A Hawai'i-born Marine is buried
By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer
Lance Cpl. Blake A. Magaoay faced a gauntlet of combat and death in Fallujah, falling to an enemy ambush Nov. 29 as Marines burst into a house looking for insurgents.
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Yesterday, the 2002 Pearl City High graduate passed through another gauntlet: one of love and remembrance as he was buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, the first Hawai'i-born Marine to die in the Iraq war.
Marine Lance Cpl. Blake Magaoay's mother, Gina Ellis-Williams, clutches the flag from her son's coffin. Her son, Octavio, 6, sits on her lap, while stepson Kelii Williams stands by her side. Magaoay, the first Hawai'i-born Marine killed in Iraq, was a 2002 Pearl City High graduate.
Several hundred friends and well-wishers lined both sides of a tree-lined sidewalk among veterans' graves from World War II as Magaoay's flag-draped casket was carried by six Marines to a shelter for a final prayer service.
Fourteen Hawai'i-based Marines have been killed in Iraq since Oct. 24. But the death of Magaoay, who was assigned to the 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion out of Camp Pendleton, Calif., cut deep in Hawai'i for those who knew him, and fellow Marines experiencing mounting losses in the war.
Brandon Ebesugawa and Nicole Carter, who went to Pearl City High with Magaoay, stood arm-in-arm, crying as Magaoay's casket was lowered into the ground at Punchbowl.
Ebesugawa, 20, wearing a black baseball hat backwards and sunglasses, had a hard time expressing his feelings at the loss of a classmate remembered for his jokes.
"I can't really say, it's just that you're not supposed to bury classmates," he said.
"(Just) two years out of high school," added Carter, also 20.
Rocky Sarono, 29, Magaoay's cousin, remembered the rascal boy who got direction from the Marine Corps.
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"I feel proud," Sarono said. "He was brave."
Marines prepare to pass the folded flag from the coffin of Lance Cpl. Blake Magaoay to his family.
Services were held for the 20-year-old Pearl City man Sunday night and yesterday morning at Borthwick Mortuary. At Punchbowl, two platoons of about 80 Kane'ohe Bay Marines formed an honor guard as final prayers were said and flowers and bouquets were placed on the casket.
Magaoay's father, Tony, struggled to say a few words, telling those assembled that his son took an interest in contact sports, including martial arts, so it probably was no wonder he wanted to join the Marines.
"When he first told me, I asked him, 'Why you want to join the Marines?' " said Tony Magaoay. "He said, 'Because that's what I want to do, Dad, that's what I want to do.' "
Two Marines held an American flag taut above the casket with white-gloved hands for a 21-gun salute, and, as taps was played, carefully and deliberately folded the flag into the familiar triangle shape no parent wants to receive.
Identical flags were presented to Tony Magaoay and the Marine's mother, Gina Ellis-Williams, 39, who sat with her 6-year-old son on her knee.
Magaoay
Ellis-Williams lit a sweet grass rope and fanned it with an eagle feather over her son's casket. The items were given to her by Lance Cpl. Joaquin McCurty, a Kane'ohe Bay Marine and a Mescalero and Chiricahua Apache who grew up in New Mexico and became friends with Magaoay.
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"This is to let everyone know that he is a warrior," Ellis-Williams said, her voice breaking into a sob.
Marine Corps pall bearers carry Lance Cpl. Blake Magaoay's casket at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl. Magaoay was killed in the Iraqi city of Fallujah on Nov. 29. He was 20 years old.
Magaoay, who joined the Corps on Aug. 28, 2002, was on his second tour to Iraq and had made it through the worst of the Fallujah fighting that began on Nov. 8. He had twice received minor wounds.
Seeing Iraqis being killed, children getting in the way, and friends dying in front of him conflicted with Magaoay's caring side, his mother said shortly after receiving the news of her son's death.
"He asked himself, 'Is there a God?' over and over, and 'Why is this happening?' because he's a Christian and he believes in God, and he felt many times seeing all this suffering and killing and pain, felt, why is this happening?" Ellis-Williams said.
The fighting in Fallujah was some of the fiercest of the war. More than 71 U.S. troops and 1,200 insurgents were killed in the city, U.S. military officials said.
Seven Kane'ohe Bay Marines with the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment were killed on Oct. 30 by a suicide car bomber in Fallujah.
McCurty got to know Magaoay on a troop transport ship as it made its way from Okinawa to Kuwait. In Fallujah, McCurty's company worked with Magaoay's unit.
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"He had a real fiery spirit about him, real quick to joke with people," said McCurty, 23, who was hit by shrapnel two miles into Fallujah and is back in Hawai'i recovering.
Marine Cpl. Joaquin McCurty, a friend of Magaoay's, has lost seven friends in combat in Iraq. McCurty himself is recovering from shrapnel wounds.
With Magaoay's death, he has lost seven friends in Iraq — six in the suicide car bombing. Magaoay had been leading Marines through a door in a house when gunfire cut him down, according to The Christian Science Monitor. Insurgents had been waiting in ambush inside.
When he found out about Magaoay's death, "it just hit me like shrapnel, it hit me that hard emotionally," he said.
"The combat stress that you deal with out there, especially when it hits so close to home, all these feelings of depression, sadness and anger, it comes back to you," McCurty said.
Cpl. Catcher Cuts The Rope, 32, a 1st Battalion, 3rd Regiment Marine who received leg injuries in a grenade attack in Fallujah on Nov. 22, walked with a limp and a single crutch to the gravesite in a sign of respect for the Marine he served with but didn't know.
"He's a Marine," said Cuts The Rope, who is a Native American from Montana. "I'm proud of the Marines. We fight for each other. There's no hidden agendas with us."
Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-5459.
