First Batch of State’s Reserves Called to Duty

The first California reservists were called to duty Saturday as the secretary of the Navy ordered more than 800 medical personnel to report to military hospitals from San Diego to Bremerton, Wash., to replace doctors, nurses and technicians who have been deployed or are headed for bases and medical ships in the tense Persian Gulf region.

The call-ups follow President Bush’s decision last Wednesday to authorize the use of the so-called “weekend warriors.” More than 49,000 armed forces reservists are expected to be involved by Oct. 1.

Meanwhile, the Navy also placed on standby two sophisticated reserve units specializing in the electronic surveillance of seaports, as well as four sea-lift details. Those units joined three other supply-oriented reserve units that were placed on standby Friday. They include an Army group specializing in the supply and purification of water and two National Guard trucking units.

The quick activation of medical and supply reservists had been anticipated since Wednesday when Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney outlined the military’s immediate needs. But the notification of two Mobile Inshore Undersea Warfare (MIUW) units represented something of a surprise.

The MIUW units--one based in Long Beach, the other in San Francisco--are trained in the operation of sophisticated radio and sonar equipment for the monitoring of harbor activity.

“They’re in essence a harbor defense unit,” said Lt. Cmdr. Bill Gay of the Navy’s regional reserve headquarters in San Diego. Their mission, he said, is to conduct both surface and subsurface surveillance for the protection of ports, harbors, anchorages and “offshore economic assets.”

“These units are self-supporting and can be rapidly deployed,” Gay said.

It was not clear on Saturday where the MIUW units may be deployed if definitive orders to activate come. The four sea-lift units put on standby Saturday include two in Alameda, one in Santa Barbara and one in Pomona.

Gay said that about 500 medical reservists had been called up in a Navy reserve region that includes Southern California, Arizona and southern Nevada. In Northern California, 380 medical reservists had been activated, a Navy spokesman in San Francisco said.

Across the state, the call-up abruptly disrupted lives, bringing to some a welcome new challenge and to others an unwanted detour.

Child-care arrangements were being hastily made. Work left undone at civilian jobs was to be left hanging.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” said Petty Officer 3rd Class Pam Slayton, fighting back tears as she clutched her orders at the Naval and Marine Corps Reserve Center on Stadium Way north of downtown Los Angeles.

Slayton, a 31-year-old corpsman, is to report for duty at Camp Pendleton. Her husband, who is on active duty with the Navy, was transferred five days ago from Long Beach to Bremerton, Wash.

Slayton, who in her civilian life is a computer technician for Southern California Gas Co., had been hoping to move to Bremerton--and switch reserve units--to be with her husband. Now the immediate concern is who will take care of their two children, ages 5 and 7. They can’t go to Camp Pendleton with her Wednesday because she will be in barracks, Slayton said.

“I don’t know who’ll take care of them--relatives, my mom, somebody,” she said.

She said she joined the reserves several years ago to get benefits while going to technical school, adding, “I guess it’s time to pay the Navy back.”

But Petty Officer 3rd Class Kenneth Pacis, also a corpsman in the same unit as Slayton, said he reported to the center Saturday “ready and willing to go.”

The 24-year-old Downey resident said he “got kinda nervous when he arrived home from a Dodger game Friday night to find a message from a roommate informing him that the Navy had called him up.”

“I didn’t sleep too well,” he said, “But I calmed down when I learned we were not going overseas, at least not for now.”

A recent graduate of UCLA, Pacis said he had just last week secured a management job but had not yet started. “I guess I’ll be letting that job go,” he said. “When this is over, I’ll have to start over.”

Doctors assigned to the Naval Reserve Center in Tustin who were called to active duty “really want to go” and “really want to support their country,” said Lt. Cmdr. M. K. Carlock, commanding officer of the reserve medical unit.

Lt. Cmdr. Edward H. Bestard, a San Clemente orthopedic surgeon who received orders to report to Tustin early Saturday, said he was told the hospital there was “almost empty.”

“There’s almost nobody left, I heard,” Bestard said after he completed his orders to report to the seaside base on Wednesday morning.

But the physicians will not report to the hospital until the middle of next week. “They don’t have to be in the bus tomorrow morning or anything like that,” he said.

Lt. Cmdr. Barbara Henk, an AIDS nurse at the UC Davis Medical Center, was among the reservists who reported to duty in Sacramento. Henk, who will be assigned to Bremerton, had no complaints about going because “I agree with President Bush that this is what we need to do.”

But the 35-year-old Roseville nurse said things will be difficult at home for her husband, Robert, a lawyer, and daughters, ages 2 and 5. The 5-year-old cried when told her mother was leaving, Henk said, and her husband is a “little anxious. He’ll have to pay the bills and do all the things I used to do.”

At the Naval Station at Treasure Island in San Francisco, 13 medical reserve units were ordered to report. The units included 380 doctors, nurses and other personnel.

The bulk of the Bay Area reserves called to active duty on Saturday will report to Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland. Some of Oak Knoll’s regular-duty doctors and nurses have been deployed in preparation for casualties in an Iraqi war.

“The staff has held together. Morale has been good. This is what we train for. This is the real thing,” said Lt. Ed DeJose, executive officer in charge of ensuring the reserves’ readiness at Treasure Island. DeJose, who had been working since midnight, said he planned to continue on the job for “as long as I can keep my eyelids from falling shut.”

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Dan Morain in San Francisco, Jerry Gillam in Sacramento, Jim Gomez in Tustin, Kevin Roderick and Shari Roan in Los Angeles, Ken Weiss in Ventura, and Linda Roach Monroe and Mark Stencel in San Diego.