Jose was born in Leon, Philippines, on the 29th of December 1907 and he left high school so that he could work to help support his family, since his mother had died when he was ten years old. At the age of 23, he joined the Philippine Scouts, which was an organization of the US Army, and traveled to the States to complete basic training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. The Philippine Scouts were originally created by the US to help combat the Philippine Revolutionary Army in 1901 remained under the command of American officers until 1948. They became the first to serve in combat for the US in World War 2 and even after the US surrendered the Philippines to the Japanese in 1942, the Philippine Scouts refused to surrender and resisted their occupation and would later be described as the backbone of the American defense of the Philippines. Jose, now an artilleryman, was assigned to Fort Stotsenburg, near Angeles City, Philippines, and while he was there, he married Nora and began a family. When the US declared was with Japan, he was a Sergeant with Battery B of the 88th Field Artillery and was mobilized to Bataan. It was his actions one month later while his unit covered the withdrawal of part of the US Army Forces Far East that would later earn him the Medal of Honor. The citation reads:

The action for which the award was made took place near Culis, Bataan Province, Philippine Islands, on 16 January 1942. A battery gun position was bombed and shelled by the enemy until one gun was put out of commission and all the cannoneers were killed or wounded. Sgt. Calugas, a mess sergeant of another battery, voluntarily and without orders ran 1,000 yards across the shell-swept area to the gun position. There he organized a volunteer squad which placed the gun back in commission and fired effectively against the enemy, although the position remained under constant and heavy Japanese artillery fire.

After displaying these actions, Jose returned to mess duty, and before he could receive the Medal of Honor, 76,000 American and Filipino troops surrendered Bataan to the Japanese. Jose and the other prisoners endured what is now known as the Bataan Death March, which resulted in a death toll that ranges from 500 to 650 American deaths and 5,000 to 18,000 Filipino deaths over the estimate 60 to 69 mile march. He was released from a prisoner camp only to work in a Japanese rice mill. Jose never gave up the fight and secretly joined a guerilla unit and attacked the Japanese until the liberation of the Philippines.

Three years after his actions, Jose received the Medal of Honor from General of the Army George Marshall on the 30th of April 1945, in a ceremony at Camp Olivas. He also received a commission in the US Army and was assigned to the occupation of Okinawa and then to the Ryukyu Islands where he stayed until 1953. Now a member of the US Army, he was assigned to Fort Lewis, Washington, but even though he was born in a US territory and fought for the US during the war, Jose was not considered to be a US citizen and he had to go through the naturalization process, which he completed when he was in Okinawa. He retired from the Army in 1957 at the rank of Captain and settled in Tacoma. Jose brought his family over to the States one-by-one and by 1963 his wife and four children had immigrated, later becoming citizens. He attended the university of Puget Sound and received a degree in business administration in 1961 and worked for the Boeing Corporation until 1972. He had worked on a small plot of farm land in the summers and on the 18th of January 1998, Jose Cabalfin Calugas died at the age of 90. He and his wife are buried in the Mountain View Memorial Park in Lakewood, Washington: New Veteran’s Section, Lot 206, Space 7.