Mexican immigrants Antonio Jasso and Genoveva Ramirez Jasso, who picked cotton in South Texas, would see five of their sons go off to war.
Their granddaughter, Evelyn Jasso Garcia, set out to record their story, and that of her father and uncles. An associate professor at San Antonio College, she regrets she wasn't able to interview her uncles, but gratified her dad, Jose "Joe" Jasso lived to see the fruit of her research.
By Marjon Rostami
One day Cruz Rodriguez was picking corn and tomatoes on a farm outside of Chicago; the next day, the undocumented Mexican immigrant was preparing to go to war.
"They [the U.S. Army] didn't care if you were legal or not," Rodriguez said during his interview. "They just needed soldiers. They took Mexicans off the field and they [were sent] ... to war."
By Cheryl Smith Kemp
Joseph Ramirez turned the Army down when officers tried to keep him on at the end of 1945, asking him to serve six more months in World War II, at the promised rank of Sergeant.
Ramirez wanted to go home.
“I was certain I would be able to get a job in the Engineering Department,” he said, referring to Armor Institute of Technology, now Illinois Institute of Technology, from where he’d graduated before the war.
In many ways, the postwar years of Felipe L. Cantú represent a quintessential profile of a World War II veteran, quietly resuming his life, but with a modest hesitancy to discuss combat experiences or express his feelings. In many other ways, however, Cantú’s story is atypical: a journalist who wrote vividly of the war and an artist whose works include scenes from the front lines.
By Yazmin Lazcano
As a young girl, Bernarda Quintana and her brothers and sister carried heavy buckets of water to their father, who mixed straw and adobe to create their home in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. When Quintana was 12, her father was shot to death after publicly opposing the 1940 presidential winner. Quintana quit school to help support her family, first by doing odd jobs, then as a seamstress making uniforms for soldiers.
The Other Soldiers
Little-remembered treaty sent 300,000 sons of Mexico to the United States during WWII; their weapons were their labor-hardy bodies
By Violeta Dominguez
The battlefield wasn’t the only place where Mexicans lent their services during World War II.
In spite of the fact that few remember, the North American home front counted on the help of nearly 300,000 servicemen known as “soldiers of the furrows and the railroad,” as well as, simply, laborers, or, in Spanish, braceros.
The Other Soldiers
Little-remembered treaty sent 300,000 sons of Mexico to the United States during WWII; their weapons were their labor-hardy bodies
By Violeta Dominguez
The battlefield wasn’t the only place where Mexicans lent their services during World War II.
In spite of the fact that few remember, the North American home front counted on the help of nearly 300,000 servicemen known as “soldiers of the furrows and the railroad,” as well as, simply, laborers, or, in Spanish, braceros.
The Other Soldiers
Little-remembered treaty sent 300,000 sons of Mexico to the United States during WWII; their weapons were their labor-hardy bodies
By Violeta Dominguez
The battlefield wasn’t the only place where Mexicans lent their services during World War II.
In spite of the fact that few remember, the North American home front counted on the help of nearly 300,000 servicemen known as “soldiers of the furrows and the railroad,” as well as, simply, laborers, or, in Spanish, braceros.
The Other Soldiers
Little-remembered treaty sent 300,000 sons of Mexico to the United States during WWII; their weapons were their labor-hardy bodies
By Violeta Dominguez
The battlefield wasn’t the only place where Mexicans lent their services during World War II.
In spite of the fact that few remember, the North American home front counted on the help of nearly 300,000 servicemen known as “soldiers of the furrows and the railroad,” as well as, simply, laborers, or, in Spanish, braceros.
The Other Soldiers
Little-remembered treaty sent 300,000 sons of Mexico to the United States during WWII; their weapons were their labor-hardy bodies
By Violeta Dominguez
The battlefield wasn’t the only place where Mexicans lent their services during World War II.
In spite of the fact that few remember, the North American home front counted on the help of nearly 300,000 servicemen known as “soldiers of the furrows and the railroad,” as well as, simply, laborers, or, in Spanish, braceros.