NM

By Gilbert Song

Born March 15, 1926, Maclovio Montoya experienced the Great Depression and military duty in World War II. Then it was off to the Pacific for the Korean War. However, it was in his golden years when he fought his greatest struggle -- trying for decades to receive the Purple Heart for being wounded in WWII.

Montoya has a quiet and husky voice; his demeanor is gentle. He wears a purple veteran's hat covered with military pins, ribbons and badges, accompanied by a matching purple silk bomber jacket.

By Alicia Rascón

While scores of Latinos served their country valiantly during World War II, many women did their part on the home front.

Juanita Tapia Montoya vividly remembers wartime rationing back home during these years, when the U.S. government limited the purchasing of items such as sugar, meat and other materials needed for the military. Families had ration-stamp books to use to purchase goods.

By IRMA GARCIA

Teodoro Garcia grew up poor in Presidio, Texas, a small border town, during the Great Depression. To relieve the family's burden, he left home in Clovis, N.M., to live with his grandmother in Presidio. Garcia only reached the fifth grade before having to leave school to earn a living, though his brothers and sisters back home were allowed to finish.

"Life was tough and I had to help," Garcia said.

At that time Garcia remembers Presidio as being "pura raza," everyone was Mexican and everyone was Catholic. And everyone was poor.

By Peggy Hanley

Jose "Joe" Cuellar volunteered to be a scout in the South Pacific during World War II because scouts were considered leaders by his fellow soldiers. At the tender age of 18, Cuellar was convinced he wanted to be a leader, and being a scout fulfilled that yearning.

His desire to lead started developing at an early age, when he was forced to fend for himself and his family as a youth in Albuquerque, N.M. Cuellar says his strong work ethic helped him survive the experiences of war in the South Pacific.

By Amanda Crawford

Delfina Lujan Cuellar grew up in Albuquerque, N.M., at a time when girls were expected to become mothers and wives. Like many Mexican American girls of her generation, she wasn’t allowed to attend school after the eighth grade.

"We were very deprived of getting more education," Cuellar said. "They thought that we would be too free and have babies before marriage and things like that, and so I didn't go to high school."

By Karen Matthews

Dennis Baca still cries when he thinks of the friends he lost during World War II. Even now, 57 years after his discharge from the U.S. Army, his voice becomes choked with emotion as he recalls the battles, the hardships and the deaths that marked his days in the South Pacific.

A soft-spoken 76-year-old with a gentle face, Baca is uncomfortable talking about himself or his war experiences. He doesn't see his service during WWII as anything heroic. He was just doing his job, he says.

By Rachel Finney

Born in her grandmother's home in 1926, in the small agricultural town of Las Tusas in northern New Mexico, Eva Maria Archuleta lived a life of modest means, like most during the World War II era.

With no electricity for refrigeration or television and no car for transportation, young Archuleta and her six brothers and sisters found an inspirational appreciation for things that today seem commonplace.

"We were so happy when we got to ride on the wagon into the town of Mora and get a piece of candy or maybe an orange. It was a good life," she said.

By Heather Hilliard

The six months Bennie Archuleta spent in battle in Europe during World War II changed his life forever.

As a 17-year-old teenager, he had rarely traveled outside of the American Southwest. But as a soldier in the 99th Infantry Division, he found himself marching across European countries. Up to that time, he could only dream about visiting those foreign lands.

But WWII was no dream. If anything, the horrors of war proved to be a nightmare for Archuleta, nightmares that still haunt him to this day.

By Israel Saenz

After joining the Army during World War II, New Mexico native Albert Angel began fretting he’d spend the entire war fixing airplanes stateside, so he found his supervisor and confronted him:

"You're wasting your time and mine too," Angel remembered saying. "I wanna go overseas."

Angel, now 81, served in the European Theater from 1943 to 1945 as a teletype worker with the 784th B-24 Bomber Squadron, part of the 466th Bomb Group of the 8th Air Force. He was stationed near Norwich, England, at Attle Bridge Air Base from March of 1944 to July of 1945.

By Xochitl Salazar

Juan Ramon Alires was already the father of two children, with another baby on the way, when he went to war as part of the 11th Armored Division.

Alires was drafted into the Army and assigned to the 11th Armored Division, known as the Thunderbolt Division, in 1944 at the age of 25. He was the second in his family to serve in WWII; Maximinio, his older brother, served four years.