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Armando Saballos spoke sparingly about his days as a World War II soldier.
The Nicaraguan immigrant occasionally mentioned the concentration camps near Munich, and the evil they represented. He laughed about how a superstitious master sergeant tried to sell him a rock that supposedly would protect him from harm. But he never described his daily existence as a soldier, or many of the places he went, or the ways his life was ultimately changed by what he saw.
Those stories died with him eight years ago.
''When I was kid, he'd talk sometimes, but I'd just tune him out,'' said his son Douglas Saballos, 61, of Kendall, also an Army veteran. ``I regret it now.''
Saballos will be passing on what little information he has to the U.S. Latino & Latina WWII Oral History Project, an initiative created to ensure that the memories of those like Armando Saballos -- among the half-million to 750,000 Hispanics who served in that war -- are not lost forever.
Project director Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez will be honored Tuesday by the National Council of La Raza, the country's largest Latino civil rights organization, as part of its convention, beginning today in Miami Beach.
Rivas-Rodriguez sparked a national controversy this year when she protested that director Ken Burns' upcoming 14-hour PBS documentary on WWII, The War, did not include the experiences of Latinos.
''This generation of people created opportunities for people like me to enjoy,'' said Rivas-Rodriguez, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin. ``We have to go as far as we can to ensure those contributions are acknowledged and recognized.''
Rivas-Rodriguez launched a campaign called Defend the Honor to pressure Burns about The War. She was joined by retired university administrator Gus Chavez in California and organizations such as the National Institute for Latino Policy and the National Hispanic Media Coalition.
Burns defended his work, saying that it was not meant to be a comprehensive history, but rather an exploration of individual experiences, mostly of people from four American towns.
Nonetheless, in May he agreed to add new material to the series -- an agreement he negotiated without Rivas-Rodriguez's participation with the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility and the American GI Forum. The new sections, which will include interviews with two Hispanic veterans and one American Indian, will run at the end of three episodes.
''I think we've found the right balance . . . that permitted us not to alter our original vision and version of the film and at the same time honor what was legitimate about the concerns of a group of people who, for 500 years, have had their story untold in American history,'' Burns said at a Television Critics Association event in California last week.
Rivas-Rodriguez is withholding judgment, saying she's concerned that the Latino interviews may not be integrated into the series.
''This documentary is on PBS, and is partly paid for with taxpayer money, so it's supposed to be for all Americans,'' she said. ``The experience of Latinos was unique.''
Since Rivas-Rodriguez began her history project in 1999, staffers and volunteers have interviewed more than 500 Latinos about their experiences. The window to capture such stories is closing, as more than 1,000 WWII veterans are estimated to die each day.
Veterans such as Carmen Bozak of Plantation watch their war buddies -- and their stories -- slip away as each year passes.
''Up to now nobody gave the Hispanics any recognition, and it's only since they started the Oral History Project that they are finally being recognized,'' said Bozak, 87, born in Puerto Rico. ``Before this point, people could care less.''
After she signed up for the Women's Army Corps in 1942, Bozak was among the first group of women sent to work for Dwight D. Eisenhower in North Africa, where she teletyped coded messages to the front. She later went to Italy, where she met Pope Pius XII in Rome and saw her first opera in Naples.
''I often wonder what would have happened if I hadn't signed up,'' she said. ``I'd probably still be in the Bronx.''
Some veterans, like Armando Saballos, joined the armed services when they spoke little or no English. The older Saballos, then 19, came from Nicaragua to New York to enlist in 1944. He had spent his teenage years reading about the war and dreamed of becoming a U.S. citizen.
''He loved what this country stood for,'' said Douglas Saballos.
Highlighting the legacy of Saballos and others is particularly important now, as the immigration debate has affected how Hispanics are perceived, said NCLR Vice President Lisa Navarrete.
''I think people are losing sight of the fact that Hispanics have been around since before the beginning of this nation,'' she said. ``As anti-immigrant sentiment morphs into anti-Hispanic sentiment, it's critical now more than ever that people understand the role we played.''
