read:
The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, “They are just deportees”
Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except “deportees”?