Freedom Fighters: Texas State Veteran's Home - KLTV.com-Tyler, Longview, Jacksonville, Texas | ETX News

By Joan Hallmark

This is a home for heroes, in spite of the fact that the veterans at the Texas State Veterans home will deny they're heroes. They'll say the real heroes are the ones who didn't make it back from war.

Most of the men like Jim Johnston and Joe Raspante didn't know each other before moving here, although these two had both been in the navy in World War Two and even fought in some of the same battles.

Of course the key word there is "survive". And in the ferocious battles against the mighty Japanese military in the Central Pacific, that wasn't always easy.