NM

By Katherine Sayre

Lina Cordova prayed each night for her husband's safe return to her and their two children during World War II.

"I used to pray every night, every night I would pray, 'Please God, bring him home,'” Cordova said. "I didn't care how he [came] home – without an arm or without a leg – as long as he came home to me and the kids.''

While Alfredo Cordova was away fighting on Europe’s battlefields, Cordova wrote him two or three times a week. When he wrote back, the letters were sometimes censored, some passages blacked out, she says.

By Julia Zwick

Seventy-nine-year-old Alfredo Cordova is one of the thousands of American men and women who served in the Army during World War II. His story starts in a poor town in New Mexico and takes him to California and Europe, and eventually back to his friends and family in New Mexico.

"My parents were very good people," Cordova said. "My wife and I took care of them when they were older, and we enjoyed doing it."

By Shan Dunn

One night in December of 1941, the world changed for Robert John Chavez. He was in the 9th grade and a 15-year-old teenager, attending a dance marathon, when word came over the radio that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.

Not long after, Chavez dropped out of school and went to California, where he worked in a shipyard, assisting in the construction of U.S. warships. He worked there until he was drafted on Sept. 4, 1944.

By Anjali Desai

Cayetano Casados had a floating, front row seat for the historic Normandy Invasion of World War II.

"We were the first ship to be fired on and the first ship to fire in the invasion," said Casados of the campaign that led to the allied victory over Germany.

"We had some very close calls. Sometimes there would be shrapnel all over you. But I was very fortunate, I only lost one man," he said.

By Helen Peralta

As a World War II prisoner of war, Agapito E. Silva said death often marched beside him while battling in the Phillippines. Having learned the art of survival is what allows him to vividly recount memories of a war that continues to haunt him.

"I never gave up hope," recalled 83-year-old Silva of San Marcel, N.M. "Guys that gave up hope never made it."

By Alicia Dietrich

When New Mexico native Joseph Rodriguez set sail from New York harbor bound for Europe to fight in World War II, he had no idea where he was headed. He only knew they were traveling east.

"We didn't know nada," said Rodriguez, laughing. "When I got on, I went straight to the back of the ship and saw the Statue of Liberty, and I waved at her."

By Matt Harlan

The life of Ernesto Padilla is one marked with opportunities masked by tragedy.

Padilla’s childhood was spent with his large family in Puerto de Luna, N.M. The town, nestled on the Pecos River, was a community inhabited primarily by Latino ranchers and farmers.

"My dad had a general store and a cattle ranch, so for my age, I was pretty well enrolled in the activities that constitute farming and cattle ranching," Padilla said.

Farming, however, was unable to offer all he wanted in life.

By Tony Cantú

Jose Fuljencio Martinez remembers the minutest details of his tour of duty's defining moment, his unit's surrender at Bataan, recalling virtually every tear and each bead of sweat he shed as he faced his captors.

"I could feel the tears coming down. They would burn. And then a drop of sweat would run down. It would be so cold and all of a sudden it would burn like fire! Like you got a lit match and put it against your skin."

By Sarah Jackson

Drafted at 21, Frank Cordero endured hardships typical of most soldiers. But in telling his story, he prefers to dwell on the lighter side of war.

Born in 1921 in Alamogordo, N.M., Cordero was the youngest of five children born to Felix Cordero and Benjardina Gonzales Cordero. He joined the U.S. Army in 1942 and was sent to Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, before being shipped out to Camp Gruber near Muskogee, Okla., for basic training. The "final exam" of the yearlong training was three months of maneuvers in the Louisiana swamps.

By Henry Mendoza

That his Purple Heart came in the mail long after he was home probably says the most about Eloy Baca's tenure as a soldier in the United States Army and, for that matter, the way most Latino veterans approached World War II -- it was something that had to be done so they gave it their best in a simple, straightforward manner.

For Baca, like his fellow veterans, that was quite a lot.