The first officer to commission from University of Hawaii’s new Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps program will serve aboard a Pearl Harbor-based warship for her first assignment.

During a ceremony aboard the Battleship Missouri, Ensign Mahinalani Vongsy officially had her officer ranks pinned on her shoulders by her parents Dec. 15. She was also joined at the commission by crew members of the USS Shiloh, who made a cake for her celebrating the ceremony and welcoming her to the crew.

“I’m not sure how many ROTC graduates get to have their first command bake their commissioning cake,” she said.

Capt. Adam Cheatham, Shiloh’s commanding officer, said “it is very unusual for a ship to take part in a commissioning ceremony for a new officer, and this is the first time I have been able to do so in my 26-year career.”

“When I first found out that Ensign Vongsy would be coming to Shiloh, I could not have been happier,” Cheatham said. “I immediately shared the good news with my officers, and we all look forward to the day she will report on board.”

At the end of January, Vongsy will attend Basic Division Officer Course — a three-month program to prepare new ensigns for their duties — before officially joining the crew. But getting her education and training in Hawaii already has given her a unique look at what she might face serving as an officer in the Pacific Fleet.

Vongsy is the daughter of immigrants from the Philippