Iraq-bound reservists say their goodbyes
By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Staff Writer
Folded carefully and tucked inside Nerony Tuimalealiifano's military fatigues are two crayon drawings, gifts offered by his 9-year-old daughter, Nileen, and 7-year-old son, Elijah, as Tuimalealiifano left American Samoa to join his U.S. Army Reserve unit called up for service in Iraq.
"It reminds me of the family," he said softly, touching the place where the drawings of his two youngest children are held against his heart. After 17 years in the Army Reserve, this is the engineer's first deployment.
Tuimalealiifano bent his head in the bright Kunia sunshine outside the Kanana Fou Samoan church, where more than 800 family members and community well-wishers had gathered in a show of support for the 411th Engineer Battalion.
Sometime in the next three weeks, the 600-member battalion made up of engineers, electricians, masons, plumbers, police officers, cooks, heavy equipment officers, teachers and others, will be on its way to serve in Iraq, building roads, repairing schools and designing and engineering new systems where needed.
The battalion has been gathered from 26 states, and as far away as Guam and American Samoa. But with 40 members from American Samoa, yesterday's service was a celebration of strength and unity.
American Samoa Gov. Togiola Tulafono told congregation members, many of them dressed in combat fatigues, that each person would be blessed on his or her way to the Middle East.
"Your body will be unseen, invisible," Tulafono said in the Samoan language, "but your eyes will be bright to see everything."
The Samoan expression is often used as people face danger or go off to an uncertain future, said Rita Achica, who served in the city and county information office under former Mayor Frank Fasi.
Twelve of the Iraq-bound reservists are family friends — "I know the parents," Achica said — and one is a distant relative.
For Patrick Tulafono, these moments were especially difficult. His wife, Moetoto, an assistant manager at a Pizza Hut in Tafuna, American Samoa, will be gone for 15 months — a year in Iraq and three months more in Hawai'i.
It means the duties of parenting their two young children, ages 3 and 5, will fall on his shoulders. He's trying to plan how to adjust to life as a single parent and to juggle the children's school schedule with his job as an information systems officer for the Development Bank.
"It was really a shock," Patrick Tulafono said of the deployment, adding that the children don't yet truly understand.
"It will hit them later on," he said.
Frank Lefiti, too, is facing a long haul as Mr. Mom.
"Or Mrs. Dad," he said with a laugh. With six children between the ages of 2 and 12, and his wife, Filomena, leaving for Iraq, Lefiti said he feels fortunate that he can cook.
"But I would rather have her back with us, safe and sound," he said. The children are trying to understand why their mother is leaving, "but it's hard right now."
Concerned, 12-year-old Sofe's school classmates wrote her a letter of encouragement.
About 12 percent of the reservists are women, and battalion commander Lt. Col. Jonathan Wung acknowledged the anxieties that families are facing.
"It's a long deployment, and they're not used to it," he said of the reservists. For many, it will be their first deployment.
"When I speak to them, they're highly motivated," he said. "But they're all going through separation anxiety. That's a tough thing."
It's made tougher by the fact that their families' lives go forward, despite the war. Some have parents who are ill. Others have just had babies or are about to.
"Soldiers have a lot of things on their minds," said Wung.
Alefosio Paulo does. A high-school math teacher, he stands with his wife, Josephine, cradling their first child.
Evangeline is just a month old and her dark head wobbles against her father's chest. Tiny fingers are hidden in baby mittens.
By the time her father returns, she will be walking, babbling a few words and eating solid food.
Paulo's eyes are moist as he holds his newborn. But it's his wife who speaks of the hardest thing ahead — "raising a child by myself."
As the service ended, with the choir singing a moving "Glory, glory hallelujah ... " chorus, and tears clouding the eyes of many, the governor of American Samoa had another message.
"May all Samoa come together and pray for your safety," he said in his native tongue. "Our lives are going with you."
But for 26-year-old Bill Sapolu, a Honolulu Police Department foot patrolman who has been with the force just a year, there is just one important thing he'll take with him.
Standing alone among those who didn't get seats for the service, Sapolu glanced down at his gold wedding band.
"Just this," he said.
The helicopter crew chief acknowledged that the news of deployment was rough.
"But we've got to do what we have to do," he said.
Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.
