- On a fall morning in 1943, several dozen young men arrived by train in Hood River, Oregon.

Most bring little more than an extra change of lightweight clothes.

- They could not anticipate the weather, the environment, the climate, the space.

They had no idea what Oregon was.

They came very ill dressed.

- They're more than a thousand miles from their homes.

They speak no English.

They've been traveling nonstop for days, yet will be hard at work, at their new jobs tomorrow.

It's a scene that's repeating in hundreds of other towns across the country, - From Belle Glade Florida to Seattle, Washington, from San Diego to Boston, and all places in between.

- They're called Braceros.

Men with strong arms recruited in Mexico, transported here by the US government for an emergency wartime mission.

- And that's the interesting thing about this Bracero program, is that historians have done a very poor job acknowledging the contribution of this, of this generation of men to the war economy of the United States.

- Whenever I watched the World War II documentary, they talk about how Americans won the war and true and the sacrifices that Americans went through.

But who fed the Americans who fed the allies?

It was Mexicans, Braceros - Miguel: My first experience with the Bracero program was in the early fifties.

As a child I used to live in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, which is right next door to Eagle Pass, Texas.

I saw Braceros coming back from their various commitments with the agricultural work in the United States, and I helped them across the, the, the bridge from Eagle Pass to Piedras Negras.

- The Bracero program began as a World War II arrangement between Mexico and the United States.

It outlined a plan for American employers to contract Mexican workers for wartime labor shortages.

Nationally, the program lived on long after the war until 1964.

And in that time, close to four and a half million Mexican men worked as Braceros.

- They would return to Mexico with their Levi's looking good, with their nice shirts.

And I thought they're doing well.

- And that's how we would find out about it.

Look, this guy is going, that guy is going.

People we knew, people we didn't know.

All of a sudden they'd arrive home speaking English or so they thought, and well dressed too.

Coming from a poor family, I wanted to go in search of that.

- Countless Mexican lives were changed by the Bracero program and it also changed the economy and the culture of the United States in ways no one had anticipated.

The United States entry into World War II presented a monumental challenge to American farmers.

They would need to feed and clothe not only a nation at war, but also millions of allied troops and European civilians.

Luckily for farmers, many of the federal irrigation projects begun in the thirties had been completed.

Vast areas of what had been desert would be transformed into productive farmland.

New rural electrification projects stood ready to power pumps, sprinklers and canneries.

But as the war effort demanded higher than ever levels of production, one key element remained in short supply -- labor.

Tens of thousands of American farm workers join the military.

David: I can give you a real good example of that is my father.

My father worked in the fields and my mother worked in the canneries.

And so when my father was working in the fields, World War II erupted.

He was drafted, and so someone had to take his place.

- Other workers abandoned the fields for better paying war industry jobs in the cities.

Farm owners found themselves in dire straits.

Erasmo: They try to meet the labor shortage by appealing to what was called the time domestic labor.

And that includes all unemployed women, school children, prisoners of war, Japanese intern labor.

But at the very end, they turned to Mexico.

- The two countries negotiated an agreement to be administered by the US Department of Labor.

- First of all, they ran ads.

Newspaper ads was ran by the Mexican government to attract people from particularly the rural areas to come into the cities Jesus: In Mexico, the word bracero was unknown.

We didn't know what Bracero meant.

At that time, I was taking care of animals and people would say, Braceros, they need Braceros in the US - For what we would ask ourselves.

And nobody could tell us.

- In one of the first cities that opened up the centers was Mexico City in 1942.

And in 1942, they attracted Braceros, too many of them actually to, to be contracted.

They figured they'd get a four or 5,000.

They got about 50,000 people just in the city of Mexico the first time they try to contract them.

- Most of them are very young men.

The selection process is going to ensure that, that they're going to be young able-bodied men sort of in the prime of their lives.

- They leave their families.

There's many communities where you could finally kids and, and women, you know, because maybe half of the men had gone to the north.

Well, Norte to be Braceros.

