By Jordan Haeger
Blas Ortiz had served as an adviser in Okinawa for a few months in 1963 when his unit, Co. E, 2nd Battalion, 27th Marines, 5th Marine Division, was rounded up, issued live ammo and told they would be on the next flight to Vietnam.
When his battalion landed on the shores of Vietnam, they were greeted with gunfire.
“It wasn’t a picnic,” Ortiz said. “No sightseeing.”
By Kassandra Balli
By Julia Bunch
Frank Martinez, a Colorado native, was a family man and a college student in the mid-1960s. Surely, he wouldn’t be sent to Vietnam.
But then he got the letter from the Army.
“I didn’t think I would get drafted because I had a daughter,” Martinez said. “I told this other Hispanic guy I knew, Joe Castro, ‘There’s no way they’re going to draft you. You’ve got a little boy!’ But then we both got drafted.”
Martinez and Castro used their friendship to prepare for the war.
By Miguel Gutierrez, Jr.
The first time Gregory Rios cast a vote was in the 1960 presidential elections, when he supported John F. Kennedy. It made an impression on him -- especially because of the poll tax, which people in some states were required to pay in order to be allowed to vote.
Rios had to weigh all of his expenses against how much he had to earn to pay for it. For someone whose livelihood was earned by picking cotton, the poll tax put a burdensome dent in his meager budget.
By Grant Abston
As a sophomore at La Salle High School in San Antonio, Texas, Arturo Ramirez stood out from his classmates.
Ramirez already had a working history that spanned many years. He had worked alongside his father cleaning offices at the Union Stockyards in San Marcos, northeast of San Antonio, since he was eight years old. The work day sometimes began at 4 a.m. before school. He had also worked landscaping for two years before taking a job at a bowling alley on the south side of town during his sophomore year.
By Lena Price
Placido Salazar had a choice.
He could have gone to the bunker, where he would have been relatively safe from the mortar attack raging outside his base in Bien Hoa, Vietnam, in 1965.
Or he could attempt to rescue his commander and a fellow soldier, who were recovering from injuries and illness in their mobile sleeping quarters several yards away from the command post where he was on duty.
By Emily Macrander
Marine veteran Robert "Bobby" Biers recalls more distress as a drill instructor dodging comments from mothers than when he was on the frontlines in South Vietnam.
"I had these mothers calling me up, asking me, 'what did you do to my baby? He has manners, and he's polite. He lost 100 pounds. He's lean, mean and tough,' " Biers said.
"Tough but firm" is how Biers described the Marine Corps' approach to making new Marines.
By Emily Macrander
As his personnel carrier (PC) drove along a rice field in 1966, Vidal Rubio snapped a photo of the convoy. It was a rare moment of quiet for him in the hectic early years of the Vietnam War.
Suddenly, the tenth vehicle in the line hit a landmine.
Rubio and the other men in his truck were thrown from their seats. The men wondered: Who was hit? How badly damaged were the PCs?
Medical personnel were in the armored personnel carrier that hit the landmine. The explosion was so powerful that it threw the PC onto the PC behind it.
By Ximena Mejorado
Cal State, Fullerton
When he got his draft notice at the age of 18, Germán Abadía’s first thought was to go into hiding.
The Puerto Rican native said he did not understand why he needed to go to Vietnam to fight a war, which he knew nothing about. His mother, Gilia Olmeda, changed his mind. If he was called to the Army, he had to go or he would be jailed, he recalled her telling him.
By Ali Vise
Catching a midnight train in Fresno, Calif., Alonzo R. Rivera Jr., watched his mother, draped with a blanket, crying as she said goodbye. At that moment, the work of his childhood harvesting grapes and cotton became a thing of the past. He recalled his fathers departing word: Im going to see if youre a real man now.
As the son of migrant workers, Junior as his parents referred to him, spent summers in the agricultural fields. He is the oldest of three siblings, all of whom were farm workers.