NM

By Karen Matthews

Dennis Baca still cries when he thinks of the friends he lost during World War II. Even now, 57 years after his discharge from the U.S. Army, his voice becomes choked with emotion as he recalls the battles, the hardships and the deaths that marked his days in the South Pacific.

A soft-spoken 76-year-old with a gentle face, Baca is uncomfortable talking about himself or his war experiences. He doesn't see his service during WWII as anything heroic. He was just doing his job, he says.

By Rachel Finney

Born in her grandmother's home in 1926, in the small agricultural town of Las Tusas in northern New Mexico, Eva Maria Archuleta lived a life of modest means, like most during the World War II era.

With no electricity for refrigeration or television and no car for transportation, young Archuleta and her six brothers and sisters found an inspirational appreciation for things that today seem commonplace.

"We were so happy when we got to ride on the wagon into the town of Mora and get a piece of candy or maybe an orange. It was a good life," she said.

By Heather Hilliard

The six months Bennie Archuleta spent in battle in Europe during World War II changed his life forever.

As a 17-year-old teenager, he had rarely traveled outside of the American Southwest. But as a soldier in the 99th Infantry Division, he found himself marching across European countries. Up to that time, he could only dream about visiting those foreign lands.

But WWII was no dream. If anything, the horrors of war proved to be a nightmare for Archuleta, nightmares that still haunt him to this day.

By Israel Saenz

After joining the Army during World War II, New Mexico native Albert Angel began fretting he’d spend the entire war fixing airplanes stateside, so he found his supervisor and confronted him:

"You're wasting your time and mine too," Angel remembered saying. "I wanna go overseas."

Angel, now 81, served in the European Theater from 1943 to 1945 as a teletype worker with the 784th B-24 Bomber Squadron, part of the 466th Bomb Group of the 8th Air Force. He was stationed near Norwich, England, at Attle Bridge Air Base from March of 1944 to July of 1945.

By Elizabeth Robertson

Despite the terror surrounding him on the mountainous Japanese island of Okinawa during World War II, Marine Cpl. Antonio Trujillo always found himself volunteering for missions that no one else wanted.

He’d been told repeatedly by fellow soldiers to hold back and not volunteer for dangerous assignments. But for Trujillo, volunteering was a matter of pride.

By Melissa Watkins

Arthur "Chavalito" Tenorio spent Dec. 6, 1941, at a hotel in Honolulu playing craps with a fellow sailor. He lost the game, but a hotel employee warned the pair it didn't matter, because after tomorrow, they wouldn't be around. Tenorio awoke aboard the USS New Orleans the next morning, a day that will live in infamy.

Baptized Arturo, Tenorio was born June 5, 1924, in Las Vegas, N.M., to Merenciano Tenorio and Ophelia Lucero, who Tenorio describes as a tough street fighter and spoiled rich girl.

Tenorio was small for his age.

By Jason McDaniel

Luis Sena was only 6 years old on Black Thursday, the day the stock market crashed and sent the American economy spiraling into the Great Depression. His father had died four years earlier, in 1925, leaving Luis' mother, Maria Sanchez Sena, to care for him and his seven siblings.

Those two events set the tone for what would be a difficult childhood for the Senas in Golondrinas, a small town in Mora County, New Mexico.

"There were days when I had to eat gravy, just made out of water and a little flour, with no bread, just a spoon," Sena said.

By Allison Mokry

While many Latinos served their country and fought for survival overseas, Elvira Sena had her own struggle during World War II: helping her family pull through tough economic times while trying to finish her schooling.

Sena grew up on her family farm in Las Cruces, N.M., the second oldest of seven children: four boys and three girls. Her father, Alberto Trujillo, supported the family by ranching and delivering mail, while her mother, Lucianita Trujillo, was a housewife.

By Nicole Dreyer

As a ranch hand, Cresencio Lopez didn't get much news about what was happening overseas in World War II. Some neighbors and his cousin had been drafted, and it was hard to get information from them. Later, when Lopez was serving in the Pacific at the tail end of the war, he’d write often to his mother and wife, letting them know where he was and inquiring about his family.

By Andrea Couch

Growing up in Santa Fe, N.M., in the '30s and '40s, Gilberto Delgado saw sign language for the first time: It was how one of his friends communicated with her deaf grandmother.

Later, that childhood exposure would lead him to take a role in education for the deaf, aiding him in earning his doctoral degree from Catholic University of America. Delgado also helped develop devices for the deaf, including closed-captioning for television and TTYs (text telephones) for phone communication.