(Editor’s Note: With Memorial Day coming up, Kingsville community leader Maggie Salinas submitted a copy of an old World War II era edition of Notas de Kingsville, a Spanish language newspaper dedicated to keeping the Kingsville homefront informed on the activities and, sadly, the death of service men and women. On this particular occasion, an editorial comment from the late Ed Erard, longtime publisher of the Kingsville Record, caught the attention of Notas editor Ben Torres, who felt Erard’s comments were worthy of reprinting as an editorial in Notas de Kingsville)

I have just returned from a very humble home in the Latin-American quarter–the home of Pedro Soto, who, according to a war department telegram, died in Italy in defense of his country. Pedro’s father, old and slight of build, held the death message and gazed with proud but tear-dimmed eyes at the words he could not read.

Private Pedro Soto’s enlarged picture, flanked by flags of the United States and Mexico, had a place of honor on the wall of the front room that served as bedroom and living room. The window displayed a service flag, with a blue star that’s changed to gold.

A sister lifted Pedro’s picture from its place so that I could see more clearly in the oil-lamp lighted room the likeness of a man who had given all for the country of his father’s adoption.

In labored, halting English, the father said, “He was a good boy. He wasn’t afraid….This is a good country…..He loved it.”

Surveying the scant comforts of that home, realizing the sacrifice that family had made, observing the tenderness which its members displayed toward everything that belonged to or associated with young Pedro, admiring their brave acceptance of the message which said he would return to them no more, many thoughts crowded into my mind.

And one question kept constantly recurring. Why should Pedro have to die in defense of his country when so many with so much more to defend are sitting safe and secure piling up more wealth or striking for higher wages? Why must Pedro and a million more like him die while sleek young bureaucrats ride government automobiles around over the home front living on the fat of the land? Why are they not in uniform? Maybe this is not the time to ask these questions. Maybe it will promote “disunity.”

O.K. Forget I asked them.

But get ready to answer them when the boys come marching home.

And the answer better be good!
From the Building Blox
by Ed Erand, Kingsville Record
Notas de Kingsville
Enero 9, 1944