honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Marine kept cool amid daily danger

By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer

A flag was unfurled and refolded yesterday at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl during the memorial ceremony for Sgt. Daniel Tsue, a Kahuku High graduate who was killed by a roadside bomb Nov. 1 in Iraq. The flag was presented to Tsue's father, Richard, seated center.

GREGORY YAMAMOTO | The Honolulu Advertiser

spacer spacer

Daniel Tsue

News 8

spacer spacer

Deborah Takemoto, Sgt. Daniel Tsue's mother, was presented a folded flag during yesterday's services. Daniel Tsue was promoted posthumously to staff sergeant.

GREGORY YAMAMOTO | The Honolulu Advertiser

spacer spacer

Marines carried a folded flag and the ashes of Marine Sgt. Daniel Tsue. A 21-gun salute also honored the 27-year-old graduate of Kahuku High School who was killed Nov. 1 by a roadside bomb, about two months into his tour of duty in Iraq.

GREGORY YAMAMOTO | The Honolulu Advertiser

spacer spacer

Richard Tsue, sitting with his wife, Jennie, accepted his son’s Purple Heart. Marine Sgt. Daniel Tsue was promoted posthumously to staff sergeant.

GREGORY YAMAMOTO | The Honolulu Advertiser

spacer spacer

Marines carry the remains and flag, followed by the family of Sgt. Daniel Tsue.

GREGORY YAMAMOTO | The Honolulu Advertiser

spacer spacer

Two days into duty in Iraq, Sgt. Daniel Akio Tsue experienced his first roadside bomb attack when he and fellow Marines conducted an impromptu traffic stop.

"As soon as we get out (of the vehicle), as soon as he steps out, bam! — an IED (improvised explosive device) goes off I want to say 30, 40 feet away," said Gunnery Sgt. Jose Soto, 34, Tsue's team leader.

The bomb blast left a "good crater in the road," but none of the 7th Engineer Support Battalion Marines out of Camp Pendleton, Calif., was hurt.

"So he (Tsue) looked at me, and I looked at him," Soto said. "He just shook it off like nothing and went right back to work."

Roadside bombs defined Tsue's two-month tour of duty in Iraq, west of Baghdad in the restive Sunni Triangle city of Ramadi.

The 27-year-old explosive ordnance disposal technician worked daily to identify and defuse IEDs, primarily using robotic devices. Soto estimated that his team, Tsue included, neutralized more than 30. On Nov. 1, a secondary roadside bomb killed Tsue as he worked on another nearby.

Tsue, a 1996 Kahuku High School graduate, is the second Marine and seventh service member to be killed in Iraq or Afghanistan and interred at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl. More than 73 service members with Hawai'i ties have been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan.

October was the fourth deadliest month of the war, with at least 95 U.S. service members killed. Twenty have died this month from roadside bombs.

Yesterday, those statistics were measured in personal loss and awful finality for family and friends as a small bronze-colored box containing Tsue's ashes and adorned with the Marine Corps eagle, globe and anchor logo was placed in the columbarium at Punchbowl.

Tsue's father, Richard, and his wife, Jennie; mother, Deborah Takemoto; brother and sister Alexander and Joy Takemoto; and grandmother Marian Tsue sat stiffly on folding chairs in a tree-shaded gazebo as white-gloved Marines unfurled an American flag and re-folded it for presentation, along with a duplicate flag, to Tsue's parents.

Richard Tsue clasped the small box with his son's Purple Heart in both hands as taps was bugled and seven Marines fired a 21-gun salute. The orders for Tsue's posthumous promotion to staff sergeant were read, and Chaplain Daniel Whitaker, a Navy lieutenant, recited taps: "Day is done, gone the sun; From the lake, from the hills, from the sky. All is well, safely rest, God is nigh."

Several dozen family members and friends attended Tsue's burial. The Marine Corps had said the family did not wish to be contacted by the media during its time of grief.

Branden Nishikawa, 28, came in from Maui and was one of a group of friends who had known Tsue since grade school.

"We kept in touch with him all the way through," Nishikawa said.

Tsue sent an e-mail in October "to let me know that everything was OK and he was safe and he was looking forward to coming back to our 10-year reunion next year for our group of friends," Nishikawa said.

Nishikawa said Tsue had told him he had about six "close encounters" in Iraq, including a near miss when a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at him.

"Right now, I don't know how to feel. I never experienced anything like this before," Nishikawa said.

Although Nishikawa has an older brother who served in Iraq in the Air Force, "I never thought that something like this would happen to anybody in our circle of friends. Just the reality of the danger (in Iraq) kinda really kicked in," Nishikawa said.

Marc Togashi, also from that circle of friends, said Tsue didn't tell the group he was in Iraq until he was already there. He had enlisted in 1998, and served as an embassy guard in places like Bahrain and Tokyo.

When Tsue told his friends of his plans to enlist, Togashi said, "We were all thinking, 'What in the world are you doing?' "

Togashi remembered Tsue as more of a rascal in his youth in the Moanalua Valley than Marine candidate.

"But it turns out it's something that he's passionate about," Togashi said. "Whatever mission and cause he was on, anything to support the country. It sounds cliche, but it was the ... truth with him."

Soto recalled Tsue's commitment amid the daily danger.

"We were finding large IEDs, as well as the smaller ones that were just being thrown out hastily," he said, adding, "the situation in Ramadi is pretty bad. It is an insurgent hotbed. My opinion, and I hate to say this, but they could lay IEDs as they wish."

Tsue was "very nonchalant" about the roadside bombs, Soto said, noting that his composure was the "right attitude for the job."

"It was just another day for him, another day at work," Soto said. "That's it. (Stuff) blowing up around him — he didn't care."

Soto was shot in the upper chest and forearm 10 days before Tsue was killed.

"Tsue was the kind of guy who did the right thing because it was the right thing to do," he said. "Bottom line: He didn't care if anybody was watching ... he was a good man."

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.