Database Provides Portraits Of California Military Personnel Who Died In Afghanistan And Iraq Wars

On Memorial Day it’s important to remember — and the Los Angeles Times has now produced the first-ever census database of California members of the military who died in Afghanistan and Iraq. The findings are interesting:

Nearly 500 Californians have lost their lives in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. At least 58 were immigrants; more than 160 were parents and left behind more than 300 children. One descended from two presidents; another was a Guatemalan street orphan taken in by a U.S. family as a teenager. One high school lost six of its graduates.

The findings come from a detailed analysis by The Times.

The Times flushes out details that ensure the human beings who in many quarters remain cold statistics will now be remembered forever as human beings with hopes, aspirations and ideals — people who put it all on the line to serve. The database is based on information compiled since 2001, which includes some 420 obituaries written by Times staffers. It includes “the service member’s high school, marital status, number of children and place of burial. It also notes, when known, that a person was born outside of the U.S. or was a first-generation American.”

Includes tidbits such as:

At age 7, Victor H. Toledo-Pulido was smuggled from Mexico through rugged mountains into California. He and another soldier were killed in May 2007 when a roadside bomb exploded near their vehicle southeast of Baghdad.

“They judge us, and they say we just come to take their jobs and positions, but we also make sacrifices. Victor worked since he was little, in the fields and in restaurants,” his mother, Maria Gaspar, said after the 22-year-old was killed. “He was Mexican, but he thought like an American. And he gave his life for this country.”

Dozens more were the children of immigrants, including Bunny Long, 22, a Marine lance corporal whose parents came from Cambodia, where the Khmer Rouge imprisoned them for four years in a labor camp.

“This is our home,” Sim Long said after his son was killed in March 2006 by a suicide car bomber in Fallouja, west of Baghdad. “I’m very proud that Bunny was able to give back to his country. Our country.”

Some of it involved generations, and tradition:

Some joined because serving in times of war was a family tradition — one that sometimes went back as far as the American Revolution. Others entered the service to pay for college, to find a career, out of a sense of adventure or to do something with their young, intemperate energy. Many thought the military would give them the training needed to become police officers.

“I had my doubts about him and the Marines, knowing how my son rebelled against authority,” said Ken Walker, the father of Marine Staff Sgt. Allan K. Walker, 28, of Lancaster, who was killed in April 2004 when his Humvee convoy was attacked in Iraq’s Anbar province. “When he came back from boot camp, I was so proud. They took a punk kid and turned out a young man with a sense of honor.”

And some answered what they felt was a compelling, overpowering call:

Many joined out of some sense of duty born of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“I’m ready to fight for my country,” Marine Lance Cpl. Derek L. Gardner, 20, of San Juan Capistrano told The Times before he deployed to Iraq. He was among seven Marines killed in September 2004 when a bomb-laden vehicle was detonated near their convoy outside Fallouja.

“I don’t want to just sit back and watch the casualty numbers climb on CNN,” Kristofer D.S. Thomas told his family when he graduated from Roseville High a semester early so he could enlist at 17. “I need to do something to help out.”

He was among eight troops killed in February 2007 when their CH-47 Chinook transport helicopter crashed in Afghanistan’s Zabol province, south of Kabul.

Take some time today (or any day) and read the stories of the fallen men and women behind the numbers.

Take some time to remember.

And to be grateful.