honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Monday, July 4, 2005

Missing SEAL found alive

 •  A tribute to Pearl Harbor's Navy SEALs

Advertiser Staff and News Service

A member of a Navy SEAL team missing in the Afghan mountains since last week has been rescued, while U.S. forces today pushed on with the search for the other members of the elite reconnaissance unit, U.S. military officials said.

The rescued sailor was being rushed to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, a U.S. Defense Department official said.

James Suh

Meanwhile, the sister of a Pearl Harbor-based SEAL killed last week during an earlier mission to rescue the missing men yesterday described her brother, Petty Officer 2nd Class James Suh, as a caring person who lived with their father in a house in Waipahu.

Months before he was deployed to Afghanistan, Suh bought two presents for his father, Solomon, and hid them in his room, Suh's sister, Claudia Brown, told The Advertiser yesterday.

After he left, Suh — known to family and childhood friends as Sung Gap — called his dad on his birthday and on Father's Day to tell him where to find the gifts, said Brown, who is in Hawai'i to be with her father.

Included with one of the packages, she said, was a letter in which Suh told his father what he meant to him.

Suh, 28, of Deerfield Beach, Fla., was one of 16 U.S. troops — eight Navy SEALs and eight Army soldiers — killed when their helicopter was shot down during a rescue mission near the Pakistani border in the eastern Afghan mountains Tuesday.

Of the eight SEALS, three were from SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team One at Pearl Harbor. The others were Senior Chief Petty Officer Daniel R. Healy, 36, of Exeter, N.H., and Petty Officer 2nd Class Eric S. Patton, 22, of Boulder City, Nev.

Suh was born March 2, 1977, in Chicago, and grew up in Deerfield Beach. He graduated in 1995 from Deerfield Beach High School, where he was an academic and athletic standout, starring for the tennis and swimming teams. In 1999, he earned a bachelor's degree in statistics from the University of Florida, his sister said. He joined the Navy in January 2001, began SEAL training five months later and was assigned to Pearl Harbor in 2003.

"He was an extremely thoughtful person, very considerate," Brown said. "I know for a fact that he was an extremely exceptional person, and he was pretty much born that way. I am so eternally proud of my brother for everything he has done."

She said she will remember him as a "quietly confident" man with a deft sense of humor whose natural inclination was to include outsiders.

She said Suh, who was single, expressed pride not only in being a SEAL, but in being part of a large extended family that included 11 cousins whom he considered siblings.

"He had a pretty dry sense of humor. Even if we were in an argument, he would be teasing and poking fun at me and I would have to laugh because that was how good he was at getting to you," she said. "The way he put people's feelings first, he made you feel loved."

Funeral services will be held later this month at the Forest Lawn Mortuary and Cemetery in Hollywood Hills, Calif.

Yesterday, a Defense Department official declined to provide other details about the SEAL who was rescued, including when he was found or reaction to specific reports that the team consisted of three SEALs.

U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara declined to comment on the rescued serviceman but said an unspecified number of other troops were still missing in the mountains.

"We still have missing service members. The search continues and all available assets are being used," O'Hara said.

The Army Times reported last week that a small reconnaissance unit from SEAL Team 10 from Little Creek, Va., was sent into the mountains near Asadabad, in Kunar province. The team came under small-arms fire, called for help and was reported missing Tuesday.

A purported Taliban spokesman, Mullah Latif Hakimi, claimed last week that militants had captured one member of the team and said he was a "high-ranking American" caught in the same area as where the helicopter went down, but refused to elaborate.

U.S. officials said there was no evidence indicating that any of the soldiers had been captured.

Advertiser staff writer Peter Boylan and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Reach Boylan at 535-8110 or pboylan@honoluluadvertiser.com.