Isle Marines still
await return itineraryAt least a dozen isle Seabees
will be returning tomorrow
Hawaii still has more than 400 Marines in the Persian Gulf region awaiting a decision from military leaders about when they will be back in the islands this summer.
However, there are at least a dozen Seabees who will return tomorrow. Hawaii's Seabees were attached to the 1st Marine Division.
They are members of 30th Naval Construction Regiment based at Pearl Harbor. About 30 of them were sent to Kuwait and Iraq last summer as part of the more than 1,000-member Seabee contingent in the Persian Gulf. Seabees is a nickname for Construction Battalions, or CBs.
Also on a homeward bound voyage is the 225-foot Coast Guard cutter Walnut, a buoy tender. It completed a 20-day mission replacing buoys at Iraq's main port two weeks ago.
The Walnut, with a crew of 50, left Honolulu in mid-January for Guam, Singapore, Kuwait and then Iraq.
Yesterday, Gen. Michael Hagee, commandant of the Marine Corps, told Pentagon reporters the target date for bringing all of the Marines home from Iraq is the end of August. He said the final decision would be made by Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who controls all forces in the Persian Gulf.
The first group of 200 Marines from Hawaii went to Bahrain in February 2002 to beef up the Marines Central Command Headquarters as part of the ongoing war on terrorism.
That contingent from Camp Smith was headed by Lt. Gen. Earl Hailston, who will retire in August. He will be replaced by Lt. Gen. Wallace Gregson Jr., now commander of the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force on Okinawa. Hailston has held the job as commanding general of U.S. Marine Forces Pacific for the past two years.
Today, the aircraft carrier USS Constellation with cruisers USS Bunker Hill and USS Valley Forge, destroyer USS Milius and frigate USS Thach will pay a port call at Pearl Harbor on the way to their home ports in California and Washington. During the Iraq war, the Constellation battle group flew more than 1,500 sorties and expended more than 1 million pounds of ordnance, including 408 Tomahawk missiles.
On Feb. 9, 250 Marines from the 1st Radio Battalion at Kaneohe Bay and 40 Marine reservists belonging to the 4th Force Reconnaissance Marines left for Iraq.
Forty members of the radio battalion returned home Monday night.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.