United States

By Caren Panzer

Arnif G. Nerio felt his life was really coming together in the fall of 1942. While so many were still out of work, he’d just landed a job at General Motors in Saginaw, Mich.

Just three months earlier, he’d married Trinidad Ayala, and they were expecting a child.

When he was drafted into the U.S. Army on Dec. 4, 1942, his life changed.

Nerio pleaded with the officials to let him wait until his daughter was born. The Army assured him that his family would be taken care of and shipped him to Little Rock, Ark., for basic training. He was 20.

By Leigh Cole

Manuel Najera certainly made his presence known in the service during World War II, flying 35 missions in Europe before coming home.

"If I would have died, it would have ended my family," Najera said.

But he took that risk and became an aerial machine gunner in the Army Air Forces in 1943.

By Allison Baxter

Dan Muñoz, Sr. grew up in the small community of San Fernando, Calif., a town that was segregated by race. At that time, he couldn’t even go to the white part of town after dark to go to a movie house without the fear of being arrested. Today, he’s the publisher of La Prensa San Diego, a newspaper that allows his words to be read by nearly 35,000 readers every week.

By Yvonne Lim

Growing up in the segregated town of Tempe, Ariz., during the late 1930s, Peter "Pete" Moraga recalls feeling nervous about public speaking.

Despite those early fears, Moraga, a World War II Navy veteran who served in the Pacific, fashioned a life as a journalist that consistently affirmed "La Voz Mexicana," or "the Mexican voice.” He worked with government radio program Voice of America, CBS Radio and, finally, at a Spanish-language television station.

By Raquel C. Garza

Gloria Flores Moraga defied many social norms in her lifetime: She moved out on her own while single, attended college when most women were expected to stay home and even worked as a disc jockey at the first all-Spanish radio station in Phoenix, Arizona.

A "Depression baby," Moraga was born Dec. 5, 1930, in Phoenix, Ariz., only 14 months after the stock market crash of 1929. Her father, Manuel Flores, baled hay for 25 cents a day to support his wife, Anita Daniel Flores, and their new daughter.

By Valerie Jayne

As a young boy growing up in Clifton, Ariz., Emilio Muñoz Membrila played war games with his friends, inventing different maneuvers and strategies. Later, during World War II, he’d be engaged in historic battles in the European Theater, fighting in the frigid German forests during the Battle of the Bulge and getting taken prisoner for six months.

"It was the worst barrage U.S. troops ever encountered," said Muñoz Membrila of the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler's last major offensive. "It was supposed to have been a quiet sector."

By Brooke West

World War II interrupted Manuel Salazar Mejia's academic endeavors when, as an 18-year-old high school sophomore, he enlisted in the Army in May of 1942.

One of five children born to immigrants from Zacatecas, Mexico, Mejia was raised in Kansas City, Kan. His father, Fidel Mejia, a butcher, and his mother, Ignacia Salazar Mejia, a housewife, struggled with finances. They depended on a large family-tended garden, in which they grew "corn, pumpkins, tomatoes, onions, peppers, some potatoes," Mejia said.

By Sarah Adams

Luis Martinez has had a hand in history.

He participated in one of the more famous New Deal projects, witnessed D-Day from the English shores and attended Gen. George S. Patton's funeral. But what he remembers most as a World War II veteran is meeting a young woman in the British Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service and falling in love.

By Christopher Trout

At home in Houston in the 1940s, Johnnie Martinez was a well-known entertainer. He eventually would own a nightclub, lead his own big band, the Johnnie Martinez Band, and even own his own record label, Alameda.

But during World War II, circumstances were different.

By Ernie Carrido

Jose M. Lopez is one of the 12 Latino World War II veterans to have received the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military accolade. He had a difficult childhood, but maintained a fervent belief in the Virgen de Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico.

Lopez's father died in the Mexican Revolution; his mother eight, years later, when he was eight. Lopez never went to school, but worked in the cotton fields to help support himself.