- There were a lot of men who actually had some level of education and they are rejected.

- They would ask to see our hands to see if they were calloused.

The people that had soft hands would not be contracted to work.

You're not a farmer, they would say.

- If they qualify, then they will be selected.

And then they will be sent to a another selection point on the border between the United States and Mexico and their US authorities will look them over again, inspect them for their physical ability, feel their biceps, their muscles.

They will give them tests for venereal disease, for syphilis.

They will prick the skin for tuberculosis.

- They sprayed us with DDT, in the hair, all over.

They thought we had fleas.

They would remove our clothing and shower us with powdered DDT with compression hoses from head to toe.

And we'd say, well, DDT is beneficial.

- Many of these young men had never been out of their small communities.

So if they have a contract, it says Yamhill, Oregon.

They have no idea where Yamhill is.

And certainly no idea where Oregon is, the climate, anything.

But that is the process.

- Once in the us the men would often pass through a facility like this, the Rio Vista Center outside El Paso.

- I would see all of the ladies and secretaries working their little machines, but boy could they move, move really fast.

These people meant business.

We went in single file lines and we would find ourselves with all of our paperwork after an hour or two.

Everything we needed, photos, fingerprints.

Everything.

- Minerva Cheatham, just out of high school, got her first job in the Rio Vista typing pool processing contracts for incoming and outgoing Braceros.

- The ones that I remember most vivid are the people that came from the state of Oaxaca.

They were indigenous people and they were very poor.

And they had walked for miles and miles.

And when they came here, they had type of sandal and their feet were bleeding.

And oh, it was just awful.

They had their white clothes and everything.

And I don't know how long they hadn't eaten because I was typing a contract for one of the gentlemen, and I was asking him questions and suddenly I looked down, you know, to at the typewriter, to type to the contract.

But I was typing and I looked up and he wasn't there anymore.

And so I looked around and nobody said anything.

None of the Braceros, there was about 200 Braceros in the building at that time.

And I said, where's the gentleman that I was talking to?

And they said, he's right there, right in front of you.

And I looked over at my desk and sure enough, he had passed, passed out.

You know, he had fainted.

- Thousands of Braceros were sent to do track maintenance on the nation's railroads, but most were offered agricultural jobs, perhaps to pick cotton in Arkansas or citrus in Florida.

- But for me, - For me, I felt that I made a good amount of money, more money than than what I made in Mexico.

We were poor children of farmers.

So yeah, it was great for us.

- At one time or another, most Braceros worked in California.

The city of Stockton honors contributions of the Braceros with this statue downtown.

Octavio Camarena remembers the backbreaking strain brought on by the shorthand tool supplied to the workers.

Octavio: Difficult, the most difficult tool was the shorthand hoe because a lot of people damaged their lower backs, an injury that lasted their entire lives.

Today, there are still people walking around bent over.

- So harmful was the shorthand hoe that its use was eventually banned In California, most Braceros knew only Spanish that pos few problems in the border states.

Isidro: Most of the farmers here know Spanish.

90% of the ones that I worked for spoke Spanish very well.

That's one of the problems.

You don't learn to speak English because you don't hear it.

- But in the Pacific Northwest, Latino culture was still quite sparse.

Few locals knew Spanish.

Erasmo: This is probably the first of the big, it's the first big influx of of Mexican origin.

People coming to the state of Oregon - the Bracero program.

- The newcomers found little that was familiar.

No Mexican businesses or restaurants.

The nearest Mexican consulate was in Salt Lake City.

The Latino presence that pervades so many northwest communities today simply didn't exist in the 1940s.

- These men, they're sort of out of sight, out of mind, if you will, with regard to, to the Mexican government.

So they're literally on their own.

- Braceros harvested apples in the Yakima Valley hops in the Willamette Valley, potatoes in Klamath County and sugar beets in eastern Oregon and Idaho.

The Northwest Farm News described these jobs in almost poetic terms, being in the out of doors, working at top efficiency in the cool of the morning, and slowing to a more languid pace as the noon sun warms the back and relaxes the spirit.

