Veterans Share Their Lessons of War

When Robaire Nieves tries to speak of his time as an American soldier fighting in the Korean War, he struggles to hold back the tears, raises a fist to his open mouth and shuts his eyes tight.

“The hardest part is thinking about my friends, the guys I joked around with and talked about pretty girls with, the guys who died right next to me and in front of me,” said Nieves, 67, who has a penny-sized scar on his right ankle from a bullet that got him a Purple Heart and sent him home from the war.

On Thursday, Nieves and others like him shared their war experiences with the students of Valley Alternative Magnet School to observe Veterans Day.

“We do this so the students can get a closer look at history,” said Rhona Feldman, a teacher at the school and an event coordinator. “When they [the students] hear the stories, they are exposed to something no textbook can ever teach them. They are exposed to reality.” The speakers were spread throughout the school, each one commanding the attention of an entire grade in a small, hot classroom.

In one room, Dr. David Alcaras, 50, a Vietnam War veteran and director of the Department of Veteran Affairs Vet Center, explained the physical and mental tolls of war and conflict on the human body and compared them with living in a gangland neighborhood.

One door down, another Vietnam veteran, Charles Nixon, 54, showed students pictures of destroyed villages and forests and 242 yearbook-type photographs of one week’s worth of dead American soldiers from a typical week during the war.

Across the campus, G. Patricia Jackson, 54, a nurse with the Army Reserves and the chief of staff of the Women’s Veterans Coordinator Office in Los Angeles, spoke of the role of women in today’s military. In another room, Atsie Murayama, 71, described what it was like for a 15-year-old American citizen of Japanese descent to be placed in a detention camp in her own country.

“It’s hard to believe this happened,” said ninth-grader Gina Merino, 14. “It’s sad but I’m glad they came to tell us about it.”

So is Nieves.

“It’s not easy. I’ll be a wreck for weeks,” said Nieves, a security guard at the school. “But these children must understand the history of their country and for what these soldiers fought and sometimes died for.”