“No greater fighting combat team has ever deployed for battle,” General Douglas McArthur noted after the war of the 158th Infantry Regiment “Bushmasters,” which was made up predominantly of Mexican Americans and members of the Pima and Navajo tribes from Arizona.

The Longoria Affair, as it came to be known, drew national attention to the systemic discrimination that Latino Americans faced and served as a rallying point for the American GI Forum’s campaign against pervasive racism and inequality.

Second Lieutenant Rudolph B. Davila, of Spanish-Filipino descent, received the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions near Artena, Italy, during World War II. 

After parachuting on Tagaytay Ridge, Manuel Pérez participated in the horrendous fighting with the Japanese in the Philippines' capital city of Manila, the scene of some of the bloodiest urban combat of the war.

For what he did on October 4, 1944, Staff Sergeant Manuel V. Mendoza garnered a special place in the history of Nazi Germany’s defeat.

On January 31, 1945, American prisoners of war from Stalag III-C were caught, tragically, in a firefight between German guards and Soviet troops.

While most people are familiar with the names of “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” as the atomic weapons used over Japan, what they may not be familiar with was how different the respective technologies of each bomb were and why this difference mattered. 

Allied intelligence believed that most captured American officers were being held at the Hammelburg prisoner of war camp, Oflag XIII-B. This population likely included Patton’s son-in-law, Lieutenant Colonel John Waters, but there was no way to be sure.