Maj. Gen. Darryll Wong has, besides the unusual spelling of his first name, a distinction: At 64, he said, he’s among the last military officers from the Vietnam era still serving in full-time status.
Between the time Wong received his Air Force commission from the University of Hawaii’s ROTC in 1972 and the present, the state’s adjutant general’s career as a pilot took him on some of the war’s final flights and, after he left active duty in 1976, into the Hawaii Air National Guard in 1984.
In his civilian life, he took to the air again, as an Aloha Airlines pilot for more than three decades. Wong’s wall includes a framed shot o him in an Aloha cockpit, piloting the final flight from Maui before that air carrier was shuttered for good.
He resumed full-time service when he took this job in 2011. The state adjutant general heads the Hawaii Air and Army National Guard units and programs for youth, veterans and, starting this year, homeland security.
But, of course, it’s the storms and the volcanic eruption that have taken much of his time this year: The general also oversees the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, formerly known as State Civil Defense.
Emergency management ranges from such natural events, to plans for cleanup of the Ala Wai Canal. But the project Wong most wants to complete before he retires is the building of a county-state emergency management center that would include a cybersecurity function.
Wong said this center would analyze classified data from the power and water utility systems and other elements of the state’s infrastructure, looking for evidence of security breaches.
Wong, who is married with four grown children, has lifelong island roots. His father ran the Chinatown dry-goods business Yat Sing and borrowed money to send Wong, his twin brother and two sisters to Maryknoll School.
He takes his island stewardship personally, but said security is a collaborative responsibility.
"This is an island," he said. "Each of us has a role in it."
QUESTION: This job is pretty multifaceted. How much is taken up with emergency management?
ANSWER: I probably spend a third of my time on emergency management, and I’m spending a lot of my time on homeland security because of cyber (cybersecurity threats) …
Q: How is the emergency management operation handled, with multiple islands?
A: Originally, way back when, they called it State Civil Defense. That’s a very old term …
You see the name change, but the other thing you need to understand is, in the old law, the governor had all the power. The power was delegated to myself, then, if you look at the organizational diagram, all the mayors become my deputy, which doesn’t make sense at all.
So what we’ve done in the change of the Hawaii Revised Statutes is to give the power to the mayors. … They’re not deputies to me. We are now totally in support of each island mayor. …
Q: How do you mean “in support”?
A: To give you an example: You see a lot of (Hawaii County Civil Defense Director) Darryl Oliveira in the media. So Darryl and Mayor (Billy) Kenoi are deciding what they need to manage things in Puna. They’ve been doing that since Iselle, and the albizia trees. …
As soon as they need other things, they will send an RFA (request for assistance). … Say they needed the National Guard …
They know their county, they know their island, they manage their island, and when they need more help, we’ll bring it.
Q: What did they most need for this emergency?
A: This one they needed security —guardsmen in uniform, driving around in the community to make sure no one’s stealing. When you leave your business, you have a lot of bad actors. People seem to not have any morals. …
We’ve done a lot of exercising with Na Makani Pahili, our hurricane exercises. And I don’t think people are aware that even during the course of the year there are many exercises with our National Guard, our civil support team, … exercises with fire, police, the Coast Guard and a lot of different agencies, in case something like this were to happen.
So, we’ve been practicing this, so this is, how you say, “game day.” Game day, you do what you practiced, and then after Iselle and even Ana, we’d do an after-action and then continue to improve.
This lava flow is just another dynamic, but the basics of us providing the help that the Big Island needs is … what we do.
Q: Some people say the fact we’re an island community can be an advantage, in coordinating emergency operations. Do you agree?
A: (Laughs) A good case in point of what you talked about: We had APEC here. We’re able to seal our borders because you know everyone coming in by ship and by air, whereas on the mainland people can just drive across the border.
By virtue of being an island community, you’re able to seal off your border and keep bad actors from coming here in droves.
But on the negative side, you’re an
island community in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that is five or seven days away from any ships providing any support, or an airplane, five hours …
If you look at the state of Hawaii, we have a lot of air assets. … That was part of a lot of strategic thinking, because in case of a natural disaster, we’re going to need those air assets. Other states may not have as much as we have. The missions we look for into the future is really to link up to the capability gaps that the state has for homeland security or a natural disaster.
