78 troops become citizens at Camp Foster ceremony

[unhappycamper]

Cpl. Enrique Andrade Caleron, 21, from Ecuador, with Marine Wing Headquarters Squadron 1, and Petty Officer 3rd Clalss John Erwin Antonio, 24, from the Philippines, with 3rd Dental Battalion, swear an oath of allegiance to the United States during a naturalization ceremony. In all, 78 servicemembers became citizens in the ceremony.


78 troops become citizens at Camp Foster ceremony
By Cindy Fisher, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Monday, December 10, 2007

CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — Haiti, Ghana, South Korea, China, Mexico, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Canada, Yugoslavia, the Philippines, Ecuador, Vietnam.

They came from 29 countries scattered around the world, but the 78 men and women who gathered Friday at the Camp Foster Theater have two things in common.

They serve in the United States military during a time of war, and they are now U.S. citizens.

During a naturalization ceremony, Maj. Gen. Mary Ann Krusa-Dossin, commander of Camp Butler and deputy commander for Marine Corps Bases Japan, told the assembled servicemembers that America has a “fine tradition of foreign-born immigrants who take up arms under the Stars and Stripes.”

“America has not fought a single war without its foreign-born soldiers,” she said.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=50854