When Spc. Corey Del Rosario first joined the Hawaii Army National Guard, he did it largely because other members of his families had served in the military.
“I wasn’t really doing anything at the time,” he recalled.
He enlisted for a three-year stint, serving as a mechanic for construction equipment. After three years in the guard he got out and figured that was it for him. Months went by, but then in August 2023 flames engulfed Maui and destroyed the town of Lahaina.
Guardsmen he had served with were called up to respond, searching the rubble in Lahaina to find the remains of those killed in the fire and other response efforts. Del Rosario said, “I figured there was some way I could help.”
He initially reenlisted for one year. Since then, he has reenlisted for another six years and is working full time for the Hawaii National Guard as a mechanic at a motor pool maintaining vehicles, monthly training with his regular unit and has been trained for search-and-rescue operations.
After a yearslong slump in efforts to recruit new guardsmen and retain old ones, the Hawaii Army National Guard is finally making its recruiting goals.
Last month the Hawaii Army National Guard posted a video to its Facebook page that was sent to its recruiting team by the U.S. Army National Guard’s top enlisted man, Command Sgt. Maj. James B. Kendrick, in which he said, “I understand that you have hit some numbers that Hawaii has not seen in several years, and right now, that’s exactly what we need across the Army National Guard. You are doing your part to help us grow combat-ready soldiers and leaders.”
For fiscal year 2025, the Hawaii Army National Guard has as of press time exceeded its recruiting goal of 290 recruits with 305 enlistments and met its retention goal of getting at least 324 troops to renew contracts with 352 choosing to stay in the guard. Hawaii Army National Guard officials said that this year marks the first time in five years that it has made its fiscal year recruiting and retention goals.
“It’s important so we can keep our force structure,” said Lt. Col. Natalie Hayes, who leads the Hawaii Army National Guard’s recruiting and retention battalion. “If we don’t meet our retention and our recruiting numbers, units will go away, because we’re showing that we can’t sustain them.”
The Hawaii Army National Guard is regularly called up for disaster response, including wildfires, floods and volcanic eruptions. It also played a central role in Hawaii’s COVID-19 response, with an active task force until March 2022 that at its peak had more than 1,300 guardsmen.
The Hawaii Guard also plays an active role in national missions, with deployments across the globe and a small detachment currently on the southern U.S. border.
“Everybody still has a reason of why they want to serve,” said Sgt. Maj. Gary Cabacongan, who serves under Hayes and has done multiple stints as a recruiter throughout his time in the guard. “It goes back to the basics. It’s training, education, adventure, money, or service the country. So when you find that need behind the need, you’ll figure out where to go for that next route.”
Cabacongan said that when it comes to figuring out what will motivate a new recruit to join, “you have to be a chameleon in this job.”
Pvt. Lily Latham, 18, is an Army brat who came to Hawaii with her parents and is following in their footsteps in the military. She just returned from training to be an intelligence analyst. She already has two associate’s degrees and is gearing up to attend the University of South Carolina, where she intends to double major in political science and German with a minor in history — and plans to go onto law school afterward.
When asked about how she’ll balance the challenge of attending college in South Carolina while flying back to Hawaii for her monthly training, she said, “I think that it’s exciting. I don’t have a problem doing it. I think it’ll be fun to get a break from the mainland and get to come down here.”
She said a love for the islands motivated her to pick the Hawaii National Guard, explaining “I’ve lived lots of places, and I felt like this is the most like, welcoming community … of everywhere I’ve lived. This is definitely my favorite place.”
Second Lt. Brianna Georgia, 30, joined the guard later in life. She’s a six-year veteran of the Honolulu Police Department who grew up in upstate New York and moved to the islands at age 19 in part to connect with her Native Hawaiian heritage.
She had from the beginning hoped for a military career, but was turned down by each branch while she was in college on medical grounds because she had one kidney. But the Hawaii Guard granted her a waiver. She’s currently undergoing training as a logistics officer.
