Vets, community honor fallen service members
At the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl, where about 61, 000 people are buried, Honolulu Mayor Rick Blan giardi told an audience of veterans, current service members, military families and diplomats that the cemetery is 'a place where history lives in silence and each grave marker tells a story.'
Blangiardi said people come to Hawaii from across the world to see sites like Punchbowl, the USS Arizona Memorial and the USS Missouri, telling the crowd, 'Here on Oahu we are privileged to be surrounded by historic sites like this one, some of the most important in our nation's history, ' but that 'many of us pass by them every single day without truly seeing them. Our promise today is to ensure the significance of these historic places and the souls they commemorate are never forgotten, to ensure that future generations understand the cost of freedom and the weight of sacrifice.'
This year the U.S. military is marking the 250th anniversaries of the founding of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps—their roots go back to the American Revolution and predate the nation itself. Adm. Samuel Paparo, who leads all U.S. troops across the Pacific from Camp Smith, told the crowd, 'If we reflect on those 250 years, that represents 1.3 million Americans who gave the ultimate sacrifice in battle, and another 1.5 million deaths of people training in dangerous environments to do the same while still wearing the uniform.'
Paparo read off the names of several service members with ties to Hawaii who died overseas in combat and those who lost their lives in training accidents, and noted family members who were in attendance at the ceremony at Punchbowl.
Among the names were Cpl. Toby Olson, a Mililani High School graduate who was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2007 ; Sgt.
Eugene Williams, who lost his life to a suicide bomber near the Iraqi city of Najaf in 2003 at the age of 24 serving with the Schofield Barracks-based 25th Infantry Division ; and Marine Cpl. Jonathan Faircloth, who died in a 2011 helicopter crash in Kaneohe Bay at age 22.
'The greatest memorial we can build is not made of granite ; it's a nation that remains worthy of their value, ' Paparo said. 'Let us build it.'
Blangiardi said, 'America's gold star families remind us the fallen heroes we are gathered to remember were sons and daughters, parents, siblings, husbands and wives. In life the brave men and women who died protecting our country and our freedom were someone's entire world.'
The U.S. military has been sending troops to conflict zones continuously since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In 2024 eight Hawaii National Guard soldiers deployed to West Africa in support of Operation Juniper Shield, a long-running counterterrorism mission in the region, to support base defense operations.
As recently as August, seven American troops were injured in Iraq during a raid in which they and Iraqi forces killed 15 members of the Islamic State militant group. Last week Adm. James Kilby, the Navy's acting chief of naval operations, said the USS Harry S. Truman carrier strike group launched the 'largest airstrike in the history of the world ' from an aircraft carrier on militants in Somalia in February.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon has been ramping up defense spending in Hawaii and the Pacific as tensions have escalated between China and its neighbors, leading to clashes in the South China Sea, a critical waterway that more than a third of global trade travels through. Beijing has claimed the entire waterway as its exclusive sovereign territory over the objections of neighboring countries.
Chinese forces have built bases on disputed islands and reefs and attacked fishermen and other maritime workers, especially in waters claimed by the Philippines. Marines and soldiers from Hawaii-based units are in the Philippines training with Filipino troops as tensions have continue to mount.
During the recently completed Exercise Balikatan, members of the Kaneohe-based 3rd Littoral Regiment brought new anti-ship missiles for the first time to the Philippines' Batanes islands just south of Taiwan.
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