This song haunts Richard...
...may it have the same impact on all of us
By: Richard Gilbert
The Song That Wouldn’t Let Them Disappear
In January 1948, a chartered twin-engine DC-3 caught fire from an engine fuel leak and crashed into the rugged terrain of Los Gatos Canyon in the San Francisco Bay Area.
All 32 people aboard were killed—the crew of four and 28 passengers. The passengers were Mexican migrant workers being deported after a season laboring in American fruit fields.
News coverage named the crew: pilot Frank Atkinson, co-pilot Marion Ewing, flight attendant Bobbi Atkinson, and immigration guard Frank E. Chaplin. But not one of the 27 men or the single woman deported on that flight was identified by name. They were simply referred to in headlines and dispatches as “deportees.”
They now lie in a mass grave in a cemetery in Fresno, California.
The crash made news from coast to coast. In New York, folk singer Woody Guthrie read those reports and was enraged. How could human beings be stripped of their names in death? In protest, he wrote a poem—part elegy, part indictment—channeling the indignity of those unnamed souls.
Ten years later, schoolteacher Martin Hoffman added a melody. Pete Seeger, Guthrie’s longtime friend, began performing it at concerts. It spread like truth often does—quietly, insistently, defiantly.
The song might have faded like the crash itself. But it didn’t.
It was passed from artist to artist: Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, Joni Mitchell, Arlo Guthrie, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Bruce Springsteen. Peter, Paul and Mary. The Byrds. The Kingston Trio.
Each one brought it to a new audience, a new generation. Yet the message remained: the humanity of every soul matters. The song—sometimes titled Deportee or Plane Wreck at Los Gatos Canyon—is as gut-wrenchingly relevant now as it was 80 years ago.
I’ve never been able to listen without a tear.
Now, more than ever.
How about you?
And here is Arlo Guthrie performing his father’s words at Farm Aid 2000:
Songs can keep stories alive…John McCutcheon
Another version of this timeless and timely ballad:
John McCutcheon "Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos)" (Woody Guthrie) @ Eddie Owen Presents
Plane Wreck at Los Gatos
(also known as "Deportee")
Words by Woody Guthrie, Music by Martin Hoffman
Contact Publisher - TRO-Essex Music Group
The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting,
The oranges piled in their creosote dumps;
They're flying 'em back to the Mexican border
To pay all their money to wade back again
Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye, Rosalita,
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria;
You won't have your names when you ride the big airplane,
All they will call you will be "deportees"
My father's own father, he waded that river,
They took all the money he made in his life;
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees,
And they rode the truck till they took down and died.
Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted,
Our work contract's out and we have to move on;
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border,
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.
We died in your hills, we died in your deserts,
We died in your valleys and died on your plains.
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes,
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.
The sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon,
A fireball of lightning, and shook all our hills,
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says, "They are just deportees"
Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except "deportees"?
Okoboji Writers’ and Songwriters’ Retreat
Julie here. I started a new column to separate the information updates about the Okoboji retreat this fall, September 18-October 1.
If you’ve been plagued by self-doubt, this one’s for you:
The Iowa Writers’ Collaborative
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The lyrics are so resonant today! Thanks for sharing this, Richard.
Thank you, Richard. This song speaks to everything that is happening to these dear people today. They are labeled as “illegals”, “criminals”, “monsters”. No, they are people who work hard, pay taxes, raise families, and make us a better, richer country. They are seeking the promise of the American dream.
The worst part is that these dear people are going to suffer and pay the ultimate price for this madness before a majority of the population will wake up.