MATEO GONZALES
Age: 89
Born: July 25, 1920
Hometown: East Los Angeles
Residence: Palm Springs
Military branch: U.S. Army; 4th Infantry Regiment
Years served: May 1941-September 1945
Rank: Sergeant
Family: Wife Ramona (deceased); two children, Don Gonzales of Palm Springs and Paul Gonzales of Antioch
About this series
Staff writer Denise Goolsby will profile desert veterans from World War II through the end of 2010 — the 65th anniversary of the end of the war. Contact her at (760) 778-4587 or via e-mail at denise.goolsby@thedesertsun.com
Coming tomorrow
U.S. Army Air Corps veteran Frank Hurlbut of Cathedral City.
LEARN MORE: Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at mydesert.com/wwii.
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Mateo Gonzales fought in hand-to-hand combat with suicidal Japanese soldiers on the rugged, icy battlefields of Attu in the Aleutian Islands.
Attu — a U.S. territory at the westernmost tip of the island chain, more than 1,000 miles from the Alaskan mainland — had been occupied by the Japanese in June 1942.
The Aleutian Islands were of tremendous strategic importance. From there, the Japanese could build bases and conceivably launch air attacks on the U.S. west coast.
On May 11, 1943, the United States began the bloody campaign to wrench control of the island from the Japanese.
Gonzales, a member of the 4th Infantry Regiment, was part of the second group to go into Attu.
“I wasn't scared,” he said. “I was the first one to climb down the ropes into the boat,” for the landing.
Gonzales was a “point man,” one of the soldiers who'd be at the front of the formation when a group went out on scouting missions.
During one operation, his squadron was ambushed while trying to root out enemy soldiers entrenched in mountainous terrain.
“They were shooting down into the ravine,” he said.
Gonzales, zigzagged his way out of the ravine. He was one of the few who made it out alive.
After more than two weeks of battle, on May 29, 1943, the remaining Japanese soldiers launched a surprise counterattack on U.S. forces near Massacre Bay.
According to historic accounts, it was one of the largest “banzai charges” of the Pacific campaign.
Gonzales and the men of the 4th Infantry Regiment bored into the charging Japanese with fixed bayonets — killing many enemy soldiers.
“Every once in a while we would shoot one of them, but mostly it was bayonets,” he said.
“It was rough,” Gonzales said. “(But) you don't get scared. Some way or another, you're going to do it. You've got to get 'em first. Two were coming and you had to go get the other one. I'm lucky. I never got injured. You had to move fast.”
The Japanese who didn't want to be captured blew themselves up with grenades, Gonzales said.
The men battled in extreme conditions, slogging through mud and slush.
They slept in foxholes in the icy tundra, but after a few hours, they'd fill with water — and fresh foxholes would have to be dug.
One time, Gonzales was in a foxhole with another soldier, who started shivering.
Turns out, he had malaria.
Gonzales wanted to help the man, so he went out looking for something to cover him.
He found an encampment of Japanese — they'd all been killed — grabbed a blanket from their supplies and went back and bundled-up the sick soldier.
Another time, he warned a soldier to stay down while he moved to another position.
“I said, ‘I'm going to go over there and check with those guys,'” Gonzales said. “He stood up and got killed.”
“All of this stuff is rough,” he said. “You don't know until you're there and you see your buddies and friends get killed.”
Once the island was captured by the United States and Gonzales was sent back to the mainland, he was selected by the Army to be part of a group that traveled the country selling war bonds.
He was a member of a team of combat veterans who performed the skit, “Here's Your Infantry,” at venues including the Stevens Hotel in Chicago and at Little Rock High School stadium in Arkansas.
According to a letter he received from the office of the war bond organizers, Gonzales and his fellow soldiers helped sell $27,975 worth of war bonds at the Stevens Hotel event in December 1944.
Before being deployed overseas, Gonzales — who volunteered for military service in May 1941 — was a member of the Bugle Corps of the 17th U.S. Infantry Band, Company B, based in Fort Ord, Calif.
The “bugle boy from Company B” was a musician from a young age. His father taught him how to play the guitar, and when he got into the Army, they gave him a trumpet and he taught himself how to play.
Along with group performances, Gonzales played revile in the morning and taps at night for the troops.
Gonzales was awarded the Bronze Star — for “Heroic or meritorious achievement or service” — an award he was unaware he had received until recently.
Gonzales, for reasons unknown, had never been awarded any of the medals he'd earned for service to his country during World War II.
One of his sons, Don Gonzales, after trying to obtain the long-overdue medals for his father from the U.S. Army — “I had been waiting over two years and never got a response,” he said — turned to Sen. Barbara Boxer for help.
He e-mailed the Rancho Mirage Democrat three or four years ago and included a copy of his father's discharge papers.
“Barbara Boxer, she did her homework and in less than a month, we received the medals,” Don Gonzales said. “That was the only reason he got those medals.”
