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Courtesy of: Rodney Jaleco, ABS-CBN, North American News Bureau, May 06, 2009.
 "BOYDS, Maryland -- There’s a new generation of Filipino-Americans in the US Navy, many children of recruits from the Philippines, and they’re at the vanguard of US efforts to contain the H1N1 swine flu pandemic.
“Actually there’s been an influx of people affected by the swine flu scare,” explained HM2 Jeffrey Nunez, a laboratory technician at the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland.
Nunez is president of the Filipino American Association of Bethesda (FAAB), a group of about 150 Fil Ams in the US Navy currently or formerly posted at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, one of America’s top medical institutions...
Bethesda Naval Hospital caters to the medical needs of military personnel, from the Commander-in-Chief down to the lowest-ranked sailor and his dependents.
Navy Capt. Val Castillo, a native of Olongapo City, said he helped establish the FAAB when he was still assigned there to look after the interest of rising young Fil Ams like Nunez.
He now heads Health Services Support, Marine Forces Reserve, North. Translated, that means he’s responsible for the health of about 100,000 Marines deployed all over the Continental US.
“In 1986, we were here in Bethesda which is part of the Metro DC area where we had a preponderance of Filipino US Navy recruits. At that time, you were part of the military but you could not become a citizen,” Castillo tells ABS-CBN’s Balitang America.
“We formed the FAAB not only for the morale of the Filipino military personnel at Bethesda but at the same time it could be a launching pad for us to influence the decision makers in the area because we are the Capital, and advance our concerns so Filipinos can be given due process,” he explained.
Fil Ams rise to us navy leadership
Castillo, who was deployed for a time with US forces in Zamboanga City to help hunt down the Abu Sayyaf, is one of the highest ranking Fil Ams in the US Navy.
Rear Adm. Connie Mariano, a daughter of a Filipino US Navy recruit, was the first Fil Am to reach star rank in the US Navy. She served as physician for both President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
Last April, Bethesda Naval Hospital chief of staff Eleanor Valentin was promoted to Rear-Admiral as well. Her appointment is awaiting confirmation by the appointments committee on Capitol Hill.
Another Fil Am, Olongapo-native Navy Capt. Ric Sadsad commands Naval Air Station Whiting Field near Pensacola, Florida. Whiting Field is the US Navy’s chief basic flight school and Sadsad is responsible for hundreds of aircraft.
A 2007 report by the DC-based think-tank Migrant Policy Institute revealed that of the 65,033 immigrants in the US military, 23 percent or about 15,000 were Filipinos. In contrast, foreign nationals born in neighboring Mexico accounted for only 9.5 percent.
And at the peak of the US war in Vietnam, about 2,000 Filipinos were being recruited in the US Navy every year. Many of them produced children who have followed in their parents’ footsteps, joining the US Navy.
Joyce Ferrer-Black is one of them. She was born in California but grew up in Norfolk, Virginia, the daughter of a retired US Navy serviceman. She enlisted in the US Navy in 2004, but had to wait another year so she can graduate from high school.
“The Navy is kind’a all I know,” she admitted to Balitang America. Black is a surgical technician, and has spent only about a year at the Bethesda Naval Hospital.
“The Iraqi Freedom patients, after they’re stabilized in Germany, they come to us and we continue their treatment,” she explained.
She is learning a very valuable skill that could help her when she has to leave the service. She specializes in plastic reconstructive surgery, especially for soldiers wounded by improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the top killer of US troops in Iraq.
Nunez, who was assigned in the former Soviet state of Georgia, immigrated to the US only in 2002. He said he was finishing his nursing studies when his visa went through, throwing him in a dilemma whether to finish his studies or avail of his “green card”.
He said a cousin, who is in the Marines, facilitated his recruitment in the US Navy.
Payback for preparation
Castillo told Balitang America that he received reports that at least two soldiers and some dependents were infected with the H1N1 swine flu virus, but they’ve all recovered.
“Right now we’re in the preparatory stage, we have our own stages. Firstly, force health protection; then there’s the readiness posture and finally, what we call COOP, the continuity of operations,” he explained.
He spoke about the great 1918 flu pandemic that swept the US. “The virulence of a flu pandemic is in the waves. So right now, the way we see it in our analysis is that this virus is still adapting to humans. But since they come in waves, we have to watch out six months from now that this thing doesn’t come back with a vengeance,” Castillo said.
“We’ve been planning for this for a long time,” he revealed, “during the Bush administration, we did a lot of exercises, we put a lot of money into this even though we were ridiculed”.
“Folks preparing for the pandemic were ridiculed why they were spending so much money planning for this. But you can see now that this is the payback like for example, we stockpiled and prepositioned the medicines,” Castillo averred.
Chief Petty Officer Ferrie Lucero is a native of Naic, Cavite but joined the US Navy in San Diego, California in 1990.
A sign of the growing role Fil Ams play in the US Navy, he was tasked IT project manager for the transfer of the US Army Medical Center in Walter Reed, and integration with an expanded Bethesda National Medical Institute, from the nucleus of the naval hospital.
Lucero has been assigned all over the world in the past 17 years, and his posting at Bethesda is the first time he was deployed in Continental USA.
“This is the first time to come back to the US after boot camp,” he tells Balitang America.
“Walter Reed Army Medical Center is scheduled to be closed by 2011 so the Army personnel, as well as the Air Force, will be going to Bethesda so there will be a joint force command,” he explained.
“My job is coordinating the movement of IT equipment, the networks, and communications. We’re shuffling clinics between the hospitals because some areas are being renovated” Lucero revealed.
Fil Ams are playing an expanding and increasingly diversified role in the US Navy, a far cry when they were limited to jobs as cooks and stewards. The new generation is not only building on the gains of their fathers and uncles, they’re blazing new trails like the young Fil Ams at Bethesda Naval Hospital."
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