NMCentennialBlueBook

*1941
John E. Miles (D) is re-elected governor for two-year term.
Concha Ortiz y Pino de Kleven, first elected to the New Mexico legislature in 1936, becomes
House Democratic Majority Whip, first woman to hold such position in the U.S.
Albuquerque Army Air Base renamed Kirtland Field.
The National Guard’s 200th Coast Artillery left Ft. Bliss for a secret destination. Many New
Mexicans were part of this unit and were later part of the fight with the Japanese in the Philippines
hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Half of the 1,800 New Mexicans later captured died during
the infamous Bataan Death March.
*1942
Holloman Air Force Base is established at Alamogordo and Cannon Air Force Base is
established in Clovis.
USS Santa Fe (CL-60), a Cleveland class light cruiser, is launched. Young Santa Fean, Caroline
Chavez, daughter of Judge David Chavez, does the christening.
Santa Fe’s former Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp in northern hillside (now Casa
Solana residential area and land near parking lot of De Vargas Mall) overlooking what is now the
National Cemetery became a Japanese American Internment Camp and held 4,555 men between
1942-46 from various locations around the nation. 425 Japanese Americans (alien enemies)
enterned in Santa Fe as part of a Federal Relocation Act. 401 more join them a few weeks later.
Another camp opened near Lordsburg and had some 2,000 Japanese enemy aliens between 1942-
43. The following years the camp housed Italian Prisoners of War (POW) and then finally German
POW’s.
These Italian and German POW's ended up being used to help families on their ranches and farms
since most of our New Mexican laborers were off fighting in WWII. The Geneva Convention
rulings involving prisoners of war treatment required that they had to be housed in areas climatically
similar to where they were captured. Therefore they ended up in New Mexico and the South. At
is highest level (between 1942-46) 13,000 POW's work in New Mexico caring for fields, livestock,
cleaning irrigation ditches, building rock walls, cooking, doing janitorial work and other work at
Army Air Fields in Alamogordo, Clovis, Deming, Ft. Sumner, Kirtland, Melrose and Ft. Bliss.
**The U.S. War Department acquires a remote ranch school in the Jémez Mountains which is
selected to become the secret national center for nuclear research, namely the Manhattan Project.
The area becomes known as Los Alamos.
**Navajo Code Talkers
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States developed a new component to its plan to
develop an improved code system that would be difficult to decipher. After using Choctaw and
Comanche's native languages in WWI, it was suggested by Philip Johnston, an Anglo who had
grown up on the Navajo reservation, to try the Navajo language since it was virtually an unwritten
language; it was complex and virtually incomprehensible outside of the tribe. More than 3500
Navajos served in the armed forces of WWII and their wartime experiences were, for each, their
first encounter with both the American society and foreign lands. This had a major impact on the
Navajo culture over time.
*1943
John Dempsey (D) is elected governor for two-year term.
**Jose P. Martínez, a Taos native, is the first Hispanic to receive the Medal of Honor for his service
in World War II.
Manhattan Project site on "the Hill" at Los Alamos is established.
New Mexico gets a second U.S. Congressional Seat, filled by Antonio M. Fernandez. The other
Congressman is Clinton Anderson.
*1945
Thousands of Native Americans served in the Armed Forces: 21,767 in the Army, 1,910 in the
Navy, 121 in the Coast Guard, 723 in the enlisted Marines. They receive many decorations for
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