Trinidad Ledesma was born in November 1924 in Downey, California. His parents did not speak English. They only spoke Spanish at home and he had not learned English at all, so he failed the first grade. His mother was a house cleaner. He lived on a farm and raised hogs, pigeons, and chickens. They were so busy that they did not talk about the war that was developing. His grandmother voted for Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Presdent Franklin Delano Roosevelt] because she believed he could set the country right. He and his family were poor but had food because of the farm. Ledesma remembers the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. The whole school gathered to listen to Roosevelt's speech [Annotator's Note: Infamy Speech; President Franklin D. Roosevelt to a Joint Session of the U.S. Congress, 8 December 1941]. He did not think much about it. He played first chair violin [Annotator's Note: lead violinist, or, concertmaster] in the orchestra. He would play on television at NBC [Annotator's Note: National Broadcasting Company] and CBS [Annotator's Note: Columbia Broadcasting System]. He joined the Los Angeles Symphony [Annotator's Note: Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles, California] and played at the Rose Bowl [Annotator's Note: American athletic stadium, Pasadena, California]. He also played at Treasure Island [Annotator’s Note: Naval Station Treasure Island] in San Francisco. He taught music after the war. His biggest dream was to have his own 16-piece band. He lost the piano player and others to the draft so that was the end of that.

Trinidad Ledesma was drafted into the Army. He went to take his physical and two men in front of him got 4F [Annotator's Note: Selective Service classification indicating that an individual is unfit for military service] for flat feet. Ledesma had a heart problem, but he was accepted. He went to Camp Hood, Texas [Annotator's Note: now Fort Hood, Killeen, Texas] and was assigned to Company E [Annotator's Note: cannot verify the unit Ledesma was assigned to at this time] which were kind of outcasts. It was very rough, but he feels it made him stronger. He had not had much of a teenage experience in life. He does not call himself a hero for being in the war. The heroes were the ones who saved his life. He got two weeks of leave after boot camp and then went to Fort Ord, California. He nearly drowned his platoon there. They were taking turns driving the landing barge. He hit a sand bar and the water was about ten feet deep on the other end and everybody was cursing him for opening the gate as they went in over their heads. His grandmother had taught him to cook and do laundry, iron, sew, and more and that is how he got by in camp.

Trinidad Ledesma received orders to ship out from Fort Ord [Annotator's Note: in California] at around three or four o'clock in the morning. The Catalina [Annotator's Note: SS Catalina] took them to a larger ship where they had to climb a rope ladder carrying 300-pound packs. The Hermitage [Annotator's Note: USS Hermitage (AP-54)] was a luxury liner turned into a troop transport. They ate two meals a day and his bunk was 20 feet below sea level. The bunks were only separated by eight inches. He had a heavy man above him and could not get into his. He slept instead in a laundry tank. He would also get very seasick. Their quarters smelled worse than a locker room. They could not really communicate as the ship had no escort. They were supposed to join with the 24th Infantry Division and then went to a lot of places following them and looking for the Number 2 Depot [Annotator's Note: cannot verify this unit] and French Guinea Islands [Annotator's Note: French Polynesia]. They were the clean-up crew there. They then went to British New Guinea. Their regiment [Annotator's Note: Ledesma was a member of Company E, 2nd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division] took Goodenough Island in the push for Leyte, Philippines. They took care of the Japanese prisoners there. And they were bombed heavily. The 19th [Annotator's Note: 19th Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division] had pulled out too soon without waiting for Ledesma's unit to take over their positions. While there they were ordered to cross a bridge. A sergeant held Ledesma back and sent another man in his place. The bridge had been wired with explosives by the Japanese and it exploded with the troops on it. Ledesma saw the man who had taken his spot fly into the air and hit the ground. He says that anyone who says they were not afraid of combat are liars. You get very religious in combat. He was wounded there while laying wire for communications.

