John Muños remembered in "Hero Street" film that links Milwaukee’s Latino veterans with Korean War

In a modest neighborhood once lined with railroad boxcars, a young man named John S. Muños left home for war and never returned. His story is rooted not only in the battlefields of Korea but in the American struggle for belonging, sacrifice, and recognition that defined a generation of Mexican-American families on what is now known as Hero Street.

Born in 1928, Muños grew up on Second Street in Silvis, a small industrial city along the Mississippi River near the Quad Cities. The area was home to dozens of Mexican families who had arrived after the 1910 revolution and found work with the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad.

Many of them lived in refitted boxcars, clustered beside the tracks that offered steady employment but little comfort. For their children, the path to acceptanc