Honduras in WWII

Since this is the month of the anniversary of the end of WWII in Europe I will write a little about Honduras and this war. Honduras declared war on Japan on December 8 1941, and on Germany and Italy four days later, yes we were at war during World War II, but mostly because if we didn't declare war, we would have been in trouble with the good old USA. We even had a Honduran air force patrol plane shot down possibly by German anti aircraft weapons, pilot and co-pilot died. We did have German submarines around the area as the US had a military base in Puerto Castilla. So a few Hondurans actually went to fight in Europe enlisting in the US Army, but mostly our participation was the use of the Honduras flag for merchant vessels that crossed the Atlantic, many of the sailors on these vessels were Honduran citizens, of which according to some records about 150 died.

In reality the outcome for the country was mostly negative, most of all because the properties of hardworking German citizens who actually had nothing to do with the German war effort were expropriated, and these people were contributing with their hard work and discipline to the development of this country, and knowing the type of government we have always had these properties were taken over by crooked politicians and the moneyed people of the time and were no longer worked, I'm talking about land, commerce and businesses, these were no longer used so we lost jobs and money.

But the sad thing is we really had no business getting involved, but it is a continuing story we also declared war on Irak and sent about 100 soldiers there just to be on the good side of Uncle Sam, frankly I think it is ridiculous.