 ROTC at the UH, wow, exciting. Military in Hawaii, I'm Jay Fidel, this is Bink Deck, and we have with us Captain Bill Ellis, who's a Navy captain who runs the ROTC program at UH Manoa. Welcome to the show, Bill. Aloha and thank you for having me on. It's a pleasure to be here. I don't know why, but I do remember one thing I want to tell you about my own ROTC experience in the ROTC for the Air Force in the late 50s. And it's this, the question was, what time is it? And the answer is was, I do not know, sir. The inner workings and hidden mechanisms of my chronometer are in such great in accord with the great sidereal movement by which all time is reckoned that I cannot, with any degree of accuracy, tell you the time, sir. They made us say that all day long. No kidding. And there were other ones too, how high is up and how's the cow? I remember how's the cow, the lactate fluid from the female, the boving species is highly proliferated, to the nth degree, all nonsense, you understand. But you had to memorize it and say it when everybody asked you the question. You don't do that at Manoa, right? No, we stick to the general orders of the century. The general orders of the century, can you give us that cap? Yeah, so they'll say like, what's your fourth general order and then you have to, you know, I'll quit my post only when we eat that kind of thing. So it's just similar concept, trying to remember things so that you practice for professional life where you are gonna have to remember a lot of professional knowledge, actual professional knowledge, but it's at a training level now. Yeah, I'm fascinated with your career. You told me about it before the show began and I wonder if you could summarize your career for us now, just so we know who you are. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So personally, I'm from upstate New York. I went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. I was in the Naval ROTC program there. That's in Troy, New York. And then I went into aviation. I started, I became a NFO in the P3 Orion. My first squadron was in Brunswick, Maine. So up in the Northeast, we did deployments to Kefalvic, Iceland and chase Russian submarines around in the North Atlantic. This is in the North Atlantic. This is in the mid to late 90s. At the end of that tour in 2000, I came to my first shore duty. You know, we took orders out here to Hawaii to work at the Wayne Building over at Cuneyoe Bay. And we had our first winter where we didn't have to shovel any snow. And we thought that that was really amazing. So we fell in love with Hawaii and have been here for most of the last 22 years since then. Right. And what's your retirement situation? So I have 29 years right now. So by law, I have to retire when I hit 30 years. However, I have a request to do one more year to go to 31. So hopefully that will be approved. And I could do two more years here in this position. So that'll help. I think it will help the unit get more firmly established since we are new and personally, maybe this is a little bit selfish, but I would actually get to commission a new officer right before I retired. So that would be a nice way to end my career as well. Oh, that's great. So that's part of it. So how new is the unit? And is that at the 31 years, that's the time when they come of age. Is that what happens? For our unit here? So our unit here is brand new. So it was actually approved in 2019. And in 2020, the Navy put the first two people here to start to work with the university to make the education support agreement and start to establish the program, get the first courses into the course catalog, get office spaces secured, things like that. 2021 was when I came to the unit and we also got our first midshipman. So last year. So we had one year with the new midshipman and we are right now starting our second year with midshipman. So we've got 35 members in the battalion now. And so we're anticipating we'll have steady growth over the next several years and we'll probably, I think get to 80 to 100 midshipmen in the battalion will be kind of a probably steady state and strength in the next couple of years. Have facilities? Yes, right now we are on the lower campus right next to the Air Force and Army ROTC units. We are just next to the baseball field and kind of between the baseball field and the swimming pool aquatics complex. It's a great location. You can have two laps. Yes. Yeah, it's about a mile to run around the lower campus road and we have access to the athletic fields and the track and with the pool, we use the pool as well. So it's nice being down here by the all the athletic department. Do you want this bill or do they come for you? No, I was really just very lucky. So I was on track to retire and then the announcement got made that the unit was gonna be established and it worked out for me that I was due to rotate out of my previous job right at the time when this job opened up so I could move in. So I put in a request and yeah, somebody out there, I have like a fairy godmother that's looking out for me. So it got me into the job. So it's been, yeah, it's been wonderful. Yeah, that's pretty common in the military to have a champion, a fairy godmother somewhere to help you through your career. I think the other thing that helped was I was already on the island. So we save a little money but not having to do a big expensive PCS move. Yeah, so it's just the first time the Navy has had an ROTC in University of Hawaii. It is, yeah, this is brand new unit. So the Army unit here just