On the 5th of December, a small ceremony will take place on the Japanese island of Okinawa in which tribute will be paid to all American veterans of Basque origin who died during World War II (WWII) in the Pacific, with special recognition for those who perished on the island. They were over twenty young […]
The next day, after visiting Munitibar, we spent the day in Bilbo. When I was living in Donostia in 1991-92, Bilbo wasn’t the biggest attraction. It had a reputation for being big and dirty. But, the city has really transformed itself, in part due to the Guggenheim effect. We met up with Pedro Oiarzabal, the […]
For the last three years, I’ve been collaborating with Pedro Oiarzabal, Guillermo Tabernilla, and the Fighting Basques: Basque Memory of the Second World War project, translating their articles from Spanish to English. The Fighting Basques project recognizes the sacrifices and contributions that Basque Americans made during World War II. These were often the children of […]
This article originally appeared in Spanish at El Diario on December 11, 2019. After the surrender of the US armed forces on May 6, 1942, in Corregidor, Japan was free to extend its military occupation throughout the Philippine archipelago. The Philippines was the only Pacific country with a solid and consolidated Basque and Navarrese community […]
This article originally appeared in Spanish at El Diario on November 27, 2019. “The air attack on the airfields of the main island of the Philippines, Luzon, took us all by surprise and the ‘P-40’ fighters were destroyed on the ground the first day, without being able to take off.” Thus begins the first-person account […]
This article originally appeared in Spanish at El Diario on December 25, 2019. Discussion of the Basque participation in the Merchant Marines of the Allied countries and more specifically in the United States during the Second World War (WWII), despite some non trivial efforts, have certainly been tangential, perhaps due to the immense scope of […]
This article originally appeared in Spanish at El Diario on October 23, 2019. In contrast to the public commemorations of D-Day in Normandy, the Mariana island of Saipan attracts little or no institutional or media attention, despite its strategic importance in the Pacific Ocean theater of operations and the significance it had in the becoming […]
In memory of journalists David Beriain and Roberto Fraile, murdered in Burkina Faso. This article originally appeared in Spanish at EuskalKultura.com. On October 22, 1912, 25-year-old young Navarrese Saturnino Clavería Razquin, born in Altsasu in 1886, crossed the border between Mexico and the United States (USA) through the pass between Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas and Laredo, […]
Between them, these three Basque-American brothers had 27 years of military service, a third of them during World War II. This article originally appeared in its Spanish form in El Diario. In February 1952, the Reno Gazette-Journal proclaimed the Basque-American brothers John, Leon, and William Etchemendy Trounday as “the most decorated group of brothers in […]
This native of Busturia was NASA’s chief engineer and participated in the mission that took Armstrong and Aldrin to the moon. This article originally appeared in its Spanish form in El Diario. How is it possible that a boy from a small town in Bizkaia, with just a few hundred inhabitants, managed to become one […]
