San Antonio

By Guillermo X. García

Manuel C. Vara was a high school senior attending a Sunday movie matinee in his hometown of San Antonio when news broke out on the screen: All soldiers were to report back to base immediately. Japan had launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that morning in December, and the United States' entry into the war was imminent.

"Right then, I had no idea where it was, or what was about to happen, but when I got home, my brothers were all talking about it, so I knew something important was happening," he recalled.

By David Zavala

Negotiating a minefield on a snowy day in World War II Germany, 1945, Felix Treviño encountered a young German soldier who looked no older than a teenager; he was leaning against a tree, one leg gone from the thigh down, the wound still bleeding.

By Tammi Grais

Eliseo Navarro and his three brothers found a positive experience, overcame the hardships and returned home safely.

Born in 1925 in Asherton, Texas, a small town 100 miles southeast of San Antonio, Navarro suffered through a segregated world. The whole town was divided into Anglos and Mexican Americans.

By Guillermo X. Garcia

Ruben Mungia, a career printer, laughs as he recalls "how smart the U.S. Army was" to let him join the service in the middle of World War II, only to assign him to Randolph Field in San Antonio, his hometown, where he ran the print shop at headquarters command.

By Brian Villalobos

Raul Martinez's hands, thick, square and accented by a crest of jagged, walnut-sized knuckles, don’t seem to match his large, soft eyes.

Over the past 76 years, these hands have handled everything from cement to machine guns to mortar charges.

Martinez was born and raised in Cementville, Texas, a small cement company village north of Alamo Heights in San Antonio. One of 10 children born to Teofilo and Manuelita Martinez, both Mexican natives, he soon got a job at the same local cement factory where his father and grandfather had both worked.

By Antonio Gilb

In the first days of the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, in Schmidt, Germany, American scouts reported that a division of German tanks and soldiers lay on the outskirts of town, ready to attack. To minimize casualties, officers hastily ordered the unit to abandon the area. But in their haste, the unit commanders left behind a handful of soldiers. Catarino Hernandez, an 18-year-old from Seguin, was among them.

By Raquel C. Garza

Julian L. Gonzalez didn’t walk the stage during the Thomas A. Edison graduation ceremonies in May of 1944. Instead, his father walked the stage in his place.

"It was announced that I wasn't there, that [my father] was receiving [my diploma] because I was in the service," Gonzalez said. "They told me that he got the biggest applause of anybody there."

Gonzalez had completed his high school education a semester early in order to be inducted into the armed services. He was inducted on March 20, 1944, at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas.

By Denise Chavarri

Alejandro De Los Santos of Laredo served overseas during World War II for about 40 months.

"I missed home but at the same time I knew I couldn't return," De Los Santos said. "I wrote to my mom very often to let her know how I was doing."

Before the service, life for De Los Santos was peaceful. The middle child of two brothers and three sisters, he grew up on a farm near Laredo. As a child, he attended school only sporadically because he had to work to help his family.

By Antonio Gilb

Peter De Leon considered himself lucky after returning home to Chicago after serving in World War II. At least 10 of his neighborhood friends came back in body bags.

The closest De Leon came to dying was a kamikaze attack off Okinawa in the Pacific Theater. The kamikaze pilot was aiming for a larger ship but missed. The gunners hit the plane, so it only hit the side of the ship.

By David R Zavala

On his initial night of fighting in World War II Europe, Domingo Cantu landed for his first mission, and was unable to free himself from his parachute. As he struggled and tugged to get the chute off, he heard the blasts of enemy fire.

Cantu didn’t panic. He grabbed his knife and cut the chute off. It was in this first battle that Cantu knew he was in for a difficult time and that the war would change his life. His service to his country continued many years after the war was over.