By Joel Weickgenant
Salvador Aguilar remembers lonesome nights aboard the cargo ship he served on during World War II. On many nights, he and fellow sailors and troops were forced to lie in the dark, ordered not make any sounds. It was frustrating -- the trips across the Pacific were long and the troops were often prohibited from engaging in conversations that could be picked up by Japanese submarines swimming the waters like sharks.
By Melanie Kudzia
Hector Acedo was 19 and World War II had been in full swing for three years when an older friend who’d already been drafted said: "Let's join the Navy."
Acedo’s response: "Sure, well let's go."
After getting sworn in, the two friends were told to be at the bus station at midnight, where they’d leave for boot camp in San Diego, Calif. So began their naval experiences.
By Rachel Howell
At 16, Oscar Villarreal was too young to vote in 1943, but he wasn’t too young to serve his country in World War II by joining the Navy.
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 Brandon Rawe
It was a time in America's history when communities were racially segregated and shunning minorities was accepted.
But none of that mattered during World War II to Henry Sillik, who served on a naval ship in the middle of the China-Burma-India Theater, the first racially equal setting in which he says he ever lived.
Sillik grew up in Buckeye, Ariz., a segregated town of about 600 outside of Phoenix. Sillik, who is of Anglo and Latino parentage, noticed the different standard of living for Hispanics.
By Allison Baxter
Dan Muñoz, Sr. grew up in the small community of San Fernando, Calif., a town that was segregated by race. At that time, he couldn’t even go to the white part of town after dark to go to a movie house without the fear of being arrested. Today, he’s the publisher of La Prensa San Diego, a newspaper that allows his words to be read by nearly 35,000 readers every week.
By Yvonne Lim
Growing up in the segregated town of Tempe, Ariz., during the late 1930s, Peter "Pete" Moraga recalls feeling nervous about public speaking.
Despite those early fears, Moraga, a World War II Navy veteran who served in the Pacific, fashioned a life as a journalist that consistently affirmed "La Voz Mexicana," or "the Mexican voice.” He worked with government radio program Voice of America, CBS Radio and, finally, at a Spanish-language television station.
By Amanda Traphagan
World War II gave Beatrice Amado Kissinger a ticket out of her small-town life in southern Arizona and into the big city adventure of serving as a Navy nurse in San Francisco.
When the United States entered the war, Kissinger was a nursing student at a Catholic school -- and tired of the discipline.
By Anjali Desai
Cayetano Casados had a floating, front row seat for the historic Normandy Invasion of World War II.
"We were the first ship to be fired on and the first ship to fire in the invasion," said Casados of the campaign that led to the allied victory over Germany.
"We had some very close calls. Sometimes there would be shrapnel all over you. But I was very fortunate, I only lost one man," he said.
By Luisito Caleon
The choppy seas north of Scotland were dark.
A dense fog enveloped the Navy ship loaded with ammunition destined for Normandy, the site of the beginning of the end of World War II.
The ship, on its way to help with the liberation of France, was stuck on uncharted rocks, and Higinio Albelo remembers he and his mates thought they were facing death.
"It was a 27-man gun crew. We were supposed to take care of the guns on ship and take care of the cargo. We were in a big convoy of close to 250 ships," Albelo said.
