Dec. 7, 1941 : The...

MARY AND MARTIN ROJAS

Mary Rojas, 70, was a 20-year-old newlywed living in Valley Center when she heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor. She lives in Vista.

Mary Rojas was sitting in the waiting room of a tire store in Hillcrest with Martin, her husband of 4 months, waiting for tires to be installed on their ’37 Chevy when the radio announcement of the Pearl Harbor attack came in.

“My first thought was, ‘Will Martin have to go?’ ” she said.

When their car was ready, the newlyweds drove down to the Broadway Pier, where they watched sailors dashing to and fro, seeking out the launches that would take them back to their ships.

They sat, silent at first, then talking about what the war would mean, then drove north to their rented “shack” in Valley Center, where Martin Rojas was working, building houses.

“It was just a board shack where we lived then,” he said. “We had to stuff newspapers in the cracks to keep the cold out. The nearest neighbor was a mile away.

“I kept thinking, how could I leave her? How could she manage if I went? We decided to wait until they came and got me.”

Rojas, now 74, received his draft notice more than a year later. He was building an adobe home in rural Vista for his then-pregnant wife. Together they finished roofing the bedroom, kitchen and living room, sometimes working until 10 or 11 at night, before he had to report for duty.

“There was no plumbing in,” Mary Rojas said. “I had to go next door to my in-laws’. But it was our house that he had built for me. I lived there all while he was gone.”

The couple since have moved to another house in Vista.

After flaying 35 bombing missions over Europe, Martin Rojas returned to Vista and finished the home for his wife and baby daughter, Virginia. The couple would have two more children in the years to come. He came through the war without a scratch, although many of his crew members did not.

“I still cry when I think of them, the boys who didn’t come back,” he said. “I’m the cry baby in the family. Mary is the strong one.”