Find the illegal alien…

Vlasil and Maria emigrated to the United States with their baby son, and changed their names– and their son’s name — from their native language to something more understandable in English.   Mykael, raised in Pennsyvlania under the name Michael, like many an immigrant, joined the Marine Corps after graduating from High School and working for eighteen months on a road crew.

Your “typical” illegal alien story, but ..

Illegal alien Marine Sgt. Michael Strank — remembered as “the kind of Marine you make movies about” — was attempting to string a telephone line to the top of Mount Suribachi on 19 February 1945, when he was commanded to place a larger flag on the mount, that could be seen across Iwo Jima.

Technically, under the laws in force at the time,  Michael Strank — born in Jarabina Czechoslovakia (Slovakia, today) in 1919 —   should have become a citizen in 1935, when his father received naturalization.  But there is no record of this, and today’s Homeland Security would have sent deporation orders along with his discharge, had Sergeant Strank not been killed in action 1 March 1945, less than a two weeks after this photo was taken.

His alien status was discovered by accident by Gunnery Sergeant Matt Blaise, a security guard at the U.S. Embassay in Slovakia researching Strank’s biography.  While other foreign-born adults are being deported, Strank was posthumously awarded United States citizenship last week.  His “anchor baby” sister accepted the certificate at a ceremony in Arlington, Virginia.

Strank is the third man from the end.  Cpl. Ira Hayes, an Akimel O’odham at the far left in the photo, could not legally vote in his home state of Arizona. Native Americas were still considered “wards of the state” and legal incompetents until 1947. Nineteen year old rural Kentuckian Frank Sousley, the next man in line, was also killed in action within a few weeks of the flag raising. John Bradley, who stands in front of Strank was a navy corpsman, who survived to run a funeral parlor in Wisconsin, but according to his son suffered from combat-related stress for years; Rene Gagnon, who also survived the war, and is the other man behind the flag (in front of Strank) was also an “anchor baby”, his parents being French-speaking Canadian immigrants. He tried to cash in on his celebrity, but — like Ira Hayes — was an alcoholic and never able to get his act together. Harlon Block, who is planting the flag at the far right, was from the Texas Rio Grande Valley. He was killed in action the same day as Michael Strank. Originally, Rene Gagnon misidentified Block as another Marine, and it took Congressional hearings, as well as Ira Hayes’ testimony — he hitchhiked from Arizona to Harlingen Texas to set the record straight.

Except maybe for John Bradley, the Navy corpsman, these guys were from blue-collar or poor homes. Three were almost “archetypical” Marines — coming from the the Rio Grande Valley, a reservation and the rural south. One was an “anchor baby” and one an undocumented alien.