JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-FORT SAM HOUSTON, Texas –
During the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the United States lost 2,335 American fighting men and women, including 2,008 Sailors, 218 Soldiers, 109 Marines and 68 civilians, resulting in a total of 2,403 American lives lost.
To commemorate the event which drove the nation into World War II, the recovering service members and supporting staff at the Joint Base San Antonio Warrior Transition Battalion conducted a unified physical training event at the Fitness Center at the Medical Education and Training Campus Dec. 7, 2018.
Non-commissioned officers from the U.S. Marine Corps led the stretching and warm-up exercises.
“Our NCOs are pretty good at knowing everyone in their platoon and understand that conditioning is through scalable physical activity, in accordance with the individual service member’s profile limitations,” said Capt. Joaquin Matias Garcia, JBSA Warrior Transition Battalion operations officer.
Each exercise was followed by a guided discussion about a specific core value intended to enhance the overall sense of meaning and purpose within the ranks of the formation, in order to set conditions for positive organizational climates within and amongst the services.
“All military services rarely conduct physical training together because we have different cultures; we have different ways of executing our exercises,” said Gunnery Sgt. Mark P. Mangio, U.S. Marine Corps Wounded Warrior Battalion-East Staff NCOIC.
“The fact that all we share the same hardships and loss of our comrades, we honor our fellow Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Airmen sacrifices through our joint physical fitness training – conducting different exercises representing the shared military core values and lives lost during Pearl Harbor makes this event very significant and meaningful,” Mangio added.