Isle reserves, called
in past, await orders

By Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-Bulletin

The head of the Army Reserve's civil affairs brigade in the Pacific doubts that specialists from his unit would be activated for the crisis in Kosovo, mainly because their primary mission is in Asia.

Col. John Ma, commander of the 322nd Civil Affairs Brigade at Fort Shafter, said "most of our Pacific troops stayed home" during past call-ups of reservists for Somalia and Bosnia.

"This is because our main mission or focus is the Korean peninsula," said Ma, 49.

"The Army doesn't send all of its forces into one place since that would mean having to re-position its remaining soldiers."

The Pentagon today said it is preparing to ask President Clinton for authority to activate as many as 33,000 reserve soldiers in support of the Kosovo conflict.

By law, the president can authorize the call-up of up to 200,000 reservists or National Guard members for 270 days at a time.

That request is expected to be sent to Clinton next week and will include 25,000 Air National Guard members who fly aerial refueling missions. The remainder would be Army civil affairs specialists and Apache helicopter support personnel.

Nearly 200 members of Hawaii Air National Guard's 203rd Air Refueling Squadron and 154th Wing at Hickam Air Force Base recently completed a nearly month long deployment refueling NATO bombers and jet fighters conducting raids on targets in Yugoslavia.

Capt. Chuck Anthony, Hawaii National Guard spokesman, said the unit hasn't received any new orders.

However, Anthony pointed out that of the 650 KC-135 jet tankers in the Air Force inventory, nearly half belong to the reserves. Currently, nine Air Guard and five Air Force Reserve refueling units are participating in NATO's Yugoslavia missions.

Hawaii has nine KC-135 jet tankers which have been sent to Europe and the Pacific on several wartime missions to support operations over Iraq and Bosnia.

Ma said 95 percent of the Army's civil affairs resources are in the reserves.

The mission of Ma's 140-member headquarters unit is to serve as a liaison between military commanders of the 8th Army in South Korea and civilian relief agencies.

"We're trained to understand the culture of the people and possess skills, such as language, that soldiers would not regularly have," Ma said.

Many of the reservists in civil affairs units are linguists, engineers and lawyers in civilian life "whose skills are not readily available in the active force," Ma added.

In the past, Pacific Army civil affairs specialists have been put on active duty to help with Kurd refugees who were relocated to Guam in 1997, illegal Chinese immigrants who were detained on Wake Island, and typhoon relief efforts.