Trinidad Ledesma volunteered to be a code clerk in headquarters where he thought he would be safer. He was shown a machine he would use to code and decode messages. The code was changed every day. An MP [Annotator's Note: military police] brought him his first day's messages and told him he had to eat the paper afterwards. He asked how he was supposed to do that. The MP said it was only rice paper and it would be easy. He then saw that the other men were laughing at this prank on the new guy. He went to the Mariana Islands and was attacked by kamikazes. They lost everything. They were short on crews and Ledesma was assigned to an antiaircraft gun. He shot down one kamikaze and hit another, but it hit the ship and it started sinking. There was a rope line and the commander said for everyone to hang on to it. They were picked up by a cruiser. He then went to Mindanao where he was given a carbine rifle and only two bullets. They were to meet up with a paratrooper group there, but they could not find them. They made two camps; one that was visible to the Japanese and another that was hidden. On the second day, the Japanese attacked the unoccupied camp that was visible. They would move this decoy camp around daily. Once they got good antiaircraft guns, they were better able to defend themselves. They shot down six enemy aircraft and the Japanese did not return after that. They were short of food and shot a water buffalo. After cooking it for 12 hours, it was still inedible as it was very tough. They were able to find peanuts growing which they dug up and roasted in a helmet. They stole some equipment from the Marines. They got a duck [Annotator's Note: DUKW, a six-wheel-drive amphibious truck] and fixed it up. A boat came in with equipment for the Marines who were not there yet. Ledesma and others took it and used it. When the Marines landed later, they wondered when their equipment would arrive. They were still looking for the paratroopers. They finally got a radio that reached them and discovered that the paratroopers had seen them land on the beach but thought they were Japanese and were hiding from them. A kamikaze pilot landed there on the island and came out of his plane crying. He was only 14 or 15 years old. There are a lot of things that Ledesma saw that he does not want to think about.

Trinidad Ledesma feels that some of the kamikazes were fanatics and some were not. One had landed on Mindanao, Philippines, and he told them he was doing it to honor his parents but then changed his mind. They were only given enough fuel to make it to the target. A lot of the kamikaze pilots were doing it to honor the Emperor who they viewed as a god. Ledesma feels that the same thing is happening in Europe with the terrorist attacks. He tries to stay away from discussions of religion and politics because he does not want to lose friends. One of the first atrocities Ledesma saw was a young man who had a stick tied between his knees, one eye was dangling from the socket, his testicles were on the ground, and all he could say was "help, help." He feels the Japanese had done this to him to scare the Americans. Their medics gave him an overdose of morphine so he could die in peace. On Mindanao, the Japanese were firing heavy mortars at them. A friend of Ledesma's was thrown more than 20 feet through the air and killed. When he saw him after the blast, he was fully bloated, and blood was coming through his pores. The medics could do nothing for him other than give him an overdose of morphine. They called these overdoses mercy killings. [Annotator's Note: Ledesma gets very emotional and says this is why he does not try to remember these things.] He thinks of all of these men as his brothers. He went on to Mindoro Island, Philippines which was sort of a resting place for them. They dug ditches to let the rain waters run out of the camps. He was digging a ditch and he saw a Colonel from the paratroopers. Ledesma and the men were out of uniform. They were told to put them on or go to the brig. He complained that it was too hot but complied. He then went over to his sergeant and handed in his stripes because he did not want to work for this Colonel. That was when he discovered their commander, Colonel Burbank, had left for the Missouri [Annotator's Note: USS Missouri (BB-63)]. Burbank's father had been an ambassador to Japan and Burbank knew how to read and speak Japanese, so he had been reassigned.

Trinidad Ledesma was sent to Yokohama, Japan [Annotator's Note: on occupation duty after World War 2]. The streets were empty because the population had been told that the women would be raped and the children would be killed. There were a lot of orphans. The captain wanted each soldier to take one orphan and give them things to do. They also provided them places to sleep and some clothing. He remained there until January 1946 and then shipped back to the United States aboard an Australian ship. They hit a storm right away. They were only served mutton for breakfast with tea and milk, which they did not like. They landed in Seattle, Washington and the first thing they did was get hamburgers and malts. There was no welcome party. He took a train to San Pedro, California which took around 20 days. They ran out of water and food on the trip at one point. About 30 of them went into Los Angeles together. His grandmother had a candy stand at Olvera Street [Annotator's Note: in the historic district; part of El Pueblo de Los Angeles, founded in 1781] in town. His grandfather had been killed in the Mexican Revolution and his grandmother came to the United States. [Annotator's Note: Ledesma describes making candy at length.] His grandmother would send him packages of the candy she made. His grandmother's letters to him would be one long sentence. The military censors thought it was some kind of code and that she was a spy. When he was on Mindoro, she would send him food like jalapenos stuffed with shrimp. The Spanish-speakers would sit and talk together. He gave a friend one who thought it was a cucumber and did not know it was a pepper. Ledesma fell asleep on guard duty once and was sent to the front. He had six hand grenades and he was guarding a bridge. Every time he heard a Japanese soldier say, "Joe come and help me" he would throw a grenade at them.

