Alaska Guard Soldier seeks citizenship while deployed

Photo By Sgt. Thomas Day | Spc. Noli Batac, a Phillipino immigrant, serves his country and his new home state, Alaska, for the Third U.S. Army/U.S. Army Central at Camp Buehring, Kuwait.  

01.31.2007

Story by Sgt. Thomas Day 

40th Public Affairs Detachment

By Sgt. Thomas L. Day
40th Public Affairs Detachment

KUWAIT — Spc. Noli Batac was clearly paying attention in his history class.

"The Americans freed us from the Spanish. The Spanish occupied us for 500 years," he said about America's 50-year presence in the Philippines. The Treaty of Paris of 1898 awarded the United States colonial control over the Philippines – offering the country independence after World War II.

Batac celebrates America's victory in the Spanish-American war of 1898 – for his native country and his new country, the country he serves in Camp Buehring, Kuwait, as an American Soldier.

While in Kuwait, Batac has pride in the American flag attached to the right shoulder of his uniform, but is still working on becoming a citizen of his new home. He hopes his service, in support of Third Army/U.S. Army Central, will help him in the process of gaining citizenship.

In May of 2001, Batac emigrated from Manila, Philippines to Juneau, Alaska, joining his father in the Alaska capital after years of official petitions to get Noli in the States. He spoke fluent English and soon found a job as a janitor, then as a grocery stocker, before approaching an Alaska National Guard recruiter.

"I asked about engineering because I have a degree from a Filipino college in civil engineering technology," Batac recalled. "There were no slots for engineering technician, so the sergeant asked me if I was a church guy."

Noli was 32 at the time he enlisted into the Alaska National Guard, signing up as a chaplain's assistant. He was more than a decade older than most of his other classmates at basic training.

"There was a lot of whining and cursing from the younger Soldiers," he said of basic training. "Chaplain Assistant School was different. There wasn't any profanity."

Shortly after completing his initial military training, Batac found a job in the civilian sector that better suited his skills. Since 2002, Batac has been doing in his civilian career what he originally intended to do for the Army: he's a materials technician for R and M Engineering Ltd., a British-owned offshore drilling company.

He also returned to the Philippines to marry his girlfriend, Monica. "We now have two children – my boy is 5 years old and my girl is 2."

Batac is now deployed with 3rd Battalion of the 297th Infantry Regiment [a unit that calls themselves the "Arctic Warriors"]. The Batacs had spent the first four years of their marriage separated by the Pacific Ocean; now they are separated by an entire continent. It's a division Noli hopes to end when he redeploys back to Alaska.

"Since I've been in Juneau, I see my family once a year," he said. "I go back to the Philippines at Christmas time and return to Juneau in February. It's really hard because you never see the transitions all children go through – how they first walk, when they first start speaking.

"But the hardest part is when I first arrive there. My kids don't want to come to me."

His most recent application for citizenship, submitted in 2005, was rejected. He plans on reapplying once he returns home.

His Army family, however, remains within arms reach. Batac's chaplain, 1st Lt. Kirk Thorsteinson, is effusive when talking about his assistant. "From all the chaplain's assistants I've had, he's the best one."

The Arctic Warriors are a tight group. Nearly everyone in the unit hails from Juneau, a town of just more than 30,000 people, according to the 2000 U.S. census.

Batac is hardly the lone Filipino Soldier in the 297th Infantry ranks, with a large population of Philippine immigrants populating southeast Alaska. "Some of the Filipino guys jokingly refer to it as the Philippine Army," Staff Sgt. Mac Metcalfe, the unit historian, said.

• Date Taken: 01.31.2007
• Date Posted: 01.31.2007 11:23
• Story ID: 9016