There's joy in handling the ripe round fruit, either picking or packing pears, apples and prunes.

But in real life, the work was simply hard.

- You can imagine working, harvesting sugar beets in close to freezing temperatures.

And the men are not accustomed to this.

- They stayed in dozens of camps, scattered throughout the state.

The living quarters ranged from adequate to poor.

The men endured frequent bouts of infectious disease and respiratory and gastrointestinal ailments.

Workplace injuries were common.

- You have a all Spanish speaking labor force and an English speaking employer that just complicates and makes it very difficult to properly instruct them in how to climb a tree, how to move a ladder, how to work around dangerous equipment.

And this complicates and as the cause of many accidents, - Many accidents occurred when men simply fell off the flatbed trucks that transported them from place to place.

Miguel: And I think that we have to keep in perspective that when the Bracero program was first initiated, which was 50 years ago or so, the rules and regulations and the laws that we, that govern our states now and labor laws and so forth, were not in existence - Yet these men performed beyond all expectations.

A Walla Walla pea farmer said, we wouldn't trade one of these Mexicans for 10 of the kind of help we have had on this job before.

- We like to work a lot, but we're unaccustomed to this new way of working.

We didn't know about breaks.

They wanted us to take breaks, but we didn't want to.

We wanted to keep working.

- The contributions of of the Mexican men, I think were enormous.

They come at a time when the nation needs Mexico's help.

And I like to believe that in many parts of the country, parts of Oregon, these men made the difference between harvested and perish crops.

Initially, the men, when they arrive, they're seen as godsend because the labor shortage is, is, is so severe.

Farmers are having to plow their crops under Green bean production around independence.

There's no one to pick these beans.

And when the workers arrive, there's actually a, a, a kind of a celebratory mood, but it, it lasts maybe a year or so.

And after that it begins quickly and someplace to go downhill.

Idaho in particular, is notorious for the discrimination against the men.

Paul: Discrimination was still evident, particularly in states like Texas, which was denied Braceros when the program began because of the long history of discrimination.

There were still signs that said no Mexicans or dogs allowed in various restaurants or public, public areas.

- But the Braceros were a resilient lot.

Miguel Rubio worked mainly in California.

Miguel: There were businesses that had signs saying they didn't admit black people or Mexicans - - clear signs in English and translated to Spanish.

My friends said, don't go into American restaurants because they'll kick you out.

They never kicked me out because there were so many Mexicans already - In the northwest.

A common complaint among workers concerned the kinds of food served in their camps.

- It's a very big issue.

The food was so different for the men that it caused an enormous problem.

- The men disliked white bread and lunch meats.

Many were convinced that canned corn beef was actually horse meat.

- There was no one to prepare the food that these workers were accustomed to.

And if you can imagine in some of these camp facilities, there are several hundred men.

They all eat the same time.

When they tried to feed them, for example, roast beef, the men would not eat it.

They saw it as uncooked.

They got tired of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

- Braceros in Oregon, Washington and Idaho displayed a unique willingness to stop work, to strike in the face of unfair treatment, poor wages or even unpopular food.

In Nampa, Idaho, more than a thousand Braceros sugar beet workers stopped working for nine days in a dispute over wages.

- The ability of the men to to stand up for their contract and to stand up to abuse is extraordinary because they are alone.

And in a sense they're bound by this contract.

It's extraordinary in another way.

And that is that it is so widespread in the Pacific Northwest.

There is this idea that anyone can do agricultural work, but that's not true.

These had to be taught the skill of agriculture, particularly in places like Oregon where agriculture is highly skilled and necessitated some investment on the part of the employer investing into this worker.

And if the employer found a good worker, generally the advice was, go back to Mexico, but next year, come back.

But bring your family because I want you to, to come back.

I want you to work for me.

And that kind of relationship is found in many parts of the country.

- I think that the Braceros go back and until their loved ones or their families, their communities, you know, how they were treated and how successful they were up here.

