Army Brig. Gen. Clarence K.K. Chinn, whose parents are from Hawaii, has been selected to receive his second star as a major general, the Pentagon announced.
Chinn is in Afghanistan as deputy commander of Regional Command-East, a component of the International Security Assistance Force Joint Command. Regional Command-East covers 14 provinces and about 43,000 square miles, roughly the size of Ohio, and shares 450 miles of border with Pakistan.
In an email from Afghanistan, Chinn recalled spending summers in Hawaii with his grandparents in Kailua and Kapaa, Kauai. His father, Clarence Y.L. Chinn, is a former Army officer and was a dentist for many years in Aiea, where he still lives.
Chinn said he lived with his grandparents on Kauai in 1969 while his father served in Vietnam.
His wife’s parents, Isamu "Lucky" and Gladys Uehara, owned New Liberty Grill, which operated in downtown Honolulu for more than 40 years.
Chinn’s wife, Val, graduated from Mid-Pacific Institute in 1980.
Their son, Jared, played ice hockey for the Nanaimo Clippers in Canada and Connecticut Oilers in Greenwich, Conn.; their daughter, Ashley, plays on an ice hockey team for Adrian College in Michigan, where she is majoring in exercise science and biology.
Chinn is a 1981 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.
He was stationed in Hawaii from 1993 to 1997, serving as chief and exercise officer at U.S. Army Pacific at Fort Shafter and then as 2nd Battalion executive officer with the 25th Infantry Division’s 5th Infantry Regiment at Schofield Barracks.
From March 1999 to May 2001, Chinn commanded the 4th Ranger Training Battalion at Camp Rogers in Fort Benning, Ga. He deployed to Iraq in 2003 with the 75th Ranger Regiment and then served in Afghanistan.
Chinn commanded the Ranger Training Brigade from July 2004 to July 2006. Later he was assigned to the U.S. Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., until June 2008.
In January 2011, Chinn became the commanding general of the Joint Readiness Training Center and Fort Polk, La.
He deployed to Afghanistan in November.
Chinn has made two combat jumps. He participated in the parachute assault on Grenada in October 1983 and a night jump into Torrijos-Tocumen Airfield in Panama in December 1989.
