TX

Twenty-two-year-old Manuel Pérez, Jr. was killed in action on March 14, 1945, on the road to Santo Tomas in Southern Luzon in the Philippine Islands.

Private First Class Pérez served as a paratrooper in the 11th Air Borne Infantry Division and was the lead scout for Company A of the 511th Parachute Infantry. A month before he was killed by a sniper bullet, he’d qualified for the Medal of Honor, the United States’ highest military honor. On Feb. 28, 1945, he wrote the following to his uncle, Private Jesse Pérez, who was also in the South Pacific:

By Brenda Menchaca

Manuel Sierra Pérez sits on a chair at a desk cluttered with photographs of his children at a young age and a University of Texas coffee mug, among other items.

“I have everything on the desk. I don’t even have to move,” Pérez said.

From his desk, he still writes to his friends from the war, who he met more than 50 years ago. Joining the Army was an eye opener for him in many ways: other cultures, ideas, education and opportunity.

By Laura Carroll

Quirino Longoria recalls joining the long Navy tradition of being initiated – or, according to some, hazed – a “Shellback” upon his virgin crossing of the Equator in 1945. New seamen are designated “Polliwogs” until they complete the Equator crossing ceremony, at which time they become hardened “Shellbacks.”

By Eva Hernandez

The air is rife with the sounds of men preparing for battle on the front lines. This is the real deal, and Private Joe Vargas is ready. He lumbers off the back of the Army truck – just barely – and moves forward.

Two bandoliers of M1 clips are strapped to his chest and he is armed with as many grenades as he can carry. The first lieutenant meets him with a critical eye.

By Laken Litman

One would think returned war veterans would try blocking battle out of their minds forever. But that’s not at all the case with Raymundo Rafael Martinez.

Having served as a Tech Sergeant in the Army’s 807th Engineer Battalion for four years during World War II, Martinez now spends much of his time volunteering with The Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, a group that honors war veterans worldwide, of which Martinez became a member after his WWII welcome home party in 1946.

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By Ashlyn Shadden

When Felix Longoria enlisted in the Army in October of 1940 as a 20‐year‐old from the South Texas town of Beeville, he had no idea what he was getting into.

Four years later, the United States was in the midst of World War II, and he was receiving the Purple Heart for getting recently wounded in Brest, France.

Longoria and his squad loaded up in trucks bound for Brest, where they came upon an image for which many were unprepared: Vehicles, dead Germans, tanks and trucks as far as one could see were all that was left.

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 Jenn Zwillenberg

Estela Fernandez was a young woman in El Paso, Texas, when World War II began, so the battlegrounds seemed distant.

Wartime wasn’t about soldiers and combat. Instead, while her husband Johnny was away, she learned how to care for her family, hold a job and value education and family. She and Johnny had married on Nov. 26, 1944, at which point Johnny had already been drafted into the Army and stationed at Ft. Devins in Massachusetts as an amphibious engineer, Fernandez recalls.

By Spencer Hamilton

A simple announcement for aviation cadet training at a camp in Washburn Island, Mass., piqued John Fernandez’s interest, so he applied.

He just never expected to make it.

But to the El Paso, Texas, native’s surprise, he did, and was quickly assigned to Army Air Corps pre-flight training at Lafayette College in Easton, Penn. Fernandez successfully completed advanced aviation training and went on to fly dangerous daily missions with the 345th Bomb Group in the South Pacific during World War II.

By Eric Latcham

When her new husband shipped off for the Philippines, Olga Delgado Flores was pregnant back home in El Paso, Texas.

Only 15 years old when she married 18-year-old Ramón Flores, she had dreams of a better life for her family and had been encouraged by a local principal to go to college. Flores soon learned, however, that traditional-household caregivers had limitations placed upon them.