Capturing emotions

A new effort to collect photos of all 311 Hawaii servicemen killed in the Vietnam War has stirred surprisingly intense emotions for island families nearly a half-century later.

Fathers, sisters, brothers, mothers and uncles have been startled by the depth of the grief they’ve uncovered while digging out photos of loved ones for the proposed Education Center at The Wall project to honor Vietnam veterans next to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C.

"It’s been over 40 years ago and all that time doesn’t wipe away the hurt," said Charlotte Bara, 68, a pianist and piano teacher from Mililani who lost her brother in Vietnam. "It’s a big hurt that becomes fresh again when his memory is brought up to the surface."

On May 14, 1969, Bara’s kid brother — Hawaii Army National Guard soldier Leonard Castillo, 21, of Wahiawa — had just taken out an enemy sniper when he was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade while aiding other soldiers.

As they relive their losses, Bara and other Hawaii families have discovered a new fellowship with one another as they send photos of their loved ones for the Education Center project, which is designed to put faces to the names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall when the center breaks ground, possibly in November 2012.

"When you have activities like this, the feelings become much more intense," Bara said. "But knowing that other people went through what I’ve been through, I don’t feel so alone."

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington lists the names of 276 dead soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen from Hawaii. But another 35 dead Vietnam veterans have ties to the islands, said Billie Gabriel, who is leading the "Hawaii Call for Photos" campaign.

So far, Gabriel has accounted for 123 photos and is trying to help identify who might have the 188 others.

The intensity of emotions that the photo campaign has dredged up so many decades after the war offers a glimpse of what relatives of military members killed more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan might endure for the rest of their lives, said Dr. Kenneth A. Hirsch, who manages the Veterans Affairs medical center post-traumatic stress disorder program on Oahu.

And as the country prepares to mark the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the fellowship that the Hawaii families are discovering through the Education Center project offers an example of the healing that families of the 9/11 victims may find, Hirsch said.

"It is only now that some of these (Vietnam-era) families are grieving and coming to grips with their loss," he said. "It is normal. It is absolutely normal. It may not be comfortable, but it is normal."

The loss will always be there for the families of casualties from Iraq, Afghanistan and 9/11, Hirsch said. But the intense resurgence of emotions may be unique to the families of Vietnam casualties, he said.

Because of the deep division around the country at the time over the Vietnam War, families mourning military deaths often got no sympathy, Hirsch said.

"You were not a very welcome person if you lost someone in Vietnam," Hirsch said. "In the emotional climate of the country, ‘He was a baby killer. He deserved to die.’"

Over the years, Hirsch said, "you put it out of your mind. And then something, like putting up a memorial, reminds you of it."

FOR FRANCES WILLIAMS, 61, of Manoa, the photo project has resurrected the old pain of the loss of her brother, Marine Pfc. Mariano Ribillia, who was killed in January 1969 at the age of 18.

It’s also helped begin to heal the wounds from Williams’ own service in Vietnam as an Air Force supply clerk.

"I feel like I’m conquering my fears now," said Williams, who retired as a sergeant. "This helps. People don’t understand about Vietnam unless you’ve been there."

Her father objected to the war — especially when Mariano was taken from their plantation home in Puunene, Maui, by U.S. marshals and drafted into the Marines, Williams said. After Mariano died, he angrily beat on the family’s television set when news of the war came on.

"He had a lot of anger," Williams said. "He would break all of the TVs."

After years of tension with her family and counseling through the Veterans Administration, Williams believes the photo project now helps.

"It took this long for something like this for me to get involved," she said. "Talking about my brother is a special healing. We’ve needed this for the longest time."

Gabriel is leading the "Hawaii Call for Photos" campaign, in part, to honor her big brother, James Gabriel Jr., a 1956 Farrington High School graduate who became an Army Green Beret.

James Gabriel was ambushed, captured and shot in the head by Viet Cong guerrillas in 1962 at the age of 24 and was the first Native Hawaiian killed in the war.

While Gabriel has wrestled with her own emotions over the last several weeks, she has been surprised at the intensity of the feelings among other families.

A man from Kau on Hawaii island who lost a nephew in Vietnam called Gabriel recently, and "the anger in his voice was so raw," Gabriel said.

The man yelled, "‘Why you doing this for? Why you opening up the wounds of the Vietnam War? We should never have been in that country in the first place. We had no business being there, wasting money and so many young lives. My nephew, just 19 years old, should never have gone! Po-ho, so young, so much promise. Why he went enlist? For what, to fight for people he nevah even know! So senseless that war."

As Gabriel listened, the anger in the man’s voice softened.

"He finally released his feelings that he probably kept bottled up for 40-plus years," Gabriel said. "Then he began to quietly cry."

GABRIEL NOW CALLS the "Hawaii Call for Photos" project her personal "ministry" to help heal families like Freddie Keahi’s.

Since he first heard about the project in early August, Keahi has been flashing back to 1968 when he was just 14 years old and his 18-year-old brother, Army Pfc. Gene Luther Keahi, was serving in Vietnam as a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division.

Freddie and his dad, retired Air Force Tech Sgt. Luther Keahi, were talking to their neighbors in Ewa Beach in February 1968 when an Army staff car pulled up to their house and someone started talking to Freddie’s mother, Grace.

"I can’t remember things from yesterday," Freddie said. "But I remember that when the guy came out of the car my mom collapsed."

Gene had been shot while trying to rescue his wounded sergeant and posthumously won the Silver Star and Purple Heart.

For the first three years after Gene’s funeral at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific at Punchbowl, Luther Keahi visited his grave every day, Freddie remembered.

Gene’s fiancee never married. She declined to attend a service to encourage more families to contribute photos at an Aug. 28 ceremony at the black granite wall on the grounds of the state Capitol that contains the names of island military members who died in the Korean and Vietnam wars.

"She dated a few other guys," Freddie said. "But she said she could never find someone as good as Gene."

Luther Keahi, 85, now uses a wheelchair and has difficulty speaking because of a tracheotomy due to throat cancer caused by exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam.

He had to stop himself to wipe away tears, but said in a whispered voice that other Hawaii families that lost loved ones in Vietnam also should begin the process to heal after all of these decades.

"For the first time," Keahi said, reaching over to touch a photo of his dead son, "we are all getting together because of this."