Hawai'i civilians also part of Afghanistan war effort
By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer
Amid the thousands of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, fortified bases that bristle with firepower, and the hazards of one of most heavily mined countries in the world, are eight civilians from Hawai'i trying to make a war zone a bit like home.
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At Bagram Air Base, a Hawai'i state flag is on one wall of a "B-hut," a plywood living quarters.
Herb Morikawa and Ed Toma prepare local food in quarters they share with three other Hawai'i workers.
A poster of an O'ahu sunset is fixed to another wall.
Twenty-four cans of Spam are neatly arranged in a cupboard, along with 18 cartons of Vienna sausages.
They're happy to make rice for visitors.
Five are financial resource managers. Three work on safety issues. All work for the 25th Infantry Division (Light) back in Hawai'i, and all followed division soldiers to the inhospitable environs of a war zone.
About 5,500 Schofield Barracks soldiers deployed to the country in March and April.
"A lot of folks don't know that civilians are also going out to Iraq and Afghanistan," said Herb Morikawa, a 59-year-old resource manager from Mililani.
The group of resource managers volunteered to go along on the year-long deployment.
As a "key employee" working as a tactical safety specialist, 56-year-old Luci Picerno of Kailua was required to go to keep her job.
She had signed a contract that made that clear. One civilian worker retired and another quit to avoid going to Afghanistan.
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But whether they volunteered, or faced the prospect of staying home and losing their job, the civilians said they felt the tug of something bigger in making the decision.
Herb Morikawa, whose usual outfit is a camouflage uniform, had a chance to wear an aloha shirt to attend a dinner featuring local food.
"With my wife, when I told her, the first thing was, 'Why do you have to go?' " said Owen Roberts, 48, who lives in Royal Kunia. "One, it's not about us so much. We're part of a bigger mission. And two, we're doing something honorable."
The five resource managers have a hand in U.S. and coalition fiscal operations in Afghanistan, overseeing more than $1 billion in finances for Combined Joint Task Force 76 headquartered at Bagram.
The group is part of the 25th Division comptroller staff. Morikawa has a 30-member staff back at Schofield Barracks.
"I think this is the first time the Army has sent a group of civilians to run one of these sections," Morikawa said. "We're the only ones who are civilians, so when the call came for the division headquarters to deploy to Afghanistan as the CJTF staff, we were it."
As safety director, Garrett Lozier, 51, from 'Ewa Beach, advises commanders on risk management.
The civilian workers wear desert camouflage uniforms, but don't carry guns. Five live in one "hooch" with little privacy.
Travel off base is limited, but even on the sprawling base there is danger. Small red triangles denoting mines are everywhere.
"We went around the post and perimeter, and it's very surreal to know how close you are to an active minefield," Roberts said. "You can trip over a rock and fall into a minefield."
Within the group, there's varying degrees of past military experience. Lozier is a 24-year Army veteran and retired first sergeant who crewed Huey and Cobra helicopters.
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Picerno, who is married and has two grown children, is a lieutenant colonel in the standby reserve with the 9th Regional Support Command.
Local food? How about Spam, Vienna sausage and crack seed stocked in a cupboard that keeps the Hawai'i civilian workers going.
She has done "two-weeker" deployments for exercises to places like South Korea before, but nothing like this.
"I had like a year to maybe think about deploying and how to handle things at home," Picerno said. "It can be a hardship, but I've been able to count on my family to take care of things for me."
She could have quit and stayed home.
"But in Hawai'i it's not that easy to get a good job like this, so I pretty much resigned myself to making the best of it," she said. "I support the troops and want to make sure they do the right thing so they don't hurt themselves."
Ed Toma, 38, a deputy resource manager from Kailua who volunteered for the Afghanistan duty, has a wife who is pregnant and expecting their first child in December.
"In a nutshell, everyone out here is doing something not about themselves. It's about that greater good," he said.
Asked about his wife's reaction to his being gone, Toma said: "She's a pretty good trooper. Like all wives, she has a concern about safety."
The civilian team at Bagram also includes Matt Steger, 38, from Mililani, project manager for the humanitarian assistance mission; Verne Chapman, 52, from Mililani, tactical ground safety manager; and Joe Parks, 34, from Honolulu, a resource manager.
Morikawa's 21-year-old daughter, Cindi, said on Friday that at first, she didn't understand why her father chose to go to Afghanistan.
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The deployment has been especially hard on her mom, she said.
Matt Steger, a civilian worker with the 25th Infantry, shares treats at the local-theme dinner.
"(Morikawa) fought in the Vietnam War. I guess he has more of a sense of our country and freedom and is proud to be an American, and (younger) people like us may take it for granted because we never experienced wartime," Cindi Morikawa said.
In an e-mail to his daughter, Herb Morikawa said he was horrified and in disbelief when terrorists attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.
"I told myself I would do anything to support my country's efforts against terrorism," Morikawa wrote. "So when the division leadership was tasked to go to Afghanistan, I had to put my money where my mouth is."
The year deployment is long even by active-duty military standards. Roberts said they take it one day at a time.
"You don't look at the whole year and try to consume that," he said. "It's like eating a sandwich — a big sandwich. You eat it a piece at a time or you'll choke."
Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-5459.
