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Hawaii’s World
HAWAII military vets -- all 115,000 of us -- now have available about the best veterans medical and pharmaceutical facility of any state. I signed up for rainy day protection. VA medical center
is outstandingWe are the last state to get such a unit but the new three-story structure just back of Tripler Army Medical Center is a beauty.
What's more, it's just across from the Department of Veterans Affairs' new, free multi-deck parking structure on the mauka (upper) side of Tripler.
This is for virtually all vets -- not, however, for dependents. There are fees, but care is not restricted to the disabled or those in financial need. Priority to the latter groups remains the rule at the nearby 60-bed VA Center for Aging.
The director of all VA medical services here and in Guam and American Samoa is H. David Burge, a Kamehameha Schools graduate with 20 years of VA executive service on the mainland plus time in the president's Office of Management and Budget. He was a naval officer in the Vietnam War.
Burge says basic VA medical services were extended to all vets by Congress in 1998. He urges every Hawaii vet to drive to Tripler, take a not-so-frequent No. 71 bus or call 433-0164 for shuttle information.
There, go to the classy, glassy second-floor check-in, provide evidence of service, and get a red, white and blue photo ID card to use the new clinic.
Don't give up your existing medical plan, Burge stresses. Most non-VA hospital confinement services remain restricted. Use the new VA unit as a backup -- most particularly for reducing drug costs.
All VA services, except for Punchbowl National Memorial Cemetery inurnments, now are relocated to Tripler, with administration offices in E-Wing adjacent to the Tripler entrance.
Also in E-Wing is the Hawaii State Office of Veterans Services, also relocated from downtown Honolulu. With body burials no longer available at Punchbowl, it arranges state cemetery burials for veterans. The office also helps vets find their way to available federal services.
Walter Ozawa, a retired Army colonel, is the director. On his wall is a painting of the U.S. internment camp where he spent several years as a child.
Lay people may not appreciate that VA services still remain quite distinct from the Tripler hospital medical services. Army-operated, Tripler serves Pacific area active duty personnel of all services and their families. Like Walter Reed outside Washington, D.C., it is also a major research hospital. VA is a separate federal department.
The present combination is doing some pioneering nationwide. Both sides pledged at the VA unit's dedication May 31 to strive to make it work.
The new clinic -- called the Spark M. Matsunaga VA Medical Center for our late U.S. senator -- is considered a living monument to one of his dreams for Hawaii. As the dedication program quoted him: "I want to be remembered as a friend of the veterans because if not for them we would not be enjoying the fruits of democracy."
Matsunaga's surviving colleague, Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, said at the dedication that the center is an important addition to national security because it shows young active-duty service personnel their nation will not forget them in future time of need.
Both senators served in Hawaii's famous Nisei combat units in World War II --Matsunaga with the 100th Infantry Battalion, Inouye with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Matsunaga, who died in 1990, is buried in Punchbowl Cemetery. Also named for him is the Peace Institute at the University of Hawaii. It was another of his dreams.
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.