turned 100 and the Air Force unit is I think about 50 years old and we just never had one here. So it leads to, we answer the same question every time. How is it that the Navy never had an ROTC unit here at this fleet concentration area? This is the third largest Navy base in the US Navy. It would stand to reason that, we wanna serve this community and that's true. So we're really glad that we're here. If you look back at the history of the NROTC program started in 1926, so it's just six universities participating then. So it's been growing over time. Right now we have 78 units and of those 78, there are also an additional 90 colleges and universities that have cross-down agreements. So really there are 168 colleges and universities that participate in the program. And interestingly, and I figured this out just getting ready for coming on here. There are 11 states of 50 that do not have any NROTC presence in them. So I think it's not so exceptional that it took so long to get a unit out here but we are really, really grateful for by 15 years worth of senior Navy and government leaders that have been pushing this initiative. It really has taken that long to get all the way through there. So I know that there are several Navy admirals that pushed for it when they were stationed out here at Pacific Fleet headquarters. But also our senators and representatives, Senator Schatz, Senator Hirono, Representative Case, they were all instrumental in getting that last bit through in DC where the policy decisions are actually made. Interesting, I take your point about the Navy being here a long time. My recollection is that the Navy first came to Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy first came to Pearl Harbor in 1850, which makes it the senior military service in the state. Furthermore, my recollection is that, you know, Sink Pack is always a Navy admiral, Paycom, a Navy admiral, Indo-Paycom, a Navy admiral. It's always been the senior service because we are in the middle of the ocean. I mean, yes, seems like it, yeah. So congratulations actually on doing it here, yeah. So what's the tone of UH Manoa and the student body and the faculty and the administration and so forth on having ROTC units here? I mean, there were times back during Vietnam when there were, you know, riots over anything military. It was called Oliver Lee, Oliver Lee was, I forget what school he was associated with, but he was really an activist, an anti-war activist. And he did a lot to damage military relations on the campus and in the community. And there were others too over the years. And then it was UARC, the Unaffiliated Research, you know, grant arrangement at UH. And that was like, oh, 15 years ago or so, whether they were riots and sit-ins and what have you against anything military. So my question is, how do the students feed it now today? Is it a friendly arrangement or is there a resistance of any kind? There's no, nobody gives any of the military midshipment or cadets a second thought here. They're all recognized that they are college students that are, you know, training for professional occupation. I do know that here, there is a full spectrum of viewpoints towards the presence of the military ranging from people that are aware that the U.S. Navy was, you know, a participant in the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and who remember that. And there are other people who know that the university and the local industry and the Department of Defense are intertwined in mutually supportive arrangements that there's a lot of research done here that supports local industry that in turn supports the Department of Defense. So there's a broad spectrum for anybody that was hesitant about the presence of military. If we ever, when we get to meet them and we talk about our goals, we find that we have a lot of common goals. And then the Navy of 150 years ago is not the Navy of today. And we are here, we're service members, we are here to serve, we're here to serve our community and serve our nation. And I think when we get to meet people and they kind of understand, you know, our viewpoint and how, you know, we take our oath to the U.S. Constitution and it's really to the ideals of our nation. I think when people get to understand that, they realize that we're good people and we're doing good things in the world. Yeah, I wanna talk for a minute about what you alluded to, namely patriotism, commitment to the country. You know, we live in strange times when patriotism seems a sort of a distant mirror. And, you know, people have been in the service, most of them, not everyone, but most of them are very, very, very, very patriotic. I can tell you are and I can tell you that I am. And it didn't take too long before I got into that mode. But, you know, what do you find in terms of the people who apply for the program, people who go through the program, you know, where do they stand? What does that generation stand in terms of being committed to the United States of America? That's a really great question. And that's part of why I feel so lucky to get to see the new generation at the very beginnings. Our students come here and they have a very open mind and they are very eager to serve. They wanna be part of the team. They recognize that they're joining an institution that's larger than anyone individual. And they are bright and they are eager. Like if anybody was really worried about, you know, what's gonna happen to the world when we hand it off to the younger generations, if you could see these students