Unweathered by time

By Eiji Yama****a
eyama****a@HanfordSentinel.com

Once a Marine, always a Marine, or so the old adage goes. For Daniel Padilla of Hanford and the men of the First Battalion Seventh Marines H&S Company 81 Mortars who served in the Pacific right before the Vietnam War, that is not an abstract ideal. It's as real and concrete, and they are living proof. Next Thursday will mark the third time the group has gathered in the nearly five decades since their platoon was deactivated.

About 50 men and their families will bow their heads that night at the Comfort Inn banquet room in Washington D.C., thanking God for their time together and for those no longer alive.

In 1960, when they were deployed aboard USS Mitchell to Camp Sukuran in Okinawa, Japan, the group numbered roughly 100. The unit was the first of the combat readiness battalions that were poised to go into Vietnam should the tension escalate in the region.

"I went in as a youngster, real immature, but I came back as a man," said Padilla, 67.

"Because of the love of the Corps, I see now why guys go into combat and do great things. It's never for yourself. It's for somebody else. We're always faithful.

"In our own private lives, had we never gotten in touch with each other and renewed our friendship, we'd still carry that spirit through every situation in life," Padilla said.

That's how their camaraderie -- forged for life between 1960 and 1961 while in Okinawa, Japan -- has stood the test of time.

One hundred members of the platoon went their own ways for some 45 years without ever meeting again as a group.

They reunited for the first time in 2006.

"I got a phone call at night time one day, and the party asked 'are you Daniel Padilla? Were you stationed in Okinawa in 1960-61?' I was thinking how could anyone know that ... I've dreamed about going back to Okinawa, but we never knew where everybody went."

Padilla had kept in touch with only two of the fellow Marines from that time. But many of his colleagues had done the same. The idea was to link two men, and they'll link two more and so on.

Seventeen of the original members of the unit, some with their spouses, showed up to their first reunion held in Branson, Mo.

"When we looked at each other, we had to look twice," Padilla said, opening an old album with pictures of all the Marines from the tour. "We had to put these pictures on us in order to recognize who you're talking with."

So far, 52 of the platoon members have been located. The group is still trying to locate 35 more, Padilla said.

Ten had already died when the search effort began two years ago, Padilla said. Since the first reunion, three move have died, he added.

Padilla got his start with the group in Los Angeles, when he signed up for the Corps in 1959 at the age of 17.

Many of those in his unit were just as young. They spent nearly seven months in the same barracks on a southern Japanese island and went on a floating battalion circling the southern Pacific in anticipation of a war in Vietnam.

When the unit returned from the tour in 1961, Padilla got married. That October, he was called to duty during the U.S. blockade of Cuba. After a tour in the Caribbean, he was honorably discharged in 1963 as a corporal.

Today Padilla works as a culinary supervisor at Avenal State Prison, but he has gone through many different careers, including helping launch Channel 21 in the area.

According to Padilla, many of his comrades went on to assume high positions in society. For example, one with whom he has kept in touch is a homicide detective in Chicago. Several continued their careers in the military achieving high ranks, he said.

But no matter where they are in society today, the experience shared 48 years ago remains sacred to the hearts of many surviving members of First Battalion Seventh Marines H&S Company 81 Mortars -- to the point that they still preserve the symbolic chain of command among themselves.

"When we get together, it's like we've never been apart," Padilla said. "In whatever avenue of life we're in now, there's something to be said to finding those that you spent so much time with. They are just the same kids they were then. Inside them beats the same heart that was there. That's the uniqueness of it."

The reporter can be reached at 583-2429.

Ellie