Q: How do you do that?
A: What we’re doing is rewriting our state catastrophic plan. So we look at the capability gaps of the state, and if we can get a mission in the National Guard that will help solve that capability gap …
To give you an example: Cyber is a huge thing, so the new missions of the Hawaii Army and Air National Guard are to go after a cyber mission, so that we can provide that capability for the state of Hawaii. Just like we went after airlift to supply airlift within the state of Hawaii.
Q: It’s kind of mind-bending to think of defense focusing on cyber attacks, isn’t it?
A: In the days when I was a young pilot, we had a lot of airplanes. Then intelligence was here (holds hand at a lower level). Now all of that is shifted: There’s less airplanes, more intelligence.
People can say what they say, but in World War II, if we wanted to get to something, we’d carpet-bomb and just take out the whole block.
Now with intelligence they know where you are, they know what time you’re there, and they’ll send a directed missile into the room that you’re at, so that you’re the only person that’s affected. …
Q: At this point, how are the guard’s air assets used?
A: The C-17 will go to help China. During the China (2008) earthquake, they were one of the first airplanes in there, from Hawaii. The first airplane into Chongqing, China. And China really recognized that.
During the war, they were constantly, weekly in and out of Iraq. But it’s nothing we really talked about.
So it is a big airplane. You have National Guardsmen there, doing a wartime mission, day to day. All of a sudden, you cut immediately to Iselle, and you need to fly tons of ice. You can’t put it on a barge; it’ll melt. So we flew a C-17. So immediately, they just do exactly what they would do in war, and do it for domestic operations.
Q: You never know when you come to work what you’re going to be doing, right?
A: And that’s the role of the National Guard.
On the Big Island right now, we have an Army unit there and we have an Air unit. Our neighbor islands have communications units. And the reason why is it’s strategically placed, in case there’s a big hurricane and all the communication is knocked out, then we have communications units that will link up to the island mayor, and then help communicate back to Oahu. …
The biggest thing is, the National Guard has a dual mission. We take our Title 10 mission, and immediately transfer it to domestic operations. The C-17 flying ice to the Big Island is the same as the C-17 flying to Chongqing, China. No difference.
Q: How did the Chinese know it was from Hawaii?
A: The big thing on the tail that says “HH” (the Hawaii tail code). … Our crews fly with Hawaii patches on.
Just to bring it home, what we did for Iselle: Immediately we went out and sent engineering units — we had one on the Big Island — to cut trees and clear roads. Right after that they re-purpose us and said we need security.
The psychology of a natural disaster is, you get a lot of adrenalin in the beginning, but then in the weeks to come, where (are all the people who came to help)? So that’s why we went door to door, to just tell people, “Are you OK?” So they know that people are still thinking about them. …
Q: How has the work here shifted since the ramping down of Iraq? Now that there’s the ISIL conflict?
A: Even Ebola. Well, the United States as a whole is downsizing from Iraq and Afghanistan. And ISIL just created another issue where the president has to make a decision on how much he’s going to do that.
Our units are prepared to do any of it, but our units are prepared 24/7 to respond to natural disasters. That’s why every state has a National Guard.
So, as far as their future deployment, they will know in advance.
Now, the next types of mission they may go on is Ebola. I just came back from West Virginia. The president has said the United States will take a global lead, so they’ve sent some military down to Africa. There’s a Guard unit there from Kentucky right now that helped open up an air base to bring more support. They may bring engineering units there to build facilities.
Not that we’re going to go there as medical people, but build infrastructure to bring more people to help support.
Q: So it is possible that the Hawaii Guard could have Ebola support work?
A: Active duty is going to call up the National Guard to help. But we will get a warning notice. …
Whether our National Guard goes, I’m not sure. It’s all done in Washington, D.C. They look at everything and they start sourcing units for things.
Q: How do they decide which ones go?
A: Obviously, we have C-17s that could carry things. We have engineering units that can build things.
