[ WAR IN IRAQ ]
KEN IGE / KIGE@STARBULLETIN.COM
Benjamin and Faye Takayesu held a picture of their son Darren, who is now with the 101st Airborne Division in Kuwait. Darren's brothers, from left, Ryan, 17; Matt, 15; and Grant, 19, are behind their parents.
Terror fight By his own family's admission, Pvt. 1st Class Darren Takayesu wasn't someone destined to join an elite Army unit.
inspires local
paratrooper
By Gregg K. Kakesako
gkakesako@starbulletin.comBut now Takayesu, who just a year ago seemed only interested in making music videos, sits in Iraq with the 101st "Screaming Eagles" Airborne Division ready for battle.
At Iolani School, where he graduated in 1998, Takayesu "never went out for any type of varsity sports," says his mother, Faye.
"He wasn't athletic at all," she said.
So it came as "complete surprise" to her when Takayesu, 22, following his junior year at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., decided to abandon a filmmaking career to enlist in the Army and join one of its top fighting units, whose World War II exploits were the subject of the award-winning HBO television series "Band of Brothers."
The Screaming Eagles jumped into Normandy before the invasion of France on D-Day, June 6, 1944, and later captured Berchtesgarten, Adolf Hitler's mountaintop retreat.
His motivation: the terrorist attacks a year earlier on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
In an e-mail sent to his alma mater this week, Takayesu wrote: "I volunteered after Sept. 11, 2001, out of a responsibility to do my duty for our country when it needs to be defended, and to make sure people like Saddam and bin Laden no longer exist. ... but the cliche is true: Freedom is not free, and everything we all take for granted (as I once did) -- life, liberty, sleeping in late (Army wish) -- comes at a price."
His mother, Faye, said her son told her that "he felt that it was something he felt he had to do. He didn't want a job sitting behind a desk. He wanted to contribute."
KEN IGE / KIGE@STARBULLETIN.COM
Iolani grad Darren Takayesu is now with the 101st Airborne Division in Kuwait.
She said she tried to talk him out of joining the Army, "but he couldn't be persuaded."
Faye Takayesu said her son told her that he gave it "a lot of thought." He did a lot of research and decided on the 101st Airborne because he believed it would see a lot of combat in the continuing war against terrorism, she said.
The Afghan campaign had been completed by the time he got out of basic training in December, and he got into Kuwait two days before the ground war began.
However, Bill Lee, who is retiring after being Iolani's dean of students for the past four decades, said yesterday he thought "the military and Darren was a perfect match."
Lee said Takayesu seemed to be trying to find some sort of motivation while at Iolani -- a course or direction. However, Lee said he also felt that Takayesu was searching for something special to focus on.
Lee said he was into ceramics and a member of the Iolani dramatic players and also president of the school's sci-fi club.
Takayesu is now an air assault infantryman in Charlie Company of the 3rd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, one of the three battalions that make up the 1st Brigade in the 101st Division. In January 1991, during Desert Storm, the 101st conducted deep combat air-assault missions into Iraqi-held territory.
Faye Takayesu said the last time she talked to her son was last week before Saturday's grenade incident at Camp Pennsylvania in Kuwait, where a 101st sergeant is suspected of tossing a hand grenade into a headquarters tent of Takayesu's unit, killing two officers and wounding 14 others.
She has not heard from her eldest son since then and tries to avoid following the events of the Iraqi war on television or in the newspapers.
She and her husband, Ben, who operates McCully Bicycle & Sporting Goods, have three other sons: Grant, a University of Hawaii student; Matt, a high-schooler at Assets; and Ryan, a senior at Iolani.
In an interview with the Baltimore Sun published March 8, Takayesu said while sitting in a dusty tent at his base camp 30 miles from Iraq: "I'm scared, trying not to be. The one thing they tell me: Keep moving. If you hesitate, you could wind up dead."
"No one our age should be thinking about death, making a will or training to kill," Takayesu wrote to Iolani's faculty and students, "but we will fight, we will win and the world will be safer for it."
He said he has been told that the unit may be in Iraq as long as a year, but he hopes he will be back at Fort Campbell in Kentucky, where the 101st is headquartered, six months from now.
News reports said yesterday that elements of the 101st began convoying out of its 1-mile-square Camp Pennsylvania in Kuwait, where they have been for the past three weeks, moving into Iraq for the first time, possibly to support the coming siege on Baghdad.
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