Army in Hawaii Reinvests in Boats for Service in the Pacific

The Army logistics support vessel SSGT Robert T. Kuroda, stationed at Pearl Harbor, is named for a World War II Medal of Honor recipient from Aiea.

The Hawaii soldier served in the legendary 442nd Regimental Combat Team, fighting through Italy and France. Kuroda died in combat near the French town of Bruyeres, where he single-handedly attacked two enemy machine gun emplacements before falling to a sniper’s bullet.

Chief Warrant Officer 3 Kyle Nicholas, the soldier who serves as the boat’s captain, has met the Kuroda family and says he thinks of him often.

“I love Hawaii, I’ve always loved living here, ” he said. “I met my wife here, we met surfing. It’s a unique place. But in 20 years of service, I’ve never had the pleasure having something like this : A boat that’s named after a young man that grew up within eyesight of where this boat’s moored up at.”

As a logistics support vessel, or LSV, the Kuroda hauls vehicles, weapons and other equipment across the ocean to the shores of wherever the Army or other military branches need them.

It’s one of two Kuroda-class LSVs in the Army, a modified version of the Besson-­class LSV that is longer and can haul more equipment. The other, the Robert Smalls, also is home-ported at Pearl Harbor and has joined the Kuroda in a push to put the Army back to sea in the Pacific.

As the U.S. military has tried to shift resources from drawn-out conflicts in the Middle East to confront China and prepare for the prospect of a very different kind of engagement, the Army has dusted off the Kuroda and the Smalls and has more ambitious plans. It also is testing a new boat prototype in Hawaii.

Navy leaders have long regarded the Pacific and its vast, blue expanse as their territory. The Pacific Fleet is its largest and most powerful fleet, and since establishment of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command at Camp Smith, it has always been led by a Navy officer.

But Maj. Gen. Gavin Gardner, commander of the 8th Theater Sustainment Command at Fort Shafter, said that boats—and the water—have always factored into U.S. Army history.

Gardner and his soldiers provide much of the logistical support for the Army in the Pacific, often in the background and largely unsung. The Army’s boat soldiers fall under his command.

“Army watercraft systems have been with the Army really since its inception, ” said Gardner, citing George Washington’s famed crossing of the Delaware river. “It just happened to be a couple of guys with some oars. So today, we still have watercraft that are out here in the theater.”

Chief Warrant Officer 3 Micah Innis is in charge of the Kuroda’s engine room and the group of soldiers that keep it running.

Innis previously served as an enlisted man in the Navy. After leaving he spent 10 years in the civilian world and earned a college degree before deciding to join the Army.

“Funny enough, I was in accounting, and then I came back in, originally to fly helicopters, ” he said. “Somehow, God had a plan for me to be back on a boat, (and I ) got put down here.”

He said the experience of going to sea as an Army soldier is much different from his days as a Navy sailor, explaining that “coming from a Navy background, the Navy has (specialized ) jobs for every aspect (of ship operations ).”

“(But in ) the Army, my soldiers do everything, ” Innis said. “They do everything from hydraulics, to electrical, to engines. They do it all, and they’ve got to have their heads on a swivel. So here we really hold our guys to a higher standard, especially underway.”

Staff Sgt. Jessica Howell, a boatswain on the Kuroda, has spent her entire Army career on boats both in the Atlantic and the Pacific. She said “you get to see the world, and you get to do the work. We’re out there for a reason.”

Back to the Pacific During World War II, older versions of the Army’s LSVs carried troops and equipment across the Pacific as part of the military’s island-hopping campaign against Japanese forces, playing a key role across the theater.

Today, the Army has been reasserting its role in the region, promoting the concept of a “landpower network ” linking the U.S. and its allies.

As the military services have competed for funding and resources, Navy and Air Force leaders have at times sought to downplay the Army’s role in the region. But this year at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual Land Power in the Pacific conference in Waikiki, INDOPACOM chief Adm. Samuel Paparo embraced a mantra Army officers have used for years, telling attendees that “human beings live on the land.”

“The Army provides the backbone of our ability to sustain combat power across the region, ” Paparo said.

The Army has been working with the Navy and Marines—as well as forces from allied countries—to reintegrate its boats into operations and look to the future.

“Sometimes it’s more convenient to use Army watercraft systems ; sometimes it makes more sense based on the volume of what we’re trying to do to go with a commercial capability, ” Gardner said. “It’s that blend and mix of watercraft, both manned and, as the future progresses, unmanned watercraft systems, is where the Army leadership has directed us to go.”

The Kuroda and Smalls originally entered service in Hawaii in the 2000s, serving in the Army Reserve. But the Army later moved Kuroda to Tacoma, Wash., and almost got rid of it as it increasingly sat pier-side not doing much, eventually putting it up for auction.

At the time, the General Services Administration said it expected to sell off it and another LSV, along with dozens of other landing craft, tugboats and other Army maritime assets by the end of 2020. The Kuroda even received bids for purchase.

But the Army ultimately decided to bring it back to Hawaii to support Pacific operations, taking it from the reserves to put it on active duty.

“In that first year, we doubled the amount of service hours that she had in the entirety of its life at the time, ” Nicholas said.

In Hawaii, the Kuroda and Smalls have hauled vehicles and equipment between Oahu and Hawaii island for the Schofield Barracks-based 25th Infantry Division to support training operations. But they’ve gone far beyond Hawaii, with voyages to Guam, Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

“(The Kuroda ) moves very slow : 10 knots is average, 12 knots is a good day, ” Innis said. “Ten knots is almost equal to almost like 11 miles an hour. So imagine driving from here to Australia at 11 miles an hour—that’s the struggles that we deal with.

“It’s not meant to go fast, it’s meant to carry equipment and beach itself anywhere in the world. We pride ourselves on being able to go into any theater and hit the shore, create a pier, and offload and unload equipment anywhere.”

‘I love this boat’

This spring during exercises in the Philippines, the Kuroda played a central role in logistics as U.S. troops from each branch trained across the archipelago.

“As a part of their operations in the Philippines, we demonstrated bringing a very large vessel, a Maritime Sealift Command vessel, ” Gardner said. “We would drive equipment off of a large Navy ship onto a floating platform and then drive it onto the Army’s watercraft, who could then steam ashore and drop the front ramp of the Army vessel and you could deliver the equipment right onto the beach.”

It’s a high-stakes operation with little room for mistakes.

“If you’re watching it from the shore, you’re seeing a big ship pull up to another big ship and put a ramp onto it, ” Nicholas said. “But it takes a lot of effort from all these young men and women, you know, to get out there … and interact with and get that big ramp right there onto another little ramp and make sure that you don’t damage any equipment.”

Sailing those long distances across the Pacific puts the Army’s small fleet to the test.

“Our counterparts on the East Coast, they’re just not seeing as much time in the middle of the sea as we are ; they’re not crossing in the ocean as much as we are, ” Nicholas said, adding that for his soldiers, “one of their primary jobs is really fighting the conditions out here and keeping the rust at bay.”

He said the Army is “taking a lot of information ” from the maritime methods employed by the Hawaii units, which “are really on the kind of forefront of development of tactics and manuals and procedures.”

The Army’s boat force is small. Few people know how to operate their systems, and support isn’t always readily available. But at one point when the Kuroda experienced engine failure in Australia, Nicholas said “these guys rebuilt that engine.”

It’s demanding and often thankless work. Howell, who sailed with the Kuroda from Tacoma on its return voyage to Hawaii, said that while most soldiers prefer staying on land, “I love this boat.”

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