that I get to work with, you would not be worried in the slightest. I think they're gonna make advances beyond what we have done. And we teach, you know, we teach fundamentals of leadership and teamwork and building a team means that you have to empower all of the members of your team. And to do that, you have to treat people with respect. You have to be inclusive. You have to respect diversity in all of its forms. And this generation, it comes so naturally to them. Where I think in older generations, we had maybe some prejudices and some discriminatory behaviors that are kind of were more culturally pervasive. And with the younger generation, it's just not there. So they take to it, they take to team building very readily. And yeah, they're bright and they're ready to get to work. Oh, that's great to hear. It's really important to, you know, sometimes I worry that the military is in a very sensitive position. We saw that during the last administration. And they had to dig deep and find their ethics in the morality sometimes and not be corrupted. In any event, you know, one thing of interest is the demography, if you will, who comes to see you? Who wants in? What groups, if you can say, are more interested, most interested in joining the ROTC here in 2022? So our students, right now about a third of them are local kids from Hawaii and two thirds come from the mainland. A lot of them are from the West Coast, but we have, and I think we'll see an increasing number that are coming from East of the Mississippi, which I think is great because it brings different perspectives to our unit. And I love having the diversity of thought. And I think that helps everybody learn and grow. Yeah, as far as the, what I would say the overall trends are growing towards more diversity, more racial and ethnic diversity and more female, like there's more women joining than before. So that I think the difference between the, you know, gender population I think will continue on its trend. I don't know if it'll ever get to be like 50, 50 or certainly won't in my lifetime, but we're on the trend in that direction to wherever that's gonna go. What's the program like? I mean, it's just like a full-time arrangement where your primary academic identity is the ROTC or is it just a bunch of classes in addition to your regular academic identity? So, well, let me give some context to that question because I think that's a great question. There's three ways you can get into the Navy and Marine Corps to become an officer or the other services as well. They all do the same thing. First, we have service academies. So in the Navy, we have the Naval Academy or there's West Point for the Army and the Air Force has their academy and so on. And that is a full-time 24 hours a day, seven days a week in the military environment. And those are very challenging places to go just because you have a lot of those demands on you all the time. ROTC is kind of a next step where most of the time you are a normal college student on campus in a normal major wearing civilian clothes. And then we have some additional duties that come on top of that. So we do PT three times a week in the morning. We have a leadership lab on Tuesday morning which we get the whole battalion together and we do some kind of training together or we have a guest speaker. We do uniform inspections, that kind of thing. And then they take Naval science classes. So one class per semester will be something that's Naval science. So the first one they take is introduction to Naval science and it's just an overview of the Department of Defense and the Department of Navy and how the Navy and Marine Corps are organized structured and so on. But they take more advanced classes later. They take a navigation class. They take one that's called leadership and management where they learn basic leadership techniques. We do Navy ship systems and Navy weapon systems. And then all those are at the unclassified level but it's to give you a familiarization of how ship submarines and airplanes work. And so that when you later you go into the fleet you have kind of a basis. That's our goal is that you just have a basic understanding and then you go start your real training when you get on to active duty. Now the third way is through officer candidate school. So we have the Naval Academy, ROTC and then officer candidate school. And that would be you just go to college. You graduate after four years. You have a bachelor's degree. You go to the officer program recruiter and say, I'd like to join the Navy and we tend you through OCS to the 12 week indoctrination program. You become an officer and head off to a ship or flight school or wherever you're gonna go from there. So we're kind of in the middle in terms of the amount of rigor that's put on you over the four years you're in college. Does the Navy have enough applicants? Is it well staffed these days or are you looking for recruits? So we are always looking for talented recruits and we are very happy to have more people applying than we can take into the program. Cause that allows us to be somewhat selective in who we take. But rather than if somebody's interested in Naval ROTC then we encourage them to apply for a scholarship while they're in high school. And if they get selected for a scholarship they go to any of the 78 NROTC units or 168 universities. So they pick one of those to go to. So if I, like we do recruiting events where we go to local high schools and meet students, explain our program, give them some advice on how to apply and