This Fourth of July held more meaning for Cpl. Luis David Delacerdamunoz than previous ones.

This time last year, the 23-year-old Kane'ohe Marine didn't have a metal rod in his leg where there once was a bone. That was the result of one of the firefights Delacerdamunoz was involved in during the battle of Fallujah last fall.

For another thing, this Independence Day was the last he would spend as a resident alien.

He was sworn in as a United States citizen in Honolulu yesterday, about seven months after his deployment in Iraq was cut short by his injuries.

He was one of more than 100 people who took the oath of citizenship here. About one-tenth of them were, like Delacerdamunoz, active military.

"It didn't have the same meaning," he said of his previous Independence Days. The war "gave me a lot of experience, knowledge about what life is about." Since coming back, he said, "I respect life more, and everything about it."

Delacerdamunoz is one of an estimated 10,000 service men and women who have become naturalized through an expedited process that was approved for military personnel by President Bush in July 2002, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

That number has been growing steadily. According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, now a division of the Department of Homeland Security, nearly 3,400 military personnel were naturalized during the first seven months of this year alone.

Local statistics were not immediately available.

Last October, military personnel got even more incentive to become citizens when the federal government changed the rules to waive their naturalization filing fees, which amount to about $400.

A resident of the United States since his family immigrated from Mexico to Texas when he was 14, Delacerdamunoz didn't feel compelled to take up citizenship until he entered military service and became part of the Marine fraternity.

"It was the right time," he said.

Just as life in the military opened up many doors, Delacerdamunoz said, citizenship will open others.

He wants to go to college on the G.I. Bill and then become a special services officer in a police force back home in Texas.

"My goal is to retire as a detective," he said.

Spc. Byron Alejandro Barcenas-Ramos, who is with the 71st Chemical Co. at Schofield Barracks, said the waiving of the fees was among the main reasons he decided to become a citizen now.

A resident of the U.S. since he was a toddler, the Honduras-born Barcenas-Ramos grew up in New Orleans.

Barcenas-Ramos, 24, said becoming a citizen also gives him privileges he otherwise would not have, including clearance to be able to work in military intelligence posts.

He also needed to become naturalized to be eligible for flight school. "My dream is to be a helicopter pilot," he said.

Cpl. Joel Paula, also a Kane'ohe-based Marine, said he was told it could take up to eight years to go through the citizenship process.

Thanks to the new rules, Paula was sworn in yesterday, only 10 months after he applied.

Paula, 22, recalled being shot at while growing up in his native Dominican Republic. "There are things Americans just don't know," he said.

Paula also was deployed to Iraq last year. Although the experience was tough, "it was worth going. You don't forget something like that."

Sgt. Rockwell Abraham Botchway, originally from Ghana, said he first applied for citizenship in 2000 when he was stationed in Ohio. But transfers to Germany and Schofield, as well as a deployment to Kirkuk, messed up his application papers.

Botchway, 37, reapplied this past January and joined the ranks of U.S. citizens yesterday.

"There's nothing like the United States," Botchway said, when asked to compare life here and in Ghana. "It's just like heaven on Earth. It's like a dreamplace, a powerhouse of wisdom, freedom and understanding."

Botchway said he is intending to re-enlist and that the only decision he has left is where he and his family want to be stationed.

"Which military in the world takes care of their soldiers, has so much care for their soldiers and their family members?" he said. "It's second to none."