By E.J. Urbanczyk
Alfred Valenzuela was an 18-year-old sailor in 1943 when he found his older brother in Hawaii.
Valenzuela recalled looking for Claudio, eight years his senior, at Schofield Barracks, a United States installation.
“He [Claudio] was very surprised when he saw me: this 18-year-old kid, the youngest one of the family, in front of his barracks … asking for him,” Valenzuela recalled.
By Kristin Stanford
While still a teenager, Esteban R. "Steve" Garcia learned firsthand that destroyers -- unlike nerves or stomachs -- are made of nearly impervious steel.
As waves incessantly pounded the sides of the four-stacker destroyer he was on in the South Pacific -- a ship built six years before he’d been born -- he and other newly trained enlistees slumped over the sides, with crisp white uniforms and green faces. It was Dec. 18, 1941, and they were en route to Alaska on the USS Kennison.
By Samantha Gallion
Jack Greenberg had been working with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for 17 years in 1966, when he received repeated requests from Mexican Americans and Native Americans.
“We had a great deal of success with civil rights cases, and people who we ordinarily didn’t represent came to us asking us to represent them,” Greenberg said.
By Brittany Wilson
After getting discharged from the Navy in 1948, Wilfred Navarro, Jr. returned to his hometown of Houston. He finished high school and decided he’d like to be a police officer. But first, he and other Latino veterans would have to overcome institutional racism.
Navarro was the third Latino officer hired by the Houston Police Department and would go on to serve for nearly five decades in many capacities, including high-level administration. His wife, influenced by her husband’s example, would later become a police officer.
By Rosa Imelda Flores
William Wood was "born in space," his reference to the little mining town of Santa Rita, which was in the hilly terrain of southwestern New Mexico.
Santa Rita was excavated for the valuable copper ore lying under it until it was completely destroyed, Wood explains. And today, only "space" remains; the open-pit mine dominates.
"The mine gobbled down the town," Wood said.
By Israel Saenz
At the Vega home in East Chicago, Ind., during World War II, there were five blue stars in the window -- one for each of the sons serving in the military. Raymond Vega was one of them, serving aboard a ship as a hospital corpsman, tending to sick and wounded men. It was that experience that would lead him to devote his life to his faith, as a Roman Catholic priest.
Sailing in the South Pacific, aboard the USS Long Island, Vega had thoughts of being killed by a torpedo.
"When you have a thought like that for two years, you learn to pray," Vega said.
By Courtney Mahaffey
Robert Soltero can barely remember details of the Depression, but his memories of discrimination during that era remain vivid.
"In those days, you couldn't even go downtown," said Soltero, who grew up in a west-side community of Kansas City, Mo., in the 1930s. "We [Latinos] had to stay in our own background."
Soltero's father, Luis Soltero, worked three jobs, including ones at the Cudahy Packing House and a hotel room service to help support Soltero, his older brother, Tony, and sister, Connie.
By Rajesh Reddy
George Salmerón grew up hearing how his father was forced to serve in the Mexican Army at age 13 in the early 1900s.
"[My father] saw a bunch of soldiers coming around with a little drum, single-file. All of a sudden, they stopped in front of him. They made a circle completely around him, and they took him off to the Army," Salmerón said. "He was then officially recruited in the Army of Porfirio Diaz."
By Lynn Maguire
Through the experiences of being a sharecropper, sailor, father, and landowner, Rodolfo "Rudolph" Saenz has learned the most about education, even though he never passed the sixth grade.
Saenz, along with his parents and five siblings, harvested from land that belonged to someone else.
"It wasn't easy, but it was the only way to survive," Saenz said.
By Brandi Richey
If it wasn't for ice cream, Antonio Rico's experience in the Navy during World War II might have been even more tedious. Stationed in Guam in 1945, Rico remembers the long hours pulling guard duty on the island.
"Ice cream saved my life," Rico joked. "It was a lonely time, but the best part was that we could have all the ice cream we wanted."
