Sue Kurashige of Wahiawa said saying "thanks" to soldiers is part of the spirit of aloha.

But John Tatem, a former member of the armed forces, said he tries not to be intrusive.

"When you get back, it's nice to have someone greet you, to say 'Good job' and 'Welcome home,' " he said as he waited in the car at Tamura's for his companion to finish her shopping. "But then, it's nice to get back to your business."

In the heart of Mililani town, Lisa Seguerre and her family were waiting for the screening of "The Pacifier" to begin at the multiplex. They talked about their inner conflict over the appropriate way to handle the return of so many in their neighborhood.

"I'd say, 'Thanks for supporting us,' " she said. "If we didn't have people like them ..."

"I'd give them their space," said her husband, Davin.

What they appreciate

Down the mall, Army man Douglas Currey was on dad duty, playing with his 2-year-old twins. He has received some kind words and, thankfully, none of the opposite.

"The most response I received was in the airports; that was probably the biggest reception we got," he said, telling the story of how a woman in the Dallas airport offered him her cell phone so he could call his wife — long-distance, on the stranger's dime — to say he was nearly home.

And his friends and neighbors steer clear of the political talk.

"(If people ask) 'Do you think we should have been there?' I don't want to hear that," said Currey. " ... What we do is by orders of the president. It's not our choice to make. ... The last thing you want to hear is 'I don't think you should have been there.' For the most part, we've learned our lesson from Vietnam."

Lessons learned

Those lessons, say people in charge of helping soldiers with the reintegration process, include unresolved pain of being treated as outcasts and having post-traumatic stress go unremarked.

When her husband returned from Vietnam as a young man, Michele Adams-Thompson, who works with the Tropic Lightning Academy program that offers classes on reintegration, said the airline wouldn't let him on the plane. Now, when he returned for R&R during his deployment as division chaplain, that same airline upgraded him to first class.

Back in the Vietnam era, soldiers were ostracized, yelled at when they returned, and called names, she said.

"We don't want to see the Vietnam syndrome repeated," said her colleague, Gene Tyson of Tropic Academy. "It was a low spot in our culture."

Bringing troops home

The Iraq situation has its own stressors coming with it: This will be a war in which nearly every member of the military was on the front lines at some time; in which the soldiers' divorce rate is under review, whether related to longer deployments or for other causes; and in which 32 percent of returning soldiers are expected to show some symptoms of post-traumatic stress.

The military is attempting to cope with the problems by offering resources like Tropic Lightning Academy's array of eight reintegration classes, ranging from anger and stress management to single soldier reintegration to — new this year — divorce recovery.

About 850 soldiers who have finished their block leave are participating in the program, but the entire division, with about 12,000 returning soldiers, including some Guard and Reserve units, will eventually take part.

Thousands of Hawai'i-based military are in the process of returning from deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. How can the community help? Some churches are reaching out with special programs. (See accompanying story.)

Tropic Lightning's Adams-Thompson said being aware of what the soldiers went through is a good first step. "Exercise understanding," she said, especially when it comes to the spouses and children. "In a restaurant or church, you may see something leaking out in behavior."

She'd even proffer a gentle offer of help, or engage a misbehaving child, to distract for a moment, enough for the parent to get back on track.

And don't forget that they've gone through something monumental, especially if you're close to the returning soldier.

"When the situation warrants, ask how they're feeling," added Tyson. "They may be dying to say something about it, but nobody's asking. So many times we want to avoid causing pain, but they're living it daily."