In the Military
For and about Hawaii's servicemen and womenBy Gregg K. Kakesako
See also: For Your Benefit
Officer school hall of fame
inducts Hilo residentRetired Army Lt. Col. Robert Montague, a Hilo resident, is believed to be the first person from the islands inducted into the U.S. Army Field Artillery Officer Candidate School Hall of Fame at Fort Sill in Oklahoma. He enlisted in the Army in 1949 and served three tours in Vietnam as an artillery officer. He is chairman of the Hawaii Island Veterans Memorial group, which is working on a combined veterans center. Montague also formed the Puna Disabled Veterans chapter.
Maj. Gen. Eric Olson will assume command of the 25th Infantry Division (Light) July 18 at Schofield Barracks, relieving Maj. James Dubik. Olson comes to Hawaii after serving as commandant of cadets at the Army's Military Academy at West Point since July 1999. He commanded a mechanized battalion during Desert Storm in 1991 and served as a brigade commander in the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood in Texas in 1995. Dubik, who took charge of soldiers of the Tropic Lightning Division in November 2000, will become the director for joint experimentation at the U.S. Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va.
At Tripler Army Medical Center, Brig. Gen. Joseph G. Webb Jr. has received the authorization to pin on his second star after the Senate approved his promotion to major general and appointment as chief of the dental corps on Thursday. He is currently serving as Tripler's commanding general.
A Senate subcommittee will investigate whether the Pentagon intended to use American sailors as human guinea pigs during the 1960s testing of chemical weapons aboard Navy ships, the Baltimore Sun reported last week. Sen. Max Cleland, a Georgia Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services personnel subcommittee, said he will convene hearings this fall on the once-secretive testing program. Cleland says he is pushing for open hearings, but the Pentagon might insist some of the material stay classified.
One project, entitled Autumn Gold, was conducted in May of 1963 about 60 miles west-southwest of Oahu, according to documents recently released by the Defense Department. The tests involved military personnel who were exposed to chemical agents meant to simulate the effects of deadlier germs such as anthrax. The four tests in the Pacific from 1964 to 1968 used either the deadly nerve agent sarin, the nerve gas known as VX, or a biological toxin that causes flu-like symptoms, the Pentagon said.
The Autumn Gold tests were among 113 that were part of a program called Shipboard Hazard and Defense that was designed to "learn the vulnerabilities of U.S. warships to an attack with chemical or biological agents and develop procedures to respond to such an attack while maintaining a war-fighting capacity."
Adm. Thomas Fargo, commander-in-chief of the Pacific Command, has recommended merging the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory and the Joint Task Force-Full Accounting into one organization by October. The goal is to merge both units to increase the operational efficiency under the same commander and staff. The new command would have the mission to search for, recover and identify remains of American military personnel and American civilian personnel unaccounted for from World War II, the Korean War, the Cold War and the Vietnam War.
On Tuesday, 50 specialists from both organizations left the islands for Laos to search for missing Americans from the Vietnam War. The four recovery teams and one investigation team will visit five primary sites in two Lao provinces.
Hawaii stands to receive $241 million in two military spending bills passed by the House last week. Military construction for Hawaii amounted to $227 million while there was another $15 million in the defense appropriations bill. The conversion of the nation's four oldest Trident submarines is one of the top defense project of the House's $354.7 billion defense bill. The House Appropriations Committee appropriated $907.8 million in the first of three installments that will fund the $3.34 billion conversion of the four Tridents to cruise-missile launchers during the next few years. Two of the Trident subs will be converted at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, beginning in November with USS Ohio. Had the House not added the funding, the four Tridents would have been phased out of the nuclear submarine fleet under the START II strategic arms reduction treaty.
Moving Up
Sand Island>> Capt. Patrick Stadt assumed command of the Coast Guard cutter Rush, relieving Capt. Paul Zukunft.
Gregg K. Kakesako can be reached by phone at 294-4075
or by e-mail at gkakesako@starbulletin.com.
