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Barking Sands helicopter
airlifts toddler to hospital

A Pacific Missile Range Facility UH-3H helicopter airlifted a 2-year-old Niihau girl suffering from respiratory distress to Kauai on Feb. 28. The Barking Sands helicopter, flown by Navy Lts. Adam Schultz and Chad Kennedy, flew to Niihau with corpsman Marcos Bordonada. The girl and her parents were airlifted to Barking Sands, where an ambulance transported them to the Kauai Veterans Memorial Hospital in Waimea. It was Schultz's third emergency mission since he was assigned to Barking Sands. In July he flew water drops to fight a fire at the Lihue transfer, then airlifted injured Kauai dive instructor Matthew Isham.

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Retired Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, who retired from the Navy this week after serving as Pacific Command commander since May 2002, will join the Iolani School Board of Governors in April, according to James Kawashima, board chairman. Fargo also became a member of the Hawaiian Electric Industries board this week.

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U.S. Military Academy cadet Roy Yokoyama, a 2001 Kailua High School graduate, recently was named to the dean's list. He will graduate from West Point in May and be assigned as a second lieutenant in Germany. He is the son of Dennis Yokoyama and Yong Sun Amine of Kailua. During his senior year, Yokoyama received honorable mention as a defensive player in OIA soccer.

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The Pacific War Memorial Association placed new bricks at its Iwo Jima memorial site on Friday for each of the 43 Marines and two sailors killed in Iraq while serving with the Kaneohe-based 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment. Memorial services for the latest combat casualties of the 1st Battalion -- including 26 Marines and one Pearl Harbor hospital corpsman -- will be held tomorrow at 1 p.m. at the state Capitol.

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Members of Kaneohe's weapons company from 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, recently helped capture eight men believed to be members of anti-government forces in Afghanistan's Khowst province. "Our enemies had never seen anything like this before, so they weren't ready for us, and they had no chance to escape into the mountains," said commanding officer Capt. Ken Barr. The company had planned the operation over a month and a half, gathering key intelligence on anti-government militia operating in the province.

America's Battalion also was able to seize a significant number of illegal weapons and explosives without firing a single shot, according to a written statement.

A platoon commander explained that the relationship the troops have tried to develop in the area over the last few months improved their ability to go in hard and fast without disrupting friendly ties.

"The local populace has begun to trust us more and more, as we've built a relationship with them through local patrols with Afghan police, and the medical and humanitarian relief efforts we've performed," said 2nd Lt. Luke Lazzo. "We try to stress to them that it's their community, and they have to take responsibility for the actions of those they live with. We're here to help them with that. That allows us to go into a town the way we did and successfully find our enemies without too much resistance from the locals."

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More than 300 soldiers from the 25th Infantry Division's 1st Battalion (Attack), 25th Aviation Regiment, deployed from Schofield Barracks in January 2004. During 13 months of combat operations, they flew more than 6,000 combat missions, for the most combat flight hours of any aviation battalion in the theater -- more than 25,000 -- while maintaining an operational readiness rate of 84 percent. This flight-hour record eclipses that of any battalion-size element in combat since the Vietnam War, according to a Schofield Barracks press release. The battalion was based at Camp Taji and flew combat missions in Baghdad supporting 17 different brigades from the 1st Armor Division, the 82nd Airborne Division and the 1st Cavalry Division.