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IN THE MILITARY

Chinese vessels to
make goodwill visit

Navy Capt. Kevin Wensing is ready to repay the Chinese Navy for the hospitality it showed his boss -- Pacific Fleet's Adm. Thomas Fargo -- and the crew of the USS Chancellorsville last week when they made the first U.S. port call on China since the Kosovo air bombing last year.

According to the Aug. 14 issue of Newsweek magazine, Wensing is supplying a case of beer to celebrate a Chinese destroyer and oiler docking here Sept. 5. It will be China's first overseas goodwill tour since 1997.

The Chinese reportedly hosted a lavish banquet for the Americans with oceans of wine and Quingdao beer. "They kept saying, 'Gan bei! Gan bei!'" Wensing said. That's Chinese for "bottoms up."

Camp Smith building to begin next year

Dick Pacific Construction Co. has been awarded the nearly $78 million contract to build the U.S. Pacific Command headquarters building at Camp Smith.

Work is expected to begin early next year, with completion scheduled for summer 2003. The 274,000-square-foot building will stand six stories.

Former Pearl spokesman returns to Hawaii

Navy Cmdr. John Singley, who once served as the Navy spokesman at the Pearl Harbor Naval Base, is returning to the islands to be the spokesman for Adm. Dennis Blair, Pacific Forces commander at Camp Smith.

Soldiers help rebuild in East Timor, Micronesia

Four schools, a health clinic and a laboratory are part of nation-building construction tasks that soldiers from the 25th Infantry Division are undertaking.

Soldiers from the 84th Engineer Combat Battalion were sent to the East Timor capital city of Dili in June to help rebuild buildings that were destroyed in August 1999 during the demonstrations that followed the country's vote for independence from Indonesia.

The Schofield Barracks unit sent carpenters, masons, plumbers, and electricians and also provided a roving security force at the job sites.

Maj. Lynne Westlake, an Army Reserve civil affairs officer with the 9th Regional Support Command, said the people have high spirits, considering what they have been through. The city of Dili was razed and its water supply contaminated after Indonesian militia gangs revolted.

In October 1999, the United Nations sent a security force to restore order.

Combat engineers from the 84th also recently returned after helping the people of Kosrae, a Micronesian island southeast of Guam, by building roads, state offices and other facilities.

Since 1984, Army Civic Action Teams have been traveling to the Federated State of Micronesia to lend a helping hand. The 84th Combat Engineer Battalion returned to Hawaii Aug. 4 after a six-month deployment, where it built an office and a lab for the forestry department, improved facilities in a prison and repaired and built several roads.

One of the roads was to the remote village of Walung, previously reachable only by boat or through swamps.

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Gregg K. Kakesako, Star-Bulletin