Jesus “Jess” Lopez, 87, of Coachella holds the Japanese sniper rifle he brought home from World War II. Japanese swords, which he also found after battle, are displayed on a rack. / Crystal Chatham The Desert Sun
Jess Lopez
AGE: 87.
HOMETOWN: Coachella.
MILITARY BRANCH, RANK: U.S. Army, 41st Infantry Division. Private first class, 1944-1946
FAMILY: Wife Mary Louise R. Lopez; two children; two grandchildren; one great-grandchild.
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Jess Lopez served in the South Pacific during World War II, making beach landings on the Philippine island of Mindanao and on Jolo Island in the Sulu Archipelago, an island chain in the southwest Philippines.
The military maneuvers were nerve-racking, the 87-year-old Coachella resident said.
“They were scary,” said Lopez, who served in the Army's 41st Infantry Division.
The cramped conditions of the landing barges, with barely enough room for the 20 men they were intended to carry, incited hostility among the soldiers.
“We were pushing and shoving,” he said. “We were angry.”
Rifles and hand grenades banged around in the close quarters as Japanese fired shells at the landing craft — putting the already agitated GIs on further edge.
Lopez, a member of the 3rd platoon, said the guys pulled it together and were in control once they hit the shore of the intended target.
Lopez said his platoon was fortunate to have dodged some of the tragedies that struck other platoons.
He recalls the time the 2nd platoon had the unfortunate luck of climbing up a hill toward the enemy, while the 3rd platoon and another platoon were to the right and left of the hill.
“There was a big explosion and the whole mountain started coming down on us,” he said. “They killed everyone in the 2nd platoon.”
Lopez recalls a bombed Hiroshima
Lopez was later sent to Hiro, about 20 miles from Hiroshima, in January 1946 — about four months after Americans dropped the atomic bomb on the Japanese city.
“Everything was burned out,” he said.
He said some stone and cement buildings were still standing.
Huge pieces of iron lay twisted and mangled in the streets.
There wasn't a soul to be seen.
The GIs were ordered to throw all of the weapons and ammunition left behind by the Japanese into the ocean.
Lopez eyed a Samurai sword among the abandoned military weaponry.
He took the sword and other war memorabilia left behind on battlefields — including a Japanese sniper rifle, a bayonet and a flag from the Japanese Navy emblazoned with the rising sun — and shipped the items back to his wife in the states.
After the war, Lopez, originally from El Paso, Texas, joined his family in Coachella, where they were sharecroppers.
“We had tomatoes and chickens and eggs,” he said. “We didn't suffer living on the farm.”
