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Veterans will be honored by three Oahu Veterans Day services -- one Friday and two Saturday. IN THE MILITARY
One service Friday,
two Saturday on Oahu
to honor veteransBy Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-BulletinRear Adm. Robert Conway, commander of the Navy Region Command, will be the keynote speaker at Friday's ceremony, which will begin at 8:15 a.m. on board the battleship USS Missouri at Ford Island.
On Saturday at 10 a.m. a one-hour ceremony will be held at the National Cemetery of the Pacific, which will include a 21-gun salute and a missing-man formation flyover conducted by the 199th Fighter Squadron of the Hawaii Air National Guard.
Later in the day at 1 p.m., Gov. Ben Cayetano and Adm. Dennis Blair, Pacific Forces commander, will speak at a ceremony at the Hawaii State Veterans Cemetery in Kaneohe.
Even as the furor grows over Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki's order to have soldiers don new headgear -- black berets -- next June, another uniform change is in the works.
U.S. News & World Report reports that the current pale or mint green shirt and black tie that make up a soldier's Class A dress uniform may be doomed. The talk seems to hark back to the Vietnam era, when soldiers wore brown shirts and black ties.
An Army Uniform Board will meet in January to consider the change.
Veterans will be given the opportunity to register online rather than trekking to Tripler to fill out forms. The Veterans Online Applications system will allow veterans to apply online for benefits and health care.
For more information check out http://www.vba.va.gov or call 1-800-827-1000.
The Veterans Affairs Department says that 80 percent of veterans responding to a recent survey had access to the Internet.
Military reservists -- who volunteer to participate in honor guards at veterans' funerals -- are guaranteed job protection under a new law co-sponsored by U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie.
The reduction in active military forces and the increasing number of veteran's funerals annually have forced the Pentagon to use reservists.
However, the old law did not provide them with job protection to perform honor guard duties. Abercrombie's measure adds honor guard functions to those reserve duties afforded legal protection.
Navy. Cmdr. Robert Hennegan, the former commander skipper of the Pearl Harbor-based attack submarine USS Buffalo, was recognized for his outstanding leadership with the presentation of the Vice Adm. James Stockdale Award last week.
Stockdale earned the Medal of Honor for his leadership as U.S. prisoner of war in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" prison camp in Vietnam. Of the past 40 Navy officers who have received the award during the past 20 years, five have risen to admiral.