if they get selected, they may not come to our unit. They may go somewhere else and that's fine. Is that up to them or is it up to the Navy? It's up to them. They get to pick where they wanna go. Only in an extreme case would we say you can't go to a school and that would only be if there were too many people trying to go to any one school in any one year. We have to maybe tell people to try your second or third choice for school. That's really infrequent though. These scholarships you talked about, that's really enticing. I mean, is that a full right type of scholarship or is it just intuition? Condition, fees and books. So. No dormitory or anything. Not your room and board. That's right. But it's still very lucrative. It's pretty worthwhile. I'm sure. So what about the physical side of this, aside from the Naval science, which I do wanna ask you more about, you know, talking before about physical training and the like, how much of physical training is involved in the program? So we have requirements. In the Navy we take a physical fitness test called the physical readiness test. So they have to be able to pass that with good or better scores before they commission. That's a requirement for commissioning. And then on the Marine Corps side, they have two tests. One's called the physical fitness test and one's called the combat fitness test. And they have to be able to Marine option students have to pass both of those. And then in addition to that, there are other like height weight standards that you have to be within. And then we also have a swim qualification that you have to meet. So you have to be at least a third class swimmer. So there's a swim test. You have to be able to pass. So we, you know, make sure that everybody is physically fit there. And then depending on what specialty you're going into, you'll have to get a more thorough physical exam. So if, for example, you wanted to go into aviation, then you have to get a flight physical and they will check out you to make sure that you're gonna be physically fit for the rigors that go into, you know, operating aircraft. So you did that. I did. Yeah. So like, for example, you can't be colorblind in the Navy. So if you're colorblind, we might not know that when you first sign up, but when we do our screening physical, either when you get a scholarship or when you go into advanced standing, then we would, you know, we would find that out. You know what strikes me is this is actually a great place to be in the Navy ROTC because, you know, the Navy controls so much, so much territory, so much ocean from here. And we know from a geopolitical point of view, the Navy is, you know, concerned about that. This is a strategic base. Boy, as it always has been, Matt Beck. And so I would imagine, tell me if I'm wrong, that your students get a little travel. For example, I would imagine they go down to Pearl Harbor and they take a look at some of the equipment down there and including advanced submarines, what have you, so that they're familiar with, you know, the technology, you know, of these various ships and boats. And so how much of that is available to them when they join the ROTC program? We have tremendous support from Pak Fleet headquarters and Marfor Pak headquarters on both the Navy and Marine Corps side. So we have access to everything that's here. So that is ship visits at Pearl Harbor with both ships and submarines. We have students that, we use their simulators so they can practice ship handling. We're over on the Marine Corps base side. There's Navy helicopter squadron and there's a detachment of Navy P-8s that we visit. And then on the Marine Corps side, they have a Marine aviation wing over at Coney Bay as well as the whole infantry regiment. And we get hands-on experience with those, which is fantastic for the midshipmen to gain the visibility. They have to put in their preferences for what service they wanna go into. And so they can make educated decisions if they get to see and get hands-on experience with the different systems and meet the people that are in those communities. And then we get, I think one thing, that's a unique thing here in that we have access to all of that, the military presence we put our hands on. But the other thing is we have engagement with leadership here that helps give us the context of why the Indo-Pacific region is such a focus in the geopolitics of the world right now and why we have done the pivot to the Pacific and what that means. And how that's gonna translate for these midshipmen is that because they will be more aware of that as they go off to their careers, wherever they're gonna get stationed, they have this kind of foundational level knowledge that they will build on that because they will eventually will get back to the Pacific side of things and they'll see how things are changing over time and they'll have good context to understand what those trends really mean. So I think that's just an advantage of being present here. If I think of somebody that's in middle America and doesn't have access to Navy leaders like we do. It must be a real thrill to go into a control room somewhere, get on a Navy aircraft, walk around on a Navy ship, see what they've got there, how they live. I got just talking to you about it, it excites me. It's been a while since I've done that. But you talk about the leadership aspect then. I mean, we have really important leaders in the Navy here. As I mentioned, they can't even count the stars anymore. And I wonder if these students get a chance to meet