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By Borger Bargas

On April 29, 1945, Genovevo Bargas and some of his shipmates looked to the sky from the deck of the USS Comfort. A Japanese kamikaze was headed straight for their hospital ship. They were in the midst of the Battle of Okinawa, the last major battle of World War II.

The kamikaze missed the USS Comfort’s smoke stack, but still managed to create a huge hole in the vessel.

“We only saw one part of the Japanese [pilot’s] body,” said Bargas, motioning from the neck up, “the rest was nothing.”

By Hasive Gomez

Cleaning land mines and building bridges in front of enemy lines leaves little room for luck. Yet former combat engineer Placido Peña says luck is one of the reasons he survived the war under hazardous conditions.

Peña had more than luck on his side, however, as he also says he had an instinct for survival.

“[Some] of the soldiers were lazy;” laughed Peña as he talked about covering for shelter. “They would only dig their foxholes a couple of feet deep. I would always dig deeper.”

By Marjon Rostami

Gilbert Treviño was a 19-year old junior at Texas A&M College when he was drafted for the war. When Treviño went to San Antonio, Texas, for his physical, he expressed an interest in the Marines, and eight months later, he was in combat.

“They didn’t waste any time,” he said.

Treviño was born in Laredo and grew up speaking Spanish. By the end of the war, all three of his brothers had served in the military: one in the Marines, one in the Army and one in the Navy.

By Prisilla Totiyapungprasert

Corporal Joseph Davila had a choice during his military occupation in the Southern Philippines: He could stay with the other soldiers to hold up enemy advancement toward American military headquarters, or he could race his way through an incoming banzai attack to rescue a fallen comrade.

It was 1944, a year before Japan surrendered to signal the end of World War II, and Sergeant David Fayard found his wounded, blood-covered body being pulled from the ground.

Davila had chosen to come back for him.

By Alicia Downard

When Hortense Mota Gallardo recalls her childhood growing up in Depression-era San Antonio, Texas, she remembers the generosity of her father, Bartollo Mota, and how he not only provided for his own family, but for strangers in need of help.

“Daddy had a big heart,” Gallardo said. “We were supposed to share what we had – even if it was just a little bit.”

By Marcel Rodriguez

At age 17, Bob Sanchez volunteered for the U.S. Navy after two close friends were killed in combat. It was 1945, and his choice to enlist would set his life in a bold new direction. From Naval intelligence, to the University of Texas at Austin, to being a trial lawyer and activist in the Rio Grande Valley, the war and the university instilled in him a determination to make the world a better place, particularly for Latinos.

By Rachel Vallejo

As his unit hit the beaches of Guadalcanal, a small island in the South Pacific, 18-year-old Isidro Ramos witnessed for the first time the bloody price of war: dump trucks full of Marines’ bodies “stacked up like wood,” Japanese soldiers littering the ground.

A moment of insight washed over the private first class that day in 1942 as he said to himself: “There really is a war.”

More than sixty years later, Ramos says he was glad to serve, but has mixed feelings about the experience. He notes differences between then and now in the tools of combat.

By Rachel Fleischman

Before he was 20 years old, Joel C. Mojica had fought in one of the bloodiest battles of World War II, and had a Purple Heart medal to prove it.

Mojica was an Army sergeant during the war, and, like many young men of his generation, was drafted when he was only 18 years old. After he was called up on Oct. 29, 1943, Mojica was sent to Hampton, England, where he trained for battle on a daily basis. His role in the Army was as a replacement soldier; his unit sent personnel to companies needing men to take the place of wounded and dead soldiers.

By Kayla Young

Peering through the door he’d just kicked in with his combat boots, the Manuel Camarillo serving on the front lines of World War II Germany was a different man from the one he’d been back in South El Paso. Back then, he’d started fights just for fun.

“I spent my time fighting. I wanted to fight anybody,” said Camarillo of his early teen years. “My oldest brother would get two or three guys in the morning. He would get them so I could fight with them. I went in [the alley] and I gave them a good whipping.”

By Brooke N. Miller

World War II flung Lita De Los Santos’ eight brothers across the world. The front room of the De Los Santos’ home in Eastland County, Texas, was dominated by a map of the world. De Los Santos and her mother, Angelita Guajardo, would run a finger across the smooth paper, pausing on foreign places with exotic-sounding names; places she’d never been, some of which she’d never even heard of.