World War II

By Hasive Gomez

Cleaning land mines and building bridges in front of enemy lines leaves little room for luck. Yet former combat engineer Placido Peña says luck is one of the reasons he survived the war under hazardous conditions.

Peña had more than luck on his side, however, as he also says he had an instinct for survival.

“[Some] of the soldiers were lazy;” laughed Peña as he talked about covering for shelter. “They would only dig their foxholes a couple of feet deep. I would always dig deeper.”

By Marjon Rostami

Gilbert Treviño was a 19-year old junior at Texas A&M College when he was drafted for the war. When Treviño went to San Antonio, Texas, for his physical, he expressed an interest in the Marines, and eight months later, he was in combat.

“They didn’t waste any time,” he said.

Treviño was born in Laredo and grew up speaking Spanish. By the end of the war, all three of his brothers had served in the military: one in the Marines, one in the Army and one in the Navy.

By Erin Brady

Puerto Rican Jose Medina-Negrón put college on hold when he volunteered to join the United States Army on July 15, 1943. He simply wanted to do his part, and says he didn’t know he was on the road to his future career.

Medina-Negrón’s path to cryptology unfolded in stages, beginning with a single test.

By Prisilla Totiyapungprasert

Corporal Joseph Davila had a choice during his military occupation in the Southern Philippines: He could stay with the other soldiers to hold up enemy advancement toward American military headquarters, or he could race his way through an incoming banzai attack to rescue a fallen comrade.

It was 1944, a year before Japan surrendered to signal the end of World War II, and Sergeant David Fayard found his wounded, blood-covered body being pulled from the ground.

Davila had chosen to come back for him.

By Alicia Downard

When Hortense Mota Gallardo recalls her childhood growing up in Depression-era San Antonio, Texas, she remembers the generosity of her father, Bartollo Mota, and how he not only provided for his own family, but for strangers in need of help.

“Daddy had a big heart,” Gallardo said. “We were supposed to share what we had – even if it was just a little bit.”

By Cheryl Smith Kemp

Number 10 in a brood of 16, Jesse De los Santos was well accustomed to being a mere piece of something much larger than himself by the time he joined the United States Calvary in 1939.

Little did he know, however, that in a couple of years he would be part of an event significantly bigger than the Calvary, the Army, all of the armed forces combined, even the U.S. itself. For on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and everything changed. World War II was on.

By Marcel Rodriguez

At age 17, Bob Sanchez volunteered for the U.S. Navy after two close friends were killed in combat. It was 1945, and his choice to enlist would set his life in a bold new direction. From Naval intelligence, to the University of Texas at Austin, to being a trial lawyer and activist in the Rio Grande Valley, the war and the university instilled in him a determination to make the world a better place, particularly for Latinos.

By Rachel Vallejo

As his unit hit the beaches of Guadalcanal, a small island in the South Pacific, 18-year-old Isidro Ramos witnessed for the first time the bloody price of war: dump trucks full of Marines’ bodies “stacked up like wood,” Japanese soldiers littering the ground.

A moment of insight washed over the private first class that day in 1942 as he said to himself: “There really is a war.”

More than sixty years later, Ramos says he was glad to serve, but has mixed feelings about the experience. He notes differences between then and now in the tools of combat.

By David M. Ramirez

On June 6, 1944, Staff Sergeant Adolfo Roberto “Rusty” Ramirez was a member of the largest invasion force in all of recorded history. He was assigned to the 29th Infantry Division, 116th Regimental Combat Team’s 121st Combat Engineering Battalion. The 29th and 1st Infantry Divisions had been given the mission to assault Omaha beach in Normandy, France. Of this 55,000-man combat force assigned to Omaha beach, the 116th Regimental Combat Team of the 29th Infantry Division was assigned to land at Zone “Dog Green.”

By Rachel Fleischman

Before he was 20 years old, Joel C. Mojica had fought in one of the bloodiest battles of World War II, and had a Purple Heart medal to prove it.

Mojica was an Army sergeant during the war, and, like many young men of his generation, was drafted when he was only 18 years old. After he was called up on Oct. 29, 1943, Mojica was sent to Hampton, England, where he trained for battle on a daily basis. His role in the Army was as a replacement soldier; his unit sent personnel to companies needing men to take the place of wounded and dead soldiers.