Donna Zovko wants Americans to remember her son Jerko "Jerry" Zovko and other contractors along with the fallen members of the nation's military.

"How will Americans treat or remember my son as a contractor that was killed?" she asked. "It's their choice, but he was there to protect our freedom and to help the Iraqis. He was not there for the money."

Along with the more than 3,400 U.S. military members killed since the March 2003 start of the Iraq war, more than 900 civilian employees of U.S. government contractors have died.

Jerry Zovko, 32, an Army veteran, was working for Pentagon contractor Blackwater USA hauling food to American troops when he and three other contractors were killed in a March 31, 2004, ambush in Fallujah. Their mutilated bodies were burned and two were hung from a bridge.

One of the men with Zovko was with was 48-year-old Big Island man Wesley Batalona, a retired Army Ranger who was raised in plantation housing near Waipi`o Valley.

Before leaving for Iraq, Batalona, worked as part of a security team at the Hilton Waikoloa and had been researching government financing options for starting a home for troubled youth in the rural areas of the Hamakua Coast.

Zovko's mother has waged a campaign for tighter oversight of military contractors, appearing in a documentary film, "Iraq for Sale: the War Profiteers," and testifying before a congressional committee.

While the military takes care of its own, Zovko said, "In private contracting, no one is responsible. They put it under the carpet and go on. It's not talked about. It's not answered to."

Occasionally sobbing as she talks about her efforts and her lost son, she said she understands the honors accorded military victims but hopes people also remember the contributions made by those hired by the Pentagon to free soldiers and Marines for combat duty.

She rejects the suggestion that contractors in Iraq are only motivated by big paychecks.

"I prefer to think of (Jerry) the way he told me," Zovko said. "That he was needed there and the skills that he learned in the military were needed and he went."

But the contractors, she said, think more about profits than the safety of their employees.

She said she especially feels for civilian contractors who lacked a military background. Her son was buried with military honors at the Ohio Western Reserve National Center near Akron.

"My heart breaks for them, because if it was 9/11 that moved those young men to go and become contractors and to go there with such a pure heart and a good will and lose their lives, their families cannot count on those companies that contracted their son," she said.

Blackwater has argued that it abided by its contractual obligations.

"The four men lost in Fallujah weigh heavily on the hearts of everyone at Blackwater and our sympathies remain with the families," the company told The Associated Press in an e-mail Friday.

Blackwater does not release the names of those killed and memorializes its dead in private. At its headquarters in Moyock, N.C., the company engraves a stone in its memorial rock garden for each contractor killed while serving.

Nancy Taylor, who teaches future school counselors at John Carroll University in nearby University Heights, said Zovko's advocacy on military contractor oversight could bring attention to the issue of contractor deaths.