“A lot of the leaders that I looked up to when I was in college, in high school, were (veterans). They said they had a (military) career prior to their civilian career,” Georgia said. “So I want to gain leadership skills that you can only get in the Army in this high-stress environment.”
In 2023 the Hawaii Army National Guard fell short of its enlistment goal of 240, by 25, and its reenlistment goal of 403, by 77. In the 2024 fiscal year it fell short of a recruiting goal of 280, by 42, and its retention goal of 360, by 145.
Recruiting numbers had been in a long slump nationally, and not just in Hawaii, as recruiters struggled to meet their numbers.
The long, grinding post-9/11 conflicts played a role. In August 2021 the bloody and chaotic evacuation that cost the lives of 13 U.S. troops and over 170 Afghan civilians shocked the nation. In Hawaii, the Red Hill water crisis the same year and its aftermath — along with other controversies around the military in the islands — also have deepened public skepticism.
A 2022 Gallup Poll found the public’s trust in the military had dropped 8% in just two years from 72% in 2020 to 64% in 2022.
But starting in late 2024, recruiting numbers began making their way back up. Hayes said that in Hawaii, the guard has been making an aggressive marketing blitz to get its name out on social media, and both sponsoring and hosting sporting events, as well as rolling out new benefits and incentives for new recruits.
Cabacongan said that one major change has been that in the early days of the post-9/11 years, recruits were often young men who sought combat roles and hoped to deploy to places like Iraq and Afghanistan. In more recent years, he’s seen more recruits seeking technical training to support future careers.
One draw in Hawaii is a newly minted “college first” package for recruits that creates a better chance for guardsmen to serve and train without getting their education disrupted. Hayes said in that package “those that join the Guard, when they come back from basic training … they will be ‘stabilized’ so they won’t mobilize. And that kind of helps people who are scared to join the military, or the parents who have anxiety. We just started that this year.”
Officials said the guard is trying to secure several other new benefits.
“We’re also working on our referral program for service members and retirees,” Hayes said. “If they refer someone that joins the guard, they would get a $500 check from the state.”
When it comes to retention, the Hawaii Army Guard is also working to aggressively reach out to troops thinking about hanging up their boots to highlight potential retirement benefits for those who stay in longer. Hayes said “we wanted to really show these to the service members, (their benefits) that they might not know are available to them.”
In July the Hawaii Army Guard held a “crossroads” event, a massive fair with booths telling current guardsmen about their benefits as well as booths from employers helping them find civilian employment. Of the roughly 500 guardsmen who attended, 30 chose to extend their time in the service.
This year the Hawaii Guard has been called up to assist with wildfires, and troops have gone overseas for training in the Philippines and Indonesia.
But the National Guard is also increasingly seeing itself drawn into controversy. During protests in Los Angeles against President Donald Trump’s mass deportation push, he ordered that California National Guardsmen be federalized to support a crackdown against protesters — against the wishes of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Last week a federal judge ruled that Trump’s mobilization of the National Guard in L.A. was illegal. Meanwhile Trump also has deployed National Guardsmen to D.C. and has vowed to send them to Chicago, as well as possibly to cities like Baltimore and Portland, Ore.
In June, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green was one of 22 governors who issued a joint statement that called Trump’s military deployment to L.A. “an alarming abuse of power” and asserted that “Governors are the Commanders in Chief of their National Guard and the federal government activating them in their own borders without consulting or working with a state’s governor is ineffective and dangerous.”
In July, the governor’s office said that Green will require a briefing on the circumstances and the “true need ” of any federal requests to activate the Hawaii National Guard before considering the deployment of soldiers, particularly law enforcement duties.
Makana McClellan, Green’s communications director, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in a statement that Green “carefully considers all requests to activate the Hawaii National Guard, which can be made for specific crises. Though like other Governors, he feels the guard is most appropriately used for local state crises, guided by that state’s Governor.”
Source: The Garden Island
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