Imagine how Hartwell Blake must have felt when he stumbled into the kitchen to make coffee one recent Sunday morning, clicked on the TV and heard that a U.S. Army maintenance company that included a woman had been captured in Iraq.
His daughter, 1st Lt. Courtney Blake Sugai, is in an Army maintenance company in Iraq.
“My heart hit the floor,” he recalls. “I was hoping for the best, imagining the worst,” and began to understand the feelings of family members of those killed in action, missing in action, or prisoners of war.
The captured soldiers turned out to be from a unit other than Sugai’s, but her unit has had its share of close calls, too, said Blake, a former county attorney.
“Initially, I tried to be fatalistic about it,” knowing that his daughter and other soldiers are well-trained and well-armed, and that whatever happens happens, said Blake, 58.
And that was working until he heard that a maintenance company had been captured. Sugai’s company is a maintenance unit, supplying drinking water, fuel and other supplies to the soldiers closer to the front lines, whom Blake calls “the trigger-pullers.”
Her 101st Airborne group is west of Baghdad, near the newly renamed Baghdad International Airport. The last time father and daughter talked, she told him she was in Iraq, but couldn’t tell him where.
She told him to watch CNN and they’d tell him where she is, he said. Blake replied that if the cameras ever pan her way, shoot him the shaka sign so he’ll know it’s her.
Sugai says, “We’re very, very careful about security,” something that doesn’t necessarily give her father a secure feeling.
Especially when he tells her that folks on Kaua’i are asking about her and praying for her safe return, and she replies, “I know, we’ve had some real, real close calls.”
Blake said he’s not sure if that’s good news or bad news.
The father is also thankful for those prayers, “because that’s something you can’t have too much of,” he said.
In fact, Blake, who has never seen himself as particularly religious, starts his mornings with prayers not only for the safety of Sugai, but for friends here and elsewhere who also have children fighting a war.
It hasn’t been all intensity for Sugai, who with some of her fellow soldiers posed for pictures with Geraldo Rivera a day before he was asked to leave Iraq.
Sugai, a Kaua’i High School graduate who used to dance hula with Kumu Kapu Alquiza’s Na Hula O Kaohikukapulani, was born and raised on Kaua’i. Her mother is Rosemary Blake, now of Florida.
Sugai’s husband, 1st Lt. Iven Sugai, is a native of Ewa Beach, O’ahu, and could be on his way to Iraq now to rejoin his unit, after finishing U.S. Army Ranger training.
She has been sharing a tent with a French journalist embedded with her unit, and was able to borrow her satellite phone to call Blake in Koloa. He said the connection was better than most on-island connections, calling it “crystal clear.”
An e-mail he received from his daughter this week gives insight into one soldier’s view of the war. “My goal is to get my soldiers and myself home safe,” she said.
“Today I reflected on why we are here. It finally sunk in that I am not just here because I was ordered to come here,” she said. “I actually realized that I want to he here to help the people in this country have a better life and rid them of this corruption and cruelty.”
She also said she is thankful to be able to continue the Blake tradition of serving in the armed forces. Her father fought in the Army in Vietnam, she has a brother in the service and other generations of Blakes were soldiers as well.
At a Sunday church service, “I prayed that we, the soldiers, remember why we are here, and to remember to be selfless in our service to our country and to the world,” she said.
She also asked Blake to forward her e-mail to her friends, and thanked all those who have sent letters, care packages and other signs of support. When her unit deployed from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, she told her father, “I don’t want to go, but it’s my duty.”
Some of Sugai’s experiences, of frustration at not being able to keep the front-line troops supplied as well as they and she would like, reminded Blake of some of his similar experiences in Vietnam.
So, he told his daughter to remember and reward those who helped her get supplies into the hands of the fighting soldiers. While some items are like gold, even sharing arare or Kaua’i Kookies with those who helped her will leave a lasting impression on the receivers of those goodies, Blake said.
Finally, Blake took the interview opportunity to commend The Garden Island for telling the stories of Kaua’i war families. The newspaper articles put names and faces on the conflict, he said. “If any of these people don’t come back, or are horribly wounded, or missing in action, they shouldn’t just be some nameless, faceless statistic,” he said.
“People should know who these Kaua’i people are who didn’t come back, or didn’t come back whole.”
Staff Writer Paul C. Curtis can be reached at mailto:pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).
