Army National Guard col., honored for CAP work, traces involvement to misplaced phone call

enlarge

Lt. Col. George Ishikata leads orientation for the California Wing’s 2009 Cadet Officer Basic Course.

Photo by Maj. Darren Kasai


Susie Paul
Contributing writer

“I was a geek who made a mistake,” Army National Guard Col. George K. Ishikata says of his initial involvement with Civil Air Patrol, where he now holds the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Ishikata learned of the organization after finding it cross-referenced under “Air Force” in The World Book Encyclopedia, which he read for fun as a teenager. 

He called the Air Force because he could not find a listing for CAP. He mistakenly, however, got hold of a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who had himself been a CAP member.

That was in 1977. At age 15, Ishikata decided to join CAP.

He attended his first meeting with San Francisco Composite Flight 86 – now Cadet Squadron 86 -- because, like most cadets, he wanted to fly.

That, he recalled, “and the fact the uniforms were neat.”

Ishikata has been active in CAP ever since. He described his service as an odyssey.
 
That journey recently resulted in his receipt of the Military Outstanding Volunteer Service Medal. The decoration was created by President George H.W. Bush in 1993 to recognize members of the military who perform significant voluntary service above and beyond their duties as members of the Armed Forces.

Ishikata’s award recognized his role in the California Wing’s 2008 Cadet Officer Basic Course. As a colonel in the California National Guard serving in Kosovo as a senior intelligence officer, he had just returned from a two-year stint in Iraq and Afghanistan when he elected to spend the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day to volunteer as a teacher and mentor in the COBC. 

 “It embarrasses him to hear it, but he is one of my heroes,” said Lt. Col. Ned Lee, CAP national cadet adviser. “I have never known a more selfless leader nor one who works as hard as he does.”

Lee served with Ishikata in the Army locally and overseas and has also known him since his CAP cadet days. “He has been a tireless mentor and role model for countless cadets in the California Wing,” he said. 

Ishikata said he finds “nothing is more rewarding than working with cadets.

“I’ve been blessed in having seen some pretty exceptional cadets grow up to become pretty exceptional adults and good friends,” he said. “I can’t think of a better way to spend my free time than to do it with these exceptional volunteers and cadets.”

Ishikata said his Army life is really an outgrowth of his CAP service. CAP led him to join Army Junior ROTC in high school and, in 1985, ROTC at the University of San Francisco. Since then he has held numerous positions in the California National Guard, including commanding at the company and battalion levels.

“I spent a lot of time seeing my soldiers going to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as welcoming them back,” he said.

When he completed his 2 ½ years in command, he volunteered to serve in Iraq himself. “My leadership wanted to provide me with this opportunity,” he said. After a 15-month tour in Iraq, he was deployed to Afghanistan for six months.

Another friend and colleague of 30 years, Col. Kenneth Parris, California Wing commander, described Ishikata as “an intelligent, competent and compassionate man of humble disposition” with “an ever-present and warm smile.” The two men met when both were cadets in the California Wing, Parris in East Bay Composite Squadron 18 in Oakland and Ishikata in the San Francisco flight across the bay. 

A weekend training exercise at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area brought them together at an abandoned Nike missile tracking station. “Mornings were breathtaking as we were above the fog and looking south toward San Francisco,” Parris said. “You could only see the two towers of the Golden Gate Bridge rising up out of the fog.”
 
Since that time, Parris said, Ishikata has continued to serve the cadet program in a variety of important ways.

“George has been a pioneer in the California Wing Cadet Integrated Leadership Program, developing the COBC curriculum that has been adopted as the Pacific Region Cadet Leadership School,” the wing commandeer said.

He knows of no other member with a greater sense of devotion to the cadet program and “to the development of future young, dynamic aerospace leaders for our nation,” Parris added.