I had cultivated a friendship with a young boy named John Custer, a patient in another ward. He came to our ward one morning and looked at me for a long time, as though he were afraid to talk.
“Will you do something for me?” he said finally. He fumbled in his pockets for a piece of writing paper. “It’s for my ma in Arkansas.”
I took the paper from him.
“You just say I’m okay.”
I started writing to an American mother in Arkansas. She had never heard of me, and I had never seen her, but her son was a common bond between us. I was writing to her what I had had in my mind and heart for years. The words came effortlessly. I was no longer writing about this lonely sick boy, but about myself and my friends in America. I told her about the lean, the lonely and miserable years. I mentioned places and names. I was not writing to an unknown mother any more. I was writing to my own mother plowing in the muddy fields of Mangusmana: it was the one letter I should have written before. I was telling her about America. Actually, I was writing to all the unhappy mothers whose sons left and did not return. There were years to remember, but they came and went away. I was telling them about those years. Then it was finished.
I read the letter slowly. When I finished reading it, he was crying.
“I have never learned to write,” he said. “I had no time for learning in Arkansas.”
I realized that this poor American boy had worked all his life. I could have told him then that I had worked all my life, too. I could have told him that I came from that part of my country where there were very few schools. I could have told him that for a long time the world of books was closed to me. I could have told him that I had been denied the little things in life that were denied to him. I could have told him that I had acquired my education by working hard. Yes, I could have told him, because when I looked at him I knew he would understand.
When he left the hospital, I said to him: “Rediscover America. You are still young. Someday I will hear from you.”
“I will remember what you said,” he said.
“Yes, John,” I said, “it’s only in giving the best we have that we can become a part of America.”
“Thanks.” And he left.
Years passed and the war came. Then one day I received a letter from him. He wrote in part:
“I doubt if you remember me. I met you in the Los Angeles County Hospital years ago and you wrote a letter for me. I returned to Arkansas and followed your suggestion. I found a job and educated myself when I was not working. I have studied American history, which was your suggestion. Learning to read and write is knowing America, my country. Knowing America is actually knowing myself. Knowing myself is also knowing how to serve my country. Now I’m serving her. . . .”
When summer came I was free to go outside the building. I would take the elevator and go down and sit on the sunlit grass beyond our porch. My brother Macario came back to Los Angeles.
“I couldn’t get a visa,” he said. “Nick couldn’t get one, either. But Felix is now in Spain.”
But the war in Spain was about to end; the Republican Government was about to be crushed. Macario knew that the fight would be over in a few months. He had found work in a downtown restaurant and rented a house in Echo Park.
Nick, who had come back with my brother from Mexico, went to Alaska to work in the fish canneries. When he returned to the mainland he proceeded to Portland where UCAPAWA, Local 226, an affiliate of the CIO, had fallen into the hands of reactionary leaders because of the departure of Jim Luna for the Philippines. Nick seized his opportunity, and offering a progressive program, was elected secretary-treasurer.
Now the local in Seattle was also in the hands of our group. The leadership in San Francisco was held by Americans and Chinese. But José tried vainly to break into it because the Filipino membership was large. He gave up in failure and went to San Pedro, where the cannery workers had been organized into the AFL by a dynamic Mexican woman unionist. Again José’s attempt to put the workers into the CIO failed, so he went to Alaska to observe the situation there. When I heard from him again he was in Portland fighting against the element that was trying to break the local which had been re-invigorated by Nick’s progressivism.
So while I was waiting for a possible improvement in the hospital, my companions were fighting in the trade union movement and for the propagation of progressive ideas. I wanted to work with them again.