Posted on: Friday, January 28, 2005

To many, it's like a loss in the family

By Timothy Hurley
Advertiser Staff Writer

Barbara Watanabe's eyes fill with tears when she thinks about the devastating helicopter crash that killed 27 Hawai'i-based troops in Iraq.

Watanabe, a Maui resident who is executive director of the Nisei Memorial Veterans Center in Wailuku, isn't related to any of the victims, but she nevertheless feels a deep sense of loss, as if they were family members.

"We're an island state, an island nation. Unlike other communities, you really have to pull together — you have to," she said. "The military is part of the fabric of our community. These people come here from all over the country to live, and we're all in the same lifeboat together."

Watanabe isn't alone in her feelings. Hawai'i was hit especially hard by Wednesday's tragedy because it has the country's highest percentage of population in the military.

Michael Pavkovic, director of Hawai'i Pacific University's diplomacy and military studies program, said Hawai'i residents are more sensitive to such losses because so many people know someone in the military, whether they are a family member, a neighbor or acquaintance.

"There isn't a community here that isn't relatively close to a military base," Pavkovic said. "We feel it more. We see military people all the time, and we are very aware of them."

According to the latest U.S. Census, nearly 5 percent of Hawai'i's population, ages 16 to 64, are in the armed forces.

In raw numbers, Hawai'i ranked eighth in the nation, with an estimated 39,056 active duty personnel in the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard.

Counting family members, Hawai'i's military population has been estimated at 50,000, many of them linked to the state's array of military installations: Pearl Harbor Naval Base, Hickam Air Force Base, the Army's Schofield Barracks Military Reservation and Marine Corps Base Hawai'i at Kane'ohe Bay.

Any community with a military presence feels the sting of casualties more acutely, Pavkovic said.

Hawai'i was a staging area for the war in Vietnam. With a transient military population serving an increasingly unpopular war, relations between the civilian and military populations soured, he said.

In more recent times, segments of the civilian community have clashed with the military over its use of environmentally and culturally significant lands at Makua on O'ahu, the island of Kaho'olawe, the Pohakuloa training grounds on the Big Island and elsewhere.

These sore points persist, but relations among the larger population have warmed, according to Pavkovic. The military population is relatively stable, and uniformed personnel have a higher profile and are much more active in the community, he said.

For example, the U.S. Pacific Command helps run the Joint Venture Educational Forum, in which soldiers from all service branches volunteer to work in Hawai'i's public schools. There are 146 of these partnerships with schools statewide, including 23 by the Marines in Kane'ohe.

"I think the military does give back a lot of volunteerism, and that's why something like (Wednesday's helicopter crash) affects everyone," said Air Force Capt. Sharon Giletti, who helps coordinate the program.

Hawai'i also has a strong military tradition, with a resonating history that includes the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 and the heroic stories of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the 100th Infantry Battalion in World War II.

In addition, Hawai'i is home to legions of former service members, many of them veterans of foreign wars. According to the Census Bureau, 120,587 civilians live here who once served in the military — about 1 in 7.5 of the state's adults, or 14 percent. That's slightly higher than the national figure of 13 percent, or 26.4 million veterans.

Gerald G. Jampolsky, a Kailua psychiatrist, said he believes the concept of 'ohana, or family, is the key to Hawai'i's keen sense of loss after the helicopter crash. Lots of people, he said, feel that the Hawai'i-based military personnel are part of their family, even if they aren't exactly the sons and daughters of Hawai'i.

"There's an aloha spirit, a loving and compassionate feeling all over the Islands," Jampolsky said. "For them, it's like, 'They're my son,' or 'They could be my son.' "

Reach Timothy Hurley at (808) 244-4880 or thurley@honoluluadvertiser.com.