By Juliana A Torres
William R. Ornelas grew up in a family of seven brothers and two sisters in Brownwood, Texas. They worked in the fields picking cotton, corn and wheat.
Like the rest of the country, the Ornelases were hit hard by the Depression.
"The whole world came to a stop. And so of course food and clothing were more important than school," Ornelas recalled.
To better help his family's financial situation, Ornelas dropped out in the 7th grade.
By Mayella Gonzalez
Tony Olivas' mother always told him and his brothers during World War II not to volunteer for the Army -- to wait until they were drafted.
"Don't volunteer. Let them come after you," Olivas recalls his mother saying around the time political and military tensions were running high between the United States and Japan, and Washington was warning military commanders to be on guard throughout the Pacific.
By Ana Cristina Acosta
For most Americans, walking down the street, entering a restaurant through the front door or going to the grocery store is routine. But for Mary Murillo, 75, who grew up at a time when Mexican Americans suffered blatant discrimination, those simple things weren’t always possible.
By Lindsay Fitzpatrick
Jesus Humberto Morales survived 11 months unharmed in the jungles of New Guinea. It wasn’t until after that, in the Philippines, when he got hurt.
Shrapnel hit Morales and his partner as they were reloading a bazooka. His comrade died, but Morales managed to survive, sustaining an injury that required an artificial joint be implanted in his thumb.
Morales, who was born Oct. 25, 1918, served in Company L of the 20th Infantry, 6th Division.
By Isis Romero
While many 18-year-olds are getting ready for college and planning their senior trips, teenagers living in the early 1940s got ready for something else, and took trips of a different sort.
Ernest J. Montoya was one of those teenagers. Born in 1925 to farmers from Colorado, Montoya remembers the day he left for the Army.
"I didn't join the service. I was drafted," Montoya said. "I knew there was a war going on ... I didn't realize how serious it was to get drafted."
By Haldun Morgan
"We were in Saipan when I had my first taste of combat. Not combat, [but] of bombs being dropped on us, trying to sink us. And I'm staring at the airplanes dropping, and I'm sure everyone is gonna hit us."
Before his initiation into World War II, Alvino Mendoza wondered what it would be like.
By Yazmin Lazcano
The experience of stepping over hundreds of bodies -- the sounds of mine blasts, surf pelting the coast and bullets whizzing overhead filling his ears -- is as vivid to Porfirio Martinez today as it was 55 years ago.
For Martinez, WWII isn’t over. He fought in major battles, and continues fighting today through nightmares of the D-Day landings.
Martinez recalled the 'tiradero' (the mess) of thousands of bodies on the beach during the second wave of D-Day landings.
"Dead. All dead," he said.
By Ayesha Mirza
Jose Angel Lopez saw myriad battlegrounds while braving the frontlines across France, Belgium and Germany in World War II.
His tales of loss and heroism are as abundant as the grains of sand on the Normandy coast. He was part of General George S. Patton's 3d Army, who liberated one of the first and largest Nazi concentration camps at Buchenwald, captured Hitler's designated successor, Hermann Goering, and saved the city of Luxembourg from German troops in the Battle of the Bulge.
By Kimberly Tilley
On the walls of a small, comfortable East Austin residence, family photographs fill the house. A framed photo of a beaming couple sits on the mantle, and an adjacent bedroom contains a small altar with a photo, surrounded by a crucifix and several candles, of a young man with long black hair and soulful eyes. On the handcrafted bookcase, more photographs of happy faces adorn the shelves.
by Minette Hernandez
MCALLEN, Texas -- Ask Heriberto Longoria, Sr. about the license plate on his 1996 Mercury Grand Marquis, and he will proudly tell you the piece of metal, which displays a Purple Heart, cost him only three dollars. To earn those plates, he valiantly fought in World War II, but the scars of war, which tend to toughen a man, have not overcome the 81-year-old veteran.