"I love ugly aircraft, machines that look like they shouldn't even be able to fly. The more brutal the better. I love the head-banging heavy metal of it. And that's why I'm a helicopter pilot. Can you imagine? My nation trusted in me and entrusted me…

“I am so blessed that the Navy gave me a second chance at life, so I submitted my resume for the Naval Nuclear Engineering Program.”~ Huey Nguyenhuu, Interview with HIAS, 2020 Born in Vietnam in 1965, Huey Nguyenhuu's family suffered during the…

“I showed people what I could do.”~Mitsuye Endo, Interview, 1976 Born in Sacramento, California, Mitsuye Endo was the second of four children of immigrants from Japan. After graduating from high school, she became a secretery with the California…

“We were way up. All we had to worry about were the shells coming. They couldn’t come over the mountains, so when they hit one side, the rocks would come flying onto our side. That’s the only thing we had to worry about... Staying up in the mountains…

“Mom, we're deploying tomorrow.”~Lori Piestewa, call to her mother from Fort Bliss, February 16, 2003 Born in Tuba City, Arizona, in 1980, Lori Piestewa was the daughter of a Hopi Native American father and a Mexican-American mother. Her family had a…

"My people honored me as a warrior. We had a feast and my parents and grandparents thanked everyone who prayed for my safe return. We had a "special" [dance] and I remembered as we circled the drum, I got a feeling of pride. I felt good inside…

“Well then after I got out of the service I was discharged from the WAC in Manilla, and I took a War Department Job in Tokyo. That’s when the occupation had just started there. As a matter of fact, I was in the first plane of women going into…

"After about a year some trouble arose between them and the Indians, and I took the war path as a warrior, not as a chief. I had not been wronged, but some of my people bad been, and I fought with my tribe; for the soldiers and not the Indians were…

“Estoy muy feliz!” (I am very happy.) My battle is over and it should never have happened. This is not an excuse but at the time, I was suffering from anxiety after coming back from the war. There were not enough resources for help and I fell into…

"The American GI Forum started with the Felix Longoria case, we had gone into police brutality, lack of representation in juries, lack of representation in draft boards. I knew civil rights [as a Mexican-American]. I knew the problems, I knew where…