"That's all we know right now," he said yesterday from San Antonio. "We're hoping we'll get more information — something that will give us some closure. We're sad for the other kids and hope they recover."

Sweger is the 16th Hawai'i-based Marine to be killed in Iraq since Oct. 24. Most of them died while fighting in Fallujah.

The number of Marines who have died recently in Fallujah has been difficult to calculate because the military, after declaring Fallujah "liberated" and "secure" last month, has been reporting American casualties from that city as occurring in al Anbar province, a larger geographical area that includes Fallujah as well as other hot spots.

Marines in Fallujah have been exchanging gunfire with insurgents daily since the liberation, and American fighter planes have bombed the city.

Hernandez said Sweger, 24, of San Antonio, joined the Marine Corps after enrolling in his first semester of college and realizing he had taken so many difficult science and math classes he was in over his head.

"I said maybe he should think about the military," Hernandez said. "I thought maybe the Army or the Air Force — and I certainly wasn't thinking anything was going to start up."

Sweger became a Marine in April 2001, five months before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"He one-upped me," Hernandez said of his stepson's choice of services. "He was always doing that. I said: 'Are you crazy or what?' "

Sweger was outgoing and funny and the type of person who stood out in a crowd, Hernandez said.

"He likes everybody and he wants everybody to like him," he said. "He likes to be the wisecracker. He can make you laugh when you're depressed. I guarantee, the people he met along the way will remember him. Tell all his friends he loved them — I know he did."

Hernandez said he was proud of the boy he had raised since age 7 — the young man he considered his son.

"He did something I'd never have the guts to do," he said, "but he did it — he did it, man."

In addition to the deaths of Sweger and 15 other Hawai'i-based Marines in Iraq, Hawai'i has lost one sailor since Oct. 24 and 12 Schofield Barracks soldiers in the past 11 months.

Lance Cpl. Blake A. Magaoay, 20, of Pearl City, a California-based Marine, was killed Nov. 29 in Fallujah.

Thirteen Hawai'i-based military personnel have been killed in Afghanistan since March.