Two years later, the world has changed, and Kaneshiro has changed as a person and a soldier.

"As we got more into this war situation, it turned me more patriotic," the 21-year-old said. "It made me feel that I was actually doing something important — not just paying for college, but doing something important in the world."

Very soon, his world will change again, and in a dramatic fashion.

Kaneshiro and about 3,600 other Guard and Reserve soldiers are in their final days of combat exercises at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk.

Kazuo Kaneshiro

After that, the troops from Hawai'i, Guam, American Samoa and Saipan of the 29th Separate Infantry Brigade, including Mainland units from such states as California, Oregon and Minnesota, will head for a year of duty in Iraq after a brief stop in Kuwait.

Two combat battalions will be based in the Baghdad area, one will be in Balad about 50 miles to the north with a support battalion, and another combat battalion will provide security from Kuwait to Qatar.

Five months after being mobilized, and with training at Schofield Barracks, at Fort Bliss, Texas, and now at the JRTC, the citizen soldiers say they are ready. And leadership says they are ready.

"As we started to learn together, we picked up things as a team," Kaneshiro said on Thursday after providing security for a traffic-control point outside the fictional village of Takira. "It's all started to fall into place."

Ryan Taniguchi

"It's how we train," he said. "Crawl, walk, run. We're in the sprinting phase."

Thursday morning, soldiers from Company D of the 2-299th, based out of Wahiawa, awoke to 15 cars and their angry occupants honking their horns and trying to get past checkpoints into Takira, one of about 18 training villages at the JRTC.

"If we can handle this, then we should be able to handle things that occur in Iraq," Kaneshiro said.

Carlo Bio, of Lana'i, mans a gun turret on a Humvee during the final days of training at Fort Polk, La. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

"The feedback I got from the observer-controllers was that they would be successful in Iraq," Lee said. On Friday he returned to Hawai'i from Fort Polk with 28 employers who were visiting workers deployed with the Guard.

Brig. Gen. Joe Chaves, who commands the 29th, told Lee the soldiers "got stretched" on some days and made some mistakes.

But the JRTC is where Army leadership wants the mistakes made — and corrected.

Mock roadside bombs "killed" seven 2-299th soldiers in two attacks — underscoring one of the more deadly aspects of Iraq duty.

A full-on memorial service with upturned rifles, helmets and empty boots was to be held yesterday to get soldiers accustomed to such loss.

"I've seen how this brigade has gone from Schofield to Fort Bliss and now to Fort Polk," Lee said. "I think the people of Hawai'i should be very confident in the leadership of the brigade."

The opposing force out of Fort Polk knows the terrain — 100,000 acres of pined woods in west-central Louisiana — and has the advantage of surprise. But the Hawai'i soldiers have been making progress.

"In training, we have less casualties, less guys getting hit," said Kaneshiro, who was bundled up with a fleece jacket under his desert camouflage uniform and hat beneath his helmet in the mid-50s at Fort Polk.

The 29th is one of 15 "enhanced" brigades, in the category that requires them to be ready to deploy within 90 days of mobilization. As such, it gets newer equipment and higher priority for schools and training.

Taniguchi joined the Guard out of high school, went on active duty assigned to the 25th Infantry Division (Light), and now is back with the Guard again. He said there has been noticeable change with the activation.

Two months were spent training at Fort Bliss, where the nonstop pace drew complaints from some soldiers.

Spc. Kalei Colburn of Kane'ohe, Spc. Dariel Gorman of 'Aiea and Cpl. Howard Mateo of Kahului, Maui, train in Louisiana before heading off for duty in Iraq, with a brief stop in Kuwait. They are members of Company D, 2nd Battalion, 299th Infantry, based out of Wahiawa. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

the rigors of Iraq and that it was "better to sweat in training than to bleed in Iraq."

"You'd see the young guys on the weekend status (drills), we were used to bringing coolers into the field," Taniguchi said. "I think it was hardest at the beginning, but the adaptation from the guys has been phenomenal. They've adjusted from that whole civilian life to being a soldier 24-7."

There also were complaints from soldiers at Fort Bliss that they didn't have proper cold-weather clothing — which they now have.

The soldiers have new sets of body armor with insert plates that can stop an AK-47 rifle round. They also have advanced combat helmets that allow more head movement.

In a conference call Friday with Hawai'i media, Blum said the 29th Brigade will be as well-equipped as any other unit the Army has sent into combat.

Sgt. 1st Class Rafael Ped, 37, a 29th Support Battalion soldier who works for Clinical Laboratories of Hawai'i as a lab technician, said Fort Bliss included training on clearing buildings and fighting battles in urban settings. There, soldiers would repeat the training.

"Here (at the JRTC), you are supposed to know what to do already," he said.

Sgt. Ivan Avilla, 21, from 'Ewa Beach, helped treat shrapnel wounds after a fictional mortar attack Tuesday night on Forward Operating Base Blackjack. Three casualties had to be evacuated to a higher level of care.

"We're still working out a lot of issues, which is good," Avilla, who's with the 29th Support Battalion, said later. "It's good we work it now so we don't run into the same things in Iraq."

Spc. Sommer Wright, 23, from Wai'anae, a Honolulu police officer, said: "I feel pretty confident. I know we'll be going to Kuwait and getting additional training there."

JRTC is one the nation's premier combat training centers. Each exercise, which lasts about two weeks, costs $10 million to $11 million.

On Thursday, as Hawai'i and California soldiers with the 29th went through a scenario, 22 buildings in the biggest village of Suliyah were arrayed near an observation tower. Cameras mounted on telephone poles provided a close-up look at tactics; observer-controllers, distinguished by their darker woodland camouflage, watched closely.

Arabic-speaking role players portrayed Iraqi police outside a municipal building.

All was quiet for the moment, but exercise planners have the ability to put on big pyrotechnics displays to replicate rocket attacks or bombs.

"Anything can happen at any time," said Maj. Randy Martin, a JRTC spokesman, keeping his eye on about five soldiers clustered in the street. "When you get troops congregating like that, it's inviting attention."

Akram Hussain

About 50 to 75 "villagers" typically will have parts in the town of more than a dozen small buildings, including a mosque.

Hussain, who has lived in the United States for eight years, said he is one of about 10,000 Kurdish people who live in Nashville. He lives on the base for the duration of the exercise.

"In this rotation, we are neutral — not too friends, not too much enemy," said Hussain, a tall man who has a mustache and wears a headdress.

Playing a government official, he tells the soldiers what officials always tell the U.S. occupation force in Iraq — he's concerned about jobs. "We told them that we have like 50 percent of our people not working," he said.

Hussain added that he thinks it's beneficial to have actual Iraqis as role players.

"Our culture is different; our personalities, our faces are different than Americans," he said.

Lee, the commander of the Hawai'i Guard, said: "Once the soldiers get to use the training they have been taught, it's no different than an active-duty unit. This unit from Polynesia, from the Pacific, is going to make a difference in Iraq. It's going to give Iraq a shout of aloha that they really need."