Briefs
Advertiser Staff and News Services
ARMY
Vehicles named for war heroes
The Army's new eight-wheeled "interim armored vehicles" now have a name: the Stryker.
The Army formally named the 19-ton fast-response vehicle at a ceremony last week in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
The name honors two soldiers with the same last name who died in the line of duty.
Robert Stryker threw himself on a land mine to save wounded comrades near Loc Ninh, South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
Stuart Stryker, meanwhile, led an attack on German forces during World War II in which more than 200 enemy soldiers were captured and three American pilots rescued.
The Army in July announced Hawai'i as one of four states that will get "Interim Brigade Combat Teams," which will use the 19-ton armored troop carriers.
Schofield Barracks is expected to receive 435 more vehicles — 300 of which will be Strykers — as part of the transformation to the fast-response force, expected to take place in several years.
MARINES
Monument built on generosity
The 6,000-pound bronze re-creation of Joe Rosenthal's famous Iwo Jima flag-raising photo being placed at Marine Corps Base Hawai'i in Kane'ohe represents American fighting spirit, sacrifice and determination.
But it's also built on the generosity of some local benefactors.
When the Pacific War Memorial Association last week found itself in dire need of volcanic rock for the monument's base, Donald Jones stepped up.
Jones, the owner of Hawai'i Stone in Kailua and a sculptor and stone mason, provided hundreds of rocks, some as heavy as 200 pounds, to the association.
Local Marines volunteered to help put the rocks in place, keeping the memorial on track for its March 16 dedication.
Honolulu-based Dick Pacific Construction Co. Ltd. is overseeing the project, and has provided more than one-third of the memorial's $600,000 budget in in-kind work, association chairwoman Alice Clark said.
The Harold K.L. Castle Foundation donated $150,000 toward the construction of the bronze edifice.
NAVY
Funeral set for casualty of '41
A funeral for Navy Apprentice Seaman Thomas Hembree, who was killed in the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, will be at 2 p.m. tomorrow at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl.
Hembree was disinterred as an "unknown" at Punchbowl in January 2001, and was recently identified by the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory, Hawai'i.
Hembree was aboard the USS Curtiss, a seaplane tender, on Dec. 7. Twenty-one sailors aboard the Curtiss died when a dive-bomber crashed into one of its topside cranes, and a Japanese bomb subsequently found its superstructure.
