Name: Lt. Col. McKinley Collins Jr.
Age: 42
Education: University of Hawaii
Occupation: Military planner
Hobbies: Golf, auto mechanics

Now as the first African-American commanding officer of the 100th Battalion/

442nd Infantry, Collins said he is honored to pick up the standard of an Army unit that also had to fight prejudice to prove its loyalty. Collins' Pacific Army reserve unit maintains the colors and standard of the 100th Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, made up mostly of Japanese Americans who volunteered for combat in World War II. It became one of the most highly decorated fighting units.

Collins, a helicopter door gunner during the Vietnam War, attended the University of Hawaii after six years in the Marine Corps. He spent another four years on active duty with the Army in Germany after being commissioned in 1981.

A major task impending now is to prepare the Army Reserve battalion for a deployment to the Army's Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, La., in 1999 as part of the Hawaii Army National Guard's 29th Infantry Brigade.

"That will be our biggest challenge since the Vietnam War call-up in 1968," Collins said.