Vladimir Mendoza Romero was born Aug. 25, 1921 in Tampa, Florida. His mother, Frances Mendoza Romero, and father, Rafael Romero Palacios, were Mexican immigrants.

The 1930 Census said the father was a shoemaker and the mother a roller at a cigar factory. It appears that the father returned to Mexico in the 1930s because of poor health.

By April 1935 Mrs. Romero, four children, a grandson, and her mother lived in New York City on Madison Avenue near East 107th Street. When Vladimir applied to the Navy in the fall of 1940, he said he’d completed 10th grade at Haaren High School and had been working for two months as a waiter. He enlisted on Oct. 15, 1940.

Mr. Romero was a seaman first class on the U.S.S. Arizona when he was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.

His mother’s background is an interesting side story. She was among a group charged in 1931 with unlawful assembly and communism for allegedly fomenting a Florida riot in which a policeman was injured.  They were convicted and Mrs. Romero served a year in jail. The state supreme court later reversed the convictions. The arrests occurred at a time when 7,000 cigar-factory workers had gone on strike.

After Vladimir was killed at Pearl Harbor his mother was interviewed by a reporter for the Daily World, a New York newspaper that was the official voice of the Communist Party USA.

“We must fight with our souls and bodies to liberate humanity from the Nazis,” she said. “I appeal to mothers and sisters and women in general to help in every way that they can, and to back President Roosevelt’s program. We must open a second front to help Soviet Russia, the hope of the world, and to defend our own country.”

Sources: The Journal News of White Plains, New York; the Daily World of New York; the Tampa Times; Census; Navy enlistment records and muster roll; World War II military registration card.