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California's War Dead
By
A census of some of the best of America. And how moving that so many were immigrants:
At 7, Victor H. Toledo-Pulido was smuggled across the border from Mexico through rugged mountains into California. He and another soldier were killed in May 2007 when a roadside bomb exploded near their vehicle southeast of Baghdad.
"They judge us, and they say we just come to take their jobs and positions, but we also make sacrifices. Victor worked since he was little, in the fields and in restaurants," his mother, Maria Gaspar, said after the 22-year-old Mexican was killed in Iraq. "He was Mexican, but he thought like an American. And he gave his life for this country."
Dozens more were the children of immigrants, including Bunny Long, 22, a Marine lance corporal whose parents came from Cambodia, where the Khmer Rouge imprisoned them for four years in a labor camp.
"This is our home," his father, Sim Long, said after his son died. "I'm very proud that Bunny was able to give back to his country. Our country."