And I think that it's evident by the number of Mexicans that we have up here in the northwest, that the, the stories that they told, while they may have had some negative things that were more positive than negative.

So consequently they see Mexicans do see the Northwest as a good place to come and live and and work.

- They can't bring their family under the Bracero program, but they can come back as a free wage earner.

They can immigrate.

And keep in mind that there's almost no restriction on Mexican immigration to the United States during the 1940s.

The border is relatively open.

Concurrently, there's this flow of labor outside of the Braceros program.

- For the most part, the contributions made by Braceros in the Northwest were publicly valued.

Many of the men later brought their families to the United States, establishing themselves in farm towns like Granger, Washington.

And Toppenish, where a colorful mural honors the Mexican men.

- The men allowed the agricultural industry to pull itself out of the depths of the depression and it will sustain agriculture during the course of the war.

- Between their first jobs in the US and the time they finally went home to Mexico, the change in the workers could be dramatic.

- When they came here, the camp was very quiet.

They would sleep and they was very quiet.

When they came back from going to the farms and being contracted, every one of them had a radio and every one of 'em had it full blast and on a different station.

So you can imagine what it sounded like.

- The program lasted just a few years in the Pacific Northwest.

In Oregon, about 15,000 men worked as Braceros between 1943 and 1947.

After the war, the government stopped subsidizing the workers' travel between Mexico and the United States.

And most Oregon farmers dropped out of the program.

- It doesn't mean that the need for farm labor disappears is in fact it's going to be greater.

And that Bracero program gives way to migratory labor, largely persons of Mexican descent.

Now, Mexican Americans, migrant workers coming from other parts of the United States, or in some case from Mexico, but not necessarily Braceros.

I think that the importance of the Bracero program is that it encourages a permanent reliance on Mexican labor by agricultural producers in Oregon.

So I like to think that the Bracero program is the genesis of many of Oregon's Latino communities today.

Independence, Woodburn, Staton and places in eastern Oregon, Nisa, that is the beginning.

This is what starts these communities.

- In recent years, a concerted effort has been made to give Braceros the respect and recognition they deserve.

This includes trying to recoup money deducted from their paychecks in the first years of the program.

- Well, the Bracero program lasted from 1942 to 1964, and there were periods of time when 10% of the Braceros paychecks would be held back and the idea was to hold it back until they to Mexico, at which point they would be given that 10%.

So it was kind of an enforced savings program, but millions of dollars that were held back just disappeared.

- Activists in both countries are working with attorneys to find out what happened to those withholdings.

Their hopeful that one day the Braceros or their families will receive at least some of the money they're due.

Historians like Erasmo Gamboa, say that the United States and the Pacific Northwest in particular owe a debt of appreciation to these men.

- The Bracero program did allow other farm laborers to move out of agriculture and into urban areas that we know that upward mobility from rural areas to urban areas, from low wage employment to a better earning ability in the urban areas.

And that connection is not always acknowledged, but that is precisely what happens.

- All in all, the contributions of these men get little recognition these days and their stories are going untold.

At least one project though, seeks to address that problem.

The Smithsonian Institution is working with the Institute of Oral History at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Together they seek to record as many life stories as possible from surviving Braceros in the United States and Mexico.

Many of these men are now in their eighties and nineties - Capturing the story, any story is important.

I think people need to capture that and learn about their history and about their family because you know once, once your relatives have passed away, I mean, you'll lose that story and you'll never know.

And I think that's just really important - For me, it was a really beautiful time.

We came to visit new places, but we also came to work.

You could say they opened the door for us to come to the United States.

- Thank you.

There's more about the Braceros on Oregon Experience online.

To learn more or to order a DVD of the show, visit opb.org.

Funding for Oregon Experience is provided by the James f and Marian l Miller Foundation, the Ann of Bill Swindells Charitable Trust, the Robert C and Nani S Warren Foundation, and the Oregon Cultural Trust.

Thank you.

Funding for this program was provided in part by the public television stations of the Pacific Mountain Network and by Amador and Rosalie Bustos.