By ISMAEL MARTINEZ
In the beginning of 1944, 22-year-old Tech. Pvt. Leon "Jack" Leura was among the American troops able to cross the raging Rapido River, and help gain control of Italy. That summer, a wounded Leura would be taken prisoner by the Germans, escape and then travel across Russia before he would return home.
Leura was in the 36th Division; Company A, 111th combat engineers. As a Tech 5th grade he discovered and destroyed mines.
By Chris Nay
Even before arriving at the European concentration camps in 1945, Joe Lerma of San Diego and his division could smell the dead.
"The sight and smell of human death is terrible," he said.
His division's job was to inform the camp survivors that the war had ended.
"The people were afraid to come out," he said, describing the difficulty in convincing the men and women that conditions were safe for them - that the nightmare was over.
The Americans were also instructed to leave quickly to prevent contracting disease.
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."
By Amanda Crane
Ruperto Soto Juarez, of Norwalk, Ca., has not had an easy life: he was orphaned as an adolescent; he quit school as a child, he fibbed about his age in order to join the Navy and serve his country in WWII. He has been a political activist, fighting for a fairer world. When his wife was terminally ill, he stayed by her bedside, holding her hand.
His is the story of an everyday hero.
By Liliana Martinez
When Ed Idar was a teenager living in Buenos Aires, a neighborhood in Laredo, Texas, he never thought he’d volunteer as a civilian for Station X in England, and go to India and China while in the Army.
"I came to realize how big the world was, how many societies and cultures there are in this world," Idar said. "Seeing poverty makes you wonder, ‘Why can't we do things to help people?’"
And it was his thirst for helping others that pushed him to devote much of his life to working for the Mexican American community.
By Lucinda Guinn
Candelario Hernandez' family moved to East Austin in 1931 from Seguin, Texas. The only time he left East Austin since then, was during World War II, when he served the United States Army in New Guinea.
"I've been in Austin since I got out of the service," he said. "I never went ... nowhere (else)."
Childhood
Hernandez was born on February 2, 1920, in Seguin, Texas. The oldest of eight children - five brothers and one sister -- he often felt pressure from those around him. His only escape was to explore the nearby woods.
By Antonio Gilb
Over half a century after it happened, Carlos Guerrero remembers the incident in May 1945 clearly - because of what it symbolized about America's racial tensions, as well as because of what it said about how communication can solve problems.
The incident happened like this: Guerrero's 65th Infantry Division was liberating a Nazi concentration camp in Germany. But the platoon sergeant had too much to drink that day and was acting like it. He was acting rowdy, and provoked an African-American major, calling him a "nigger."
By Kristen Henry
Deep blue, purple, coral. Even 60 years after Jesse Guajardo served in the Navy the colors of the seas and oceans he traveled still strike him.
"I went to the Pacific, the Pacific is blue," Guajardo reminisced at his home in East Austin.
"You get down to the Coral Sea and it's just like somebody is drawing a line just like this right here," he said, drawing an invisible line in the air, to show how definite the change in the color of the water was to him.
By Veronica Sainz
Raised with 11 sisters, four brothers and two pet javelinas in the small town of Chapin, Texas, no one could have guessed that Julian Gonzalez would become a decorated veteran of the Normandy invasion.
Gonzalez grew up on a farm where the only creatures hunted were doves or rabbits, and where the daily exchange involved tacos for sandwiches with a hint of World War II on the horizon.
Like many boys his age, Gonzalez says he was disenchanted with school.
By Corina Kellam
Before the births of his son and three daughters, before trying his hand at professional golf training and real estate, Ernie Gonzalez was a naval engineer.
Gonzalez attended Oatman Grammar School in Arizona first through third grade, before moving to San Jacinto, California in 1931 after the death of his father, to continue his school years.
"Oatman is sort of a deserted town now. There is some action with donkeys walking up and down the street, though," he said.