Trinidad Ledesma did not go by the name Trinidad while on duty overseas. He found out Trinidad meant gay people and thought that was why girls would not dance with him. He changed his name to Tony from then on. Survival is the main objective of life to him. His job was to lay wire and hook up telephones. They would use three wires, two of which would be fake. He was laying wire once and he had two guards with him. He came upon a small sand hill and he sent the guards to check it out. They came back into sight and Ledesma ran to get over the hill with the wire reel. The dirt started spraying up around him and after he made it over the hill, he saw that his boot was cut from a bullet and his foot was bleeding. The medic put some powder on it and Ledesma went on. The medic was killed shortly afterwards as the Japanese were targeting the medics and people of rank. Soldiers would remove their rank insignia because it would make them a target.

Trinidad Ledesma was present when MacArthur [Annotator's Note: US Army General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] landed in the Philippines. The movie reel everyone saw of that took about five takes to get right. Ledesma had to radio in for gun fire when the taping would start so it would sound like war was going on. To the left of where it was filmed was a building for WACS [Annotator's Note: members of the Women's Army Corps; the women's branch of the US Army from 1942 to 1978] and a hospital was on the right. [Annotator's Note: Ledesma describes the fights between MacArthur and President Harry S. Truman over the planned invasions of Japan and the Philippines.] Ledesma saw the buildings that had been destroyed by the atomic bomb. They were not told to not get close to them. Ledesma says that the population [Annotator's Note: the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki] had been warned that it was coming but the civilians were fanatics as well, so he thought it was okay. The number of lives that would have been lost in an assault would have been enormous.

Trinidad Ledesma was tired and had jungle worms, so he decided not to reenlist. He was at a hospital and quarantined from the other patients. They gave him a big pill that they called the "Napalm Bomb." He swallowed it and had diarrhea. [Annotator's Note: Ledesma describes the St. John's Day festivities there.] His stomach has never been the same. His records were burned in Sacramento, California in a fire. Ledesma is not his real name. His real name is Flores. [Annotator's Note: Ledesma talks of speaking with a lawyer about his name use but it is not clear what he means.] He did go to college for two years on the G.I. Bill. His wife became ill and he had to leave college and go to work. He was a recreational director in Los Angeles, California. After that he worked in Riverside, California assisting with immigration. He would go and talk to prisoners. He got stuck inside once during a guard change and they thought he was a prisoner. He was a music teacher for a little while, but he did not make enough money doing that. He retired from being a bus driver in Los Angeles.

When Trinidad Ledesma lived in Riverside, California, he would get up in the middle of the night and make his family get in the closet because he thought the Japanese were coming. He did not remember doing any of this in the morning. He went to a psychiatrist. He was watching a lot of war movies on television and they triggered those episodes. It took him about two years to adjust after the war. He did not remember nightmares or dreams very often. A lot of his friends went crazy after the war. He did not want to see many of his friends as he did not want to remember things from the war. His most memorable time was being in a foxhole with a priest and they were pinned down for two days. They spoke about a lot of things, including religion. Ledesma says that by drafting him, the government decided he was going to fight in the war. From 18 to 21 years of age, he grew up too fast due to his duty and he did not experience what a normal life would have been. In Mexico, a promise is made to the Virgin of Guadalupe. Ledesma took a friend and some family members with him to Mexico City to pay homage to the Virgin. He has gone back but he does not like the new church. [Annotator's Note: Ledesma describes the Shroud of Turin in Piedmont, Italy.] His service showed him respect, taught him to be nonjudgmental, and to listen to both sides of any story. American today should pay attention to what happened in World War 2. He thinks that everybody should visit the museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana] because it is where the story is really told. This war was the first time America was actually attacked. We are now sending the cream of our youth to fight other people's wars. Too many people are followers and do not question what is happening. He is told he is a hero. He was just lucky. The heroes gave their lives.