KAILUA-KONA — The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month is an emotional one for veterans everywhere. West Hawaii’s men and women of service were no exception.
KAILUA-KONA — The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month is an emotional one for veterans everywhere. West Hawaii’s men and women of service were no exception.
Tracy Bennedsen wore the dog tags belonging to her son Robert, killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. You could see how the tags had been bent.
Although she and her husband Scott, both of Kailua-Kona, spent Veterans Day visiting their son’s ashes at the West Hawaii Veterans Cemetery, they had another place where they kept him.
“He’s here,” she said, clasping her fists to her chest.
Army 1st Lt. Robert Bennedsen was in the 2nd Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment when his convoy ran into a roadside bomb on July 18, 2010, near Qalat, damaging an ambulance. Bennedsen rushed over to pull one soldier from the vehicle and was returning to render further aid when he was killed by a second bomb.
The story was just one of sacrifice and remembrance at the cemetery Wednesday, site of a ceremony that drew well over 400 of the West Hawaii military ohana.
“This day is about you; it’s about all of you guys,” said Lt. Col. Jacob Peterson, commander of U.S. Army Garrison Pohakuloa, and the ceremony’s guest speaker.
“It’s a day to say thanks for all of the liberties that we have,” Peterson said. “No other country appreciates their military the way that we do.”
The island’s famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team veterans are rapidly fading into history. One more slipped away this past Sunday — Tokuichi Nakano of Naalehu, said Tracey Matsuyama, daughter of Don Seki, who lost his arm fighting to liberate Bruyeres, France, from the Germans during World War II.
West Hawaii now has only four veterans of the 442 left, Matsuyama said. They are Seki, Takeshi Kudo, Fumikichi Matsuoka and Yasunori Deguchi.
“I’m just hanging onto my dad,” she said. “I’m trying to give him the fullest life possible before he goes.”
The 442, comprised of Japanese-American soldiers, is the most highly decorated unit in U.S. military history. Present at Wednesday’s ceremony were veterans of conflicts spanning eight decades. Robert Strickland, a Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam, still struggles with a legacy of grief that began with his father’s imprisonment for 28 months in a German prisoner-of-war camp. It continued when Strickland got off the bus in San Francisco after his service in Vietnam, and was spat upon.
“It’s kind of hard to deal with,” he said.
Asked if opening up has gotten easier over time for veterans in general, he said: “It’s getting better.”
While the men shared their stories when asked, the hardships of the past did not set the tenor of the ceremony. The time was marked instead by brotherhood, hope, and sharing — and a lot of good food. The event generally draws around 400 people. Several veterans said this year’s attendance was well above last year’s.
“This is a day for me to honor the people I served with, who are currently serving and those we lost along the way,” said Bruce Soto, a retired Air Force veteran who was involved in the Gulf War and is now the scoutmaster for Boy Scout Troop 79 of Kailua-Kona.
During the 21-gun salute, the crack of the rifles held a sharp reminder. As the peels rang out, Peterson’s 11-month-old son Bo began to cry in the arms of his mother, Shelley. His crying could be heard between the volleys.
“This is his first time at an event like this,” his mother explained.
At the other end of the field, Soto shot a reminder to the line of Boy Scouts behind him.
“— Hold the salute. Hold it!”