Garcia serves alongside white characters played by Brad Pitt, Shia Lebeouf, and Jon Bernthal.
The US Army in WWII was segregated by race. Would a man named Garcia really have served amongst whites? If yes, does this mean that Hispanics or Latinos were to some extent considered white?
In the 1940 U.S. census, as in all censuses, there was a question asked concerning the race of home occupants;
There was no racial category for Hispanic-Americans on the census, so the vast majority of them just marked "white." As a result, it is not really known how many Hispanic-Americans served in WWII; it is estimated to be between 250,000 and 500,000. Hispanic-Americans, like Filipinos and Filipino-Americans (~140,000; up to 400,000 if counting Filipino guerrillas in the Philippines), Native Americans (~25-40,000), Chinese-Americans (~12-20,000), and Korean-Americans (~100), were not segregated and served along with whites in all aspects of the military. The tanker on the very left appears to be of Asian descent. Certain units, as a consequence of geography, were made up almost entirely of Hispanic-Americans (Company E of the 141st Infantry Regiment, 36th Infantry Division, Texas National Guard).
Source:
