A decorated Korean and Vietnam war veteran who lost his home in the 2009 Samoa earthquake is going to prison for five years for assaulting a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employee in American Samoa last year with a machete in a dispute over where he could resettle.

A federal jury deliberated for just one hour in March before finding Simeti Lualemaga, 67, guilty of assaulting a U.S. government employee performing his official duties.

U.S. District Judge David Ezra handed down the sentence Monday.

The employee, Mark Cunningham, former station chief for the NOAA observatory on Tutuila island, lost the lower portion of his left ear and suffered a laceration along his cheek and neck in the attack.

According to trial testimony, Cunningham and Lualemaga had a long- standing dispute over NOAA’s use of the land for its observatory.

After Lualemaga lost his home in the 2009 earthquake, he lived with his wife in a tent given to them by the Federal Emergency Management Agency on land bordering the NOAA-leased property and built a cooking shed across the border.

The government said Cunningham was taking pictures of the property on March 29 last year when he encountered Lualemaga and threatened to call police.

As Cunningham held a telephone up to his ear, the government said, Lualemaga hit him in the head with a machete.

Lualemaga testified Cunningham attacked him with his camera and that he struck Cunningham in self-defense.

Ezra granted Lualemaga’s request to remain free on bond until the Federal Bureau of Prisons designates a facility with the capacity to treat his post-traumatic stress disorder.