MIAMI — Armed but alone, Marine Pfc. Guy Gabaldon roamed Saipan's caves and pillboxes, persuading enemy soldiers and civilians to surrender during the hellish World War II battle on the island.

Using the Japanese language skills he learned as a boy, he warned the Japanese they would die if they stayed hidden, and told them Marines were not torturers as they had heard. The Marines, he said, would feed them and give them medical care. Many agreed, and Gabaldon, just 18, led them back to U.S. lines.

By the battle's end, Gabaldon had coaxed more than 1,000 Japanese out of the steamy caves. He was praised as being brave and compassionate, and he received a Silver Star — later upgraded to a Navy Cross. His actions were recounted on television and in movies.

Now, almost two years after his death, there is a renewed campaign to give Gabaldon the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military award. A new documentary, "East L.A. Marine," asks whether Gabaldon's Hispanic heritage prevented him from receiving the medal, though others blame his tough and outspoken nature.

Critics question whether Gabaldon deserves the medal, saying his feats do not measure up to those of others on Saipan.

"It's a much bigger issue than any of us realize," said Steve Rubin, who directed the documentary, which was made available online on May 6. "Guy is a symbol not only of a hero in war, but a man who treated people humanely. He killed people, sure, but having grown up essentially as a Japanese, he treated them as human beings."

Growing up in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, Gabaldon became close with a Japanese-American family and made friends with Japanese boys. He also picked up the language as he delivered Japanese newspapers and picked crops with Japanese-Americans.

After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, more than 100,000 people of Japanese heritage, including Gabaldon's friends, were sent to internment camps.

"He got very upset when the government put the Japanese in concentration camps," said his second wife, Ohana Gabaldon, who lives in Old Town in central Florida.

Gabaldon joined the Marines in 1943, becoming a scout observer and interpreter, and hit the shore of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands on June 15, 1944. Combat was often in close quarters in jungles and caves, and more than 3,200 Americans and 23,800 Japanese were killed, according to a 1994 Marine Corps pamphlet, "Breaching the Marianas: The Battle for Saipan."

Civilians, some prisoners of Japanese soldiers, hid in caves. They included women and children, and were hungry and suffering from shell shock, leprosy, dengue fever. Fearing the Americans, Japanese civilians blew themselves up with grenades or jumped off cliffs.

Gabaldon did his share of killing, but one day he ventured alone behind enemy lines and brought back a group of Japanese prisoners. Gabaldon was scolded by his commander, Col. John Schwabe, but went out alone again and returned with more Japanese.

Satisfied, Schwabe let Gabaldon continue.

"He would go up to the mouth of that cave and jabber, jabber, jabber, and pretty soon somebody would dribble out," Schwabe said in the documentary.

Eventually, Gabaldon had rounded up 1,000 to 1,500 Japanese — including a purported 800 in one day.

"Through his efforts, a definite humane treatment of civilian prisoners was insured," according to a Marine Corps document detailing Gabaldon's credentials for a Silver Star.

Interviewed in the documentary, Gabaldon discussed his motivation. "Being raised in the barrio, every day is a fight," Gabaldon said. "You're fighting to survive in the barrio and I think that might have had something to do with my personality, my makeup. I knew I was doing something that had never been done in World War II."