Army

By In-Young Kim

Francisco Guerra still doesn't understand why people had to kill each other during World War II. And he says he doesn’t believe in wars anymore.

Guerra remembers the harrowing days he spent on Omaha Beach during the 1944 Normandy campaign. He recalls the high casualties as United States forces took Normandy. He witnessed intense combat, as German gunfire from enemy positions on high ground ripped American units apart.

One memory vividly sticks with him to this day -- the day a fellow soldier was struck by German machine-gun fire.

By Lindsay Graham

Raised in Ybor City, a Cuban neighborhood inside Tampa, Fla., Evelio Grillo attended black segregated schools and grew up with black role models.

"Black Cubans were closer to black Americans and white Cubans were closer to white Americans," Grillo said. "We became culturally African American."

He went on to attend Dunbar High, an all-black high school in Washington, D.C., and attended Xavier University, a college for black students in New Orleans, La. He then was drafted into the Army to serve in a "colored" unit in the China-Burma-India Theater.

By Christine Pev

On Dec. 7, 1941, 20-year-old Pablo Gonzales heard on the radio in his hometown of Sabinal, Texas, that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, and he immediately wanted to enlist in the military to help defend his country.

His mother, Julia Bocanegra Gonzales, wasn’t pleased. The second of 10 children and the oldest son, he was a significant contributor to the family’s income. Ever since Gonzales and his father, Rafael Gonzales, had worked together on a job mending fences and cutting cedar, they’d labored as a team.

By Emiko Fitzgerald

It wasn't until he went for his physical, after being drafted in October of 1942, that Lufkin, Texas, native Norman Gonzales realized he was blind in one eye. However, that didn’t stop Gonzales from serving in the military and, after the war, traveling around the world supporting cleanup operations.

Gonzales had hoped to join the Marine Corps instead of being drafted into the Army. But the physical exam for the Marines revealed he didn’t have vision in his right eye.

By Catherine Mathieson

Contrasts have defined Norberto Gonzalez's life.

Gonzalez appreciates the opportunities the United States has offered him; he came here because he saw none in the tiny Cuban village where he was born.

While serving in the Philippines after World War II, Gonzalez, who grew up poor, watched in pity as Filipinos waited to eat his table scraps.

And even though the United States introduced so many positive experiences into his life, he recognizes the discrimination that confronted him in his adopted country and isn’t shy about pointing it out.

By Christine Powers

"I had a bitter taste in my mouth when I learned both my sons were drafted for Vietnam," said World War II veteran Mike Gomez.

He leaned forward in his seat, paused for a second and then emphasized: "A bitter taste."

Frustrated at the possibility of losing his children and recalling his memories of the European Theater, Gomez, 78, says the draft seemed to be an unavoidable family tradition.

By Ismael Martinez

Moises Garza enjoyed the simple farm life of La Joya, Texas. Born Sept. 4, 1924, he grew up by a river and enjoyed fishing and hunting deer and ducks. Garza remembers huge family gatherings where they cooked food outside. Garza's parents, Jose and Josefina Garza, worked in nearby farms.

"My parents farmed, picked cotton in towns like Victoria," Garza said. 

By Melanie Jarrett

By the time World War II ended, Guadalupe Garza had traveled hostile roads through French Morocco, Spanish Morocco, Algiers, Tunisia, Sicily, Italy, Gibraltar, Scotland, England, France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Germany and Austria.

In all, he experienced 480 days of combat.

By Sierra Brasher

Saragosa A. Garcia always marched to the beat of a different drum.

And his ability to play music, to change the tempo of his life, along with the assurance from carrying a treasured Holy Bible and his mother's prayers, may have helped him through tough times in World War II and in a segregated Texas.

Born Oct. 22, 1922, in Corpus Christi, Texas, to a family of musicians, Garcia says he was destined to play the drums.

By Doralis Perez-Soto

In December 1941, 18-year-old José Blas García traveled from his neighborhood of Trastalleres, an area among the swamps and mangrove trees near Caño de Martín Peña in Santurce, Puerto Rico, with four friends to enlist in the military at Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico. Of the five, only two were chosen, and young García was one of them. He says he had nothing better to do at the time.