The University of Hawaii for the first time in history has students participating in each military branch’s Reserve Officer Training Corps program. This academic year the university’s newly formed Naval ROTC program — which officially started last year — launched its Marine Corps option, allowing midshipmen to train as Marines under Marine Corps instructors.

It joins the university’s long-established Army and Air Force programs. The Coast Guard offers programs for students to become officers upon graduation but has no ROTC program of its own.

“The addition of the Marine Corps to the Rainbow Warrior ROTC team increases joint competition, provides joint training opportunities and breeds camaraderie amongst the U.S. armed services,” said Marine instructor Capt. Grace Jenkins.

Midshipman Dylan Yamaguchi, a sophomore at UH, joined the NROTC program as a freshman. He excelled and quickly became one of the student leaders in the program’s physical training sessions. But when he joined he was just biding his time. He was just waiting for the program to set up its Marine Corps program.

When he made the change, he saw the difference immediately.

“It’s a lot more strict. And the PT sessions are actually challenging,” he said in between training sessions Thursday afternoon at the Clarence T. C. Ching Athletics Complex. He and his fellow midshipmen were drenched with sweat as the sun beat down overhead.

The fledgling program is finding its footing. Yamaguchi said that during his freshman year he felt like he and his fellow midshipmen were “sort of guinea pigs.” But he has high hopes for the program.

“I would think that this Naval ROTC detachment will be one of the best ones because of the connections it has with (the Pacific Fleet), and with it being so close to so many different military bases,” Yamaguchi said. “We’re able to actually explore a lot more than someone who was like in the middle of nowhere with no military base around.”

The Marine Corps is currently in the middle of an ambitious restructuring of its forces with an emphasis on island and coastal fighting — with a focus on Pacific operations — beginning with forces in Hawaii. In March the Marine Corps activated the 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment, which will serve as the blueprint for the reorganization of other units across the service.

“Standing up a new unit is a team effort and the University of Hawaii Marine NROTC unit is fortunate to have support from across the island,” said Jenkins. “Specifically, the UH Marine NROTC unit recognizes the continuous support from Marine Forces Pacific Command, Headquarters Battalion Marine Corps Base Hawaii, 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment and Puuloa Rifle Range.”

The Pentagon currently considers the Pacific to be its top priority theater as it looks beyond the wars that have defined the post-9/11 era. The war in Afghanistan came to a bloody and chaotic end about a year ago as American troops evacuated American citizens and Afghans that feared the return of Taliban rule. In the final days a suicide bombing at Kabul’s international airport killed 13 American troops — most of them Marines — and more than 200 Afghan civilians.

But as military planners look to the future, the legacy of the past two decades has proven difficult to shake. A Gallup Poll from earlier this year found the public’s trust in the military has dropped 8% in just two years, going from 72% in 2020 to 64% in 2022. Meanwhile, the Pentagon estimates that more than three-quarters of American youth don’t meet the mental or physical requirements for military service.

In briefing slides obtained by Politico last month, Pentagon leaders expressed concern that the military “currently faces the most challenging recruiting market since the advent of the All-Volunteer Force, with multiple Services and Components at risk for missing mission in FY 2022,” according to the slides.

But the new Marine Corps program at UH is drawing interest. Jenkins said that so far it has 12 midshipmen and that it is attracting more interest from those on the Navy track in the NROTC program, and that civilian students have approached the program expressing interest in the Marines.

Midshipmen Shane Wilder, a UH freshman from Las Vegas, participated in Marine Corps Junior ROTC in high school. He has a cousin who just got out of Marine boot camp and had a grandfather who was a Marine. “I fell in love with the ideals, morals and ethics of those that are in the Marines and I wanted to be like them,” he said.

For him, attending college at UH is particularly meaningful.

“I chose this college because my mom was going to come here, and then she got pregnant with myself. So she wasn’t unfortunately unable to go,” Wilder said. “It felt like it was meant to be in a sense.”

Midshipman Megan Miller, a junior at UH, trained with fellow midshipmen at the Ching complex Thursday even as she worked on recovering from an injury she’d suffered during the recent Hawaii Spartan race. She thought it wouldn’t be a big deal but realized her Achilles tendon injury was worse than she thought. But she insisted on doing lifting exercises, lifting an ammo container with fellow students.

Her path to the Marines wasn’t as straightforward as Wilder and Yamaguchi’s.

“I didn’t really even think about the Marines. It’s not even something that has ever crossed my mind until really this summer,” Miller explained.

She originally had been a student at Hawaii Pacific University enrolled in the Air Force ROTC program. She said that it largely emphasized skills like email writing and was much more office­-oriented. She transferred last year when the NROTC program was stood up at UH. During the summer she interned with the Pacific Fleet and had her sights set on being a Navy bomb disposal officer. But an officer who worked with her told her that her attitude would be a good fit for the Marines.

“It’s a lot more physical,” she said. “And working out is pretty much what I do all of the time.”

Wilder said he hasn’t given much thought to what sort of job he’d like to have in the Marines, whether he saw himself leading the charge in the field or handling logistics in a supporting role.

“As long as I’m in the Marine Corps and I’m able to embody those ideals — honor, courage and commitment — it doesn’t matter what I do, because you know, I’ll be loving what I do.”