The graves of the young men who gave the most in the Iraq War can be found among casualties from other wars at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific and at Hawaii State Veterans Cemetery.

Among those at Punchbowl are Cpl. Toby Olsen, 28, a Mililani High graduate who was killed along with three other soldiers in 2007 when a roadside bomb ripped through their Humvee in western Iraq.

There is Marine Lance Cpl. Blake Magaoay, 20, a 2002 Pearl City High graduate, who was cut down by enemy gunfire in 2004 and was the first Hawaii-born Marine to die in the Iraq War.

Army Sgt. Alexander Gagalac, 28, who was quieter than his twin brother, Alexis, was killed in 2007 by an insurgent’s explosive device eight days before he was to leave Iraq.

Buried on a rise at Hawaii State Veterans Cemetery is 1st Lt. Nainoa Hoe, 27, a 1995 Kamehameha Schools graduate who was felled by a sniper’s bullet in 2005 while leading his platoon in Mosul, Iraq.

More than 215 service members with Hawaii ties have been killed in Iraq since 2003. Many more have been seriously wounded.

The decision by President Barack Obama, announced Friday, to end the war and bring all U.S. troops out of Iraq by Dec. 31 carries the promise that the list of names, ever increasing over the past 81/2 years, is all but complete.

Hawaii soldiers and Marines no longer will deploy in the large numbers that saw 14,000 isle troops leaving for or returning from Iraq and Kuwait late in 2008 and early in 2009.

THE RAMIFICATIONS of the war will continue, though, for those who lost loves ones or comrades, veterans struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, and families trying to stay together through long and repeated absences.

A recent Pew Research Center poll of post-9/11 combat veterans found that about half the group (49 percent) suffered from PTSD, with many reliving traumatic experiences through flashbacks or nightmares.

"The long-term care of our wounded warriors is a sacred obligation and a continuing cost of war, and we must ensure that they receive the care and benefits they have earned and deserve," U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, said Friday in response to Obama’s decision.

In the short run, the announcement that the Iraq war is ending still was sinking in Friday for those who have experienced it personally and painfully.

"The warfighting — that kind of ended last year, but at this point it seems like (the war will be over)," said Allen Hoe, whose son, Nainoa, was killed in Iraq. "In that regard, speaking for myself, I’m very pleased that we’ve reached a point where it is done."

The Kailua resident, a Vietnam combat veteran and a civilian aide to the secretary of the Army for Hawaii, said he will hang onto his son’s pride in service.

"He was there because he wanted to be part of our country’s armed forces," Hoe said. "And he was very excited to be called upon to go and do his mission. So I think at the end of the day, I’m very satisfied that in some small way, he contributed to a resolution of the issues that kind of have dominated our lives for the last 10 years."

As someone who witnessed all the deployments from Hawaii and stays in touch with soldiers here, Hoe said, "The number of deployments has just literally worn everyone down, so I think in that regard, everyone should feel somewhat relieved that at least for the moment, they are not looking at additional deployments."

There are about 700 25th Infantry Division headquarters soldiers left in Iraq.

Over the years, there were losses from Hawaii that spread sorrow through entire units.

Eight Kaneohe Bay Marines with the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, were killed in a suicide car-bomb attack on Oct. 30, 2004; 11 more Marines were killed — most of them in the subsequent Battle of Fallujah; and 26 Hawaii Marines and a Navy corpsman were killed in the crash of a CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter in a sandstorm on Jan. 26, 2005.

Hawaii has a record of early naval involvement — the Pearl Harbor submarine USS Cheyenne fired one of the first Tomahawk missiles of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

In the first days of the war, three other Pearl Harbor subs — the Columbia, Key West and Louisville — along with destroyers Paul Hamilton and O’Kane, also fired cruise missiles. The O’Kane alone launched 19 Tomahawks.

About 250 Marines with the 1st Radio Battalion at Kaneohe Bay and another 40 with the 4th Force Reconnaissance Company left Feb. 9, 2003, for eventual duty in Kuwait and Iraq, and more than 200 soldiers with Charlie Company, 193rd Aviation, Hawaii National Guard, were mobilized on Jan. 7, 2004, for Iraq.

But it wouldn’t be until Jan. 13, 2004 — 10 months after the war began — that the first wave of an eventual 5,200 Schofield Barracks soldiers would leave Hawaii for Iraq.

That would be followed by 5,800 soldiers deploying to Afghanistan several months later. About 1,000 Hawaii Marines with the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, entered Iraq in September, followed by a similar number with the 3rd Battalion arriving in Afghanistan in November.

In December 2004, Hawaii had nearly 14,000 soldiers and Marines at war.

Staff Sgt. Mark Rimi, 25, saw the arc of the war as a Schofield soldier with the 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry "Gimlets" on a 2007 deployment during the "surge" of U.S. forces to Iraq, and more recently on a deployment that ended last June.

The deployments were "polar opposites," the Orlando, Fla., man said.

"The first one being, we were going out and bagging up bad guys in the middle of the night for 15 months, and the next (deployment) suddenly, we’re just training the Iraqis," said Rimi, who is making a transition to another duty station.

Rimi said there has been progress, and he has a simple formula to measure it.

"The second time I went back, less people are dying — less people are even there," he said, "and we’re training (Iraqis) instead of doing all the work."

On the recent deployment, Rimi and other Schofield soldiers helped train several battalions of Iraqi soldiers.

"It was more about setting them up, putting them in the forefront and training them to be prepared for us to leave," he said.

And in that progress, he takes pride in the time he spent in Iraq.

"Some (soldiers) might think that we wasted our time, but I don’t think they really put it in perspective, or just have no pride in themselves in the first place," Rimi said. "I think we made an impact."