GI Bill

By Araceli Jaime and Jasmin Sun

G. Roland Vela was an 11-year-old delivering newspapers when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Suddenly, everyone wanted to learn more about the bombing, and they swarmed Vela as he rode along his regular route.

“I sold all the papers I had[,] leaving me with none for my route customers,” he wrote later. “I was in serious trouble! But! Normally I sold 2 or 3 papers at 3 cents each; today people were paying a nickel -- I collected a pocketful of nickels.”

By David Muto

Trinidad Martinez remembers the little things.

Like the long list of vegetables he helped his family grow on their ranch in South Texas before World War II broke out.

Thoughts like that punctuate Martinez's recollections of his time at war, during which he endured years of incredible hardship at the hands of enemy combatants and even walked in the infamous Bataan Death March. He seems amused while recalling these smaller, seemingly trivial memories of his youth, as if they've been uncovered for the first time in years.

By Barrett Williams

Flying at full speed above Australia in a C-47 during WWII, radioman Alberto Rede heard bullets ripping through the plane, followed by a sputtering engine.

His mind raced: If power to the engines is lost, the plane will become a gliding, uncontrollable mass that could drop out of the sky.