By Erika L. Martinez
When Agapito Casarez Gonzalez was drafted into the Army on June 2, 1942, he never imagined the horrors and devastation his eyes would have to see.
"The draft got me," Gonzalez said.
And even though his memory fails him at times, he vividly remembers the day he saw the bodies of Mussolini and his mistress hanging in the town square of Milan, Italy, in April of 1945.
By Monica Rivera
When she was being trained as an airplane mechanic in the 1940s, Josephine Ledesma was the only woman in her training group. Later, as an airplane mechanic at Bergstrom Air Field, she was one of three women out of her seven-person workgroup.
One typical scenario was having several people working on one plane.
"You had people working on the electric part, on the hydraulic part, on the engine," said Ledesma during an interview at her home. "I happened to work on the fuselage, the body of the plane."