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Takemoto leaves post
with 82nd

Col. Glenn Takemoto, 1974 Farrington High School graduate, relinquished command Friday of the 82nd Division's Division Support Command, made up of 2,200 soldiers, after two years. This was his fourth tour with the 82nd Division. He has already commanded two battalions in the "All American Division."

His next assignment is with the U.S. Pacific Command at Camp Smith, where he will be division chief of the J53 regional strategic plans section.

Takemoto, 49, met his wife -- Lytle Kaaweloa, a 1974 Kamehameha Schools graduate -- while enrolled in the University of Hawaii Army ROTC program. She also made the Army a career, retiring in 1998 as a lieutenant colonel after 20 years.

"About two months after taking command on June 11, 2003, the 82d Airborne Division deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom," she told the Star-Bulletin. "Glenn deployed the DISCOM (Division Support Command) to a location just outside Fallujah. After eight months in Iraq, the 82nd redeployed to Fort Bragg in April 2004, but sadly, the DISCOM lost four of its paratroopers during that deployment."

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Seventy-three Marines from Okinawa and Kaneohe Bay are at Camp Wy-Wuh on Annette Island in Alaska manning heavy equipment all along a road project, building bridges, servicing vehicles, filling potholes on the access road, cooking meals in the camp dining facility, or issuing equipment out of the supply shop.

About two-thirds of the detachment is from the 9th Engineer Support Battalion from Camp Hansen on Okinawa and the rest are members of Combat Service Support Group 3 from Kaneohe, according to a military news release. The arrival of the Marines nearly doubled the camp's population. The group is the first of the large-scale engineer groups to work this year in Alaska.

Operation Alaskan Road, which entails construction of a 14.5-mile road on an island that is Alaska's only federally recognized Indian reservation, offers each branch of the service an opportunity to work with the others -- something else the Marines rarely get to do at home.

In maintenance, "the soldiers we're working with are showing us a lot, helping us get over the obstacles," said Sgt. Brendan Sanders from Hawaii.

Marines stationed in Hawaii and Japan "can't work with this kind of equipment at home," said Gunnery Sgt. James Darity, also from Kaneohe. Original specifications for the road call for gentle sloping with no steep grades, a huge challenge among the rocky mountains of the island.

One of the Marines' tasks involved installing a culvert, 5 feet in diameter, in the road. "We've never put in a culvert of this magnitude," Darity says.

Staff Sgt. Richard Arvey, construction staff noncommissioned officer in charge from Hawaii, oversaw the culvert installation. "Excavators, trucks and Marines, all these moving parts," Darity said. "It sharpens my task organization skills."

When completed, Operation Alaskan Road will connect the town of Metlakatla with a ferry boat dock on the north end of the island that will provide quick and easy access to Ketchikan, Alaska's fifth-largest city, across the bay.

Moving up

Hickam Air Force Base

» Brig. Gen. Gregory J. Ihde, commander of the 57th Wing, Air Combat Command, at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., has been selected to be the vice commander of the new George C. Kenney Headquarters (provisional) and commander of the Pacific Air Operations Center.

» Col. David Hocking has assumed command of the 15th Medical Group, relieving Col. Scott Wardell.