Cresencia Garcia
Cresencia Garcia was born in Puerto Rico on April 18th, 1920. She dropped out of high school after her sophomore year to work and help support her family. At the age of 18, she moved to New York and worked in a sewing Factory, eventually bringing her sister and mother to live with her. Shortly after that, she worked as an orderly at a hospital in New York, but in 1944, with the war raging, she decided to enlist. She was first assigned to the 6810th Hospital Burn Unit because she had studied nursing back home in The Bronx. She was later reassigned to the 6888 unit, a segregated "all Black" unit. During her time in the army and her army training in the south, she experienced prejudice and segregation, which she referred to as "disgraceful". Like many mixed-race people, she struggled with feelings of isolation, being rejected by white and black communities. After the war, she met Esteban Garcia, another World War II veteran, and they married and had three children. Recently, at the 2021 Veterans Day celebration in Carnegie Hall, she was honored for her service, and a couple of years later, in August of 2023, she passed away at the age of 102.
Anna Robertson
Anna Robertson was born in 1924 in Osceola, Arkansas, a small town. She grew up with her brother and mother, helping out with her mother's work on crops and babysitting neighborhood children. She joined the Women's Army Corps in 1938 after her mother died because no one was there to take care of her and her brother, who went into the Navy. During basic training, Anna learned to work in hospitals as nurse aid's which included making beds, giving baths, and taking temperatures, as well as learning fighting tactics. Throughout the war, she and her brother stayed in touch through letters. After the war, she went back to Detroit to live with her aunt. While her brother went to Michigan to live with their father. Soon after, she attended a friend's wedding in Milwaukee, where she met her husband, John D Robinson. They later got married and had eight children. She recently passed away at the age of 101 on May 30th, 2025.