them, whether you're able to wrangle them down to your classes and have them address your kids and tell them what it's like to be a senior admiral. Does that happen? Yes, it does. So we've had, yeah, sure. It's a motion sensor, I'm sitting here talking. So I'm not moving around enough to trigger it. Okay. Okay, we've been very fortunate that we've been able to meet with, let's see, from last year to this year, we've met with the Secretary of the Navy, Secretary Del Toro. He was here for a commissioning ceremony of the USS Daniel Inouye. And we had a midshipment down to help usher the event. We've met the Indo-Paycon commander, Admiral Ecolino, Pact Fleet commander, Marfor Pact commander, and then the base commanders at the Marine Corps base here at Pearl Harbor. Let's see, Navy surface group, mid-Pact, he's a good friend of mine. He's been over to talk to our midshipment about surface warfare, the Director of Military Ops at SubPAC has been over to talk to our midshipment about life on submarines. So they don't just hear it from me, they hear it from the real experts that have spent their whole careers doing it. That's another reason why we're just, we're lucky with our location. Wow, I wish I was them. Sounds like terrific fun. They make it to put their hands on things but for example, I was part of the press group that covered the Greenville incident 2001. So we had tours of the control rooms of a variety of the submarines at the sub base and we saw how the distinguished visitors handled the control systems and the like and we saw the various monitors and repeaters and what have you and it was really a thrill to walk around there and see how a submarine is put together. If they get a chance to do that, they get a chance to stand over the charts and all. Did they take rides? Did they take ride? They do. So just as a, here's a really great example. Last, this past summer, we set up with the PAC fleet headquarters and eight week internship or midshipment that we're gonna be here over the summer. And in that eight week internship each week had a different theme. So in one week, they went, they took the small boat operator course qualified as a coxswain on the small boat and then the security boats, the patrol Pearl Harbor, they drove those around Pearl Harbor. They actually drove it all the way down to Diamondhead and back. They worked at the PAC fleet boat house maintaining the Admiral's barge there working down in the bilge and scraping barnacles off the bottom but also learning how the crew operates the boat and it's a small museum there. So they qualified to be museum tour guides. This summer was RIMPAC. So they got, we took them out to the USS Abraham Lincoln and they got to watch fixed wing flight ops from the flight deck. And then they went over to USS Essex and watched the Marine Air Wing do their flight ops from there. And then back on land, they went to a training group, Mid PAC drove, they'd spent a week in the surface ship simulator working on different scenarios, training on ship handling and that kind of navigation, that kind of stuff. They spent a week with the Marines and they did the obstacle course and they did a small arms gun shoot and they kind of, we capped off the whole thing with a day at the air show in August. If you remember the Blue Angel team that we were visiting so we finished up with the air show to close that out. It was really, really a great opportunity for them. They also learned how to do staff work and stand watches. They did, they had a capstone project they worked on really, really great engagement with the PAC fleet staff. They learned a lot about how the Navy works not just at the leadership level but at the, how the staff actually takes the leader's vision and turns it into actionable reality. So really, really good exposure for them. And they learned how the culture in the Navy how people get along. I always felt the Navy had a special quality about that. You're a good example of that I think. There's just something about the Navy that is very appealing in the sense that the Navy culture is different and that other services and there's a certain connection maybe it's because of the shipboard aspect of Navy life that you have to get along with the guy next to you or the woman next to you. That's true. Because you're on a ship and there's nowhere to go. You're, yes. Your survival literally depends on how well you can function as a team. Yeah. Well, this is really interesting. It does bring back some memories from me and it makes me ask you, if I'm interested in watching this video at some point how do I connect up? Where do I go? Who do I talk to? Would you be willing to talk to me? Would you be willing to tell me about these things? Mano, Imano or woman to man, what have you? Tell me how that works. What do I do? So we have a website. It's part of the University of Hawaii's webpage. I think we have it open. The easiest thing to do is just to jump on Google and type Hawaii NROTC. And the first link will take your right to our page and then on there has got contact information. You can reach out to us. If you're a high school student and you are thinking about applying for an NROTC scholarship definitely reach out to us. We can help you get started on that process. If you're already in college then also it's not too late to join. So reach out to us. We can talk about what your options are. Or if you already are done with college and you think a career in the Navy might be an interesting thing to you we can help you get connected to the recruiters that will find the right occupation for you. We are here as a resource for anybody. We try to serve in that role as a connective node between the university and the base, the military and the recruiting programs. So we definitely want anybody that has questions about anything. Don't be afraid to ask. Yeah, that's great. So when I finish the program however I get into it then I am going to be commissioned. Am I right? That's correct. As an ensign in the United States Navy. Yes, or a second lieutenant in the US Marine Corps. Okay. And to go further than that and then I am obligated for a period of service. How does that work? Yeah, so if you accept the commission into the US Navy or the Marine Corps the minimum commitment will be for five years to serve. Some pipelines incur a longer commitment. So for example, if you wanted to be a pilot you go to flight school. When you complete flight school and earn your wings you start an eight year commitment from that point. And it takes about two years to go through flight school. So it is a significantly longer obligation but it's warranted in the fact that it costs millions of dollars to train somebody to be a pilot with all the round and flight training that they go through to get to that point. So yeah, we need. It must be popular, especially now with Top Gun. Yeah, right. Everybody wants to. I mean, aviation. I mean, remind you he was a Navy pilot, right? That's right. Yeah, aviation is great. I've had my career has been in aviation and it's of absolutely loved every day. The other communities we have are all equally rewarding in their own way. So the people I know that drive ships love driving ships and the people I know that drive subs absolutely love driving subs. And really what we all have in common the reason that some of us stay for 30 years or more it's really the people that we work with. We are in the military. We work with all people that are high performing. They are have a high integrity and they're focused on ideals and to be part of a team where everybody is so good at their job and your goal is to just uphold your end and do make sure you're doing your part so the overall team can succeed. That's what's most rewarding. That's what keeps us doing this for years and years. Well, when I was in the Coast Guard, I was in the Coast Guard. I was a lawyer directly commissioned and I went to the 14th Coast Guard district or rather Naval district then I tried cases. I defended cases. The guy next to me later became the Jag of the Marine Corps. Fell named Dave Brahms if you ever knew him. And it was a great experience to rub shoulders with the Navy of the Marines out there and I agree with you. There's a special thing and you can enjoy that if you're in the Navy. Let me ask you one last question, Captain. And it's this. So I finished my obligated period of service. And at that point I can go for a career. I can go for a long career like yours. Yours is unusually long, I would say. Just my observation. Or I can get out at 20, whatever. But I have all this experience. I have all the training I would gain in the classes, the Naval science classes and engineering classes, navigation classes, what have you that you mentioned. And I would have all my experience at sea or in aircraft or submarines. And I would have special skills. So what do these people do when they get out? Are they marketable? Are they marketable to the federal government? Are they marketable to industry? Are they marketable here, elsewhere? What's it like, the job market for them? People getting out of the military, officers separating, retiring at 20 years, not one of them ever has a problem finding what line of work they're gonna transition to next. I think corporate recruiters love to hire military people because they are people that have loyalty to their organization. They have teamwork built in. It's wired into our DNA. Their work ethic is established. In the military, we don't let people... You can't show up late to work. You can't just skip work if you don't feel like going that day. You just can't do that. So that is completely out of anybody's system by the time they are done with their military time. So if you hire somebody who's ex-military, you know somebody who's gonna show up every day on time, ready to work. And what more could you want from an employee? These are people that they are taught how to learn so they can learn new jobs. They're people that have been put into scenarios that they have things like that they didn't expect were gonna happen and they have to react, assess the situation, start making decisions and resolve the problem. So these are their natural problem solvers. And in the case of the officers that separate, they're people that are trained that if they see a problem, they engage with the problem, take charge, figure out what we need to do to fix it and put in corrective actions. They're not afraid to be in charge of something and they're not afraid to tell somebody what to do. And so those are great qualities for managers and senior leaders inside a company. So yeah, this really, really should be no surprise that anybody coming out of a military service is a prized asset going into the corporate world. That's great. You're giving them a gift that they wouldn't have otherwise perhaps. And it's great to have the program at UH. Thank you so much for talking to me. Captain Bill Ellis, commanding officer of the Naval ROTC at UH Manila. Thank you, Jay. It really was a pleasure to be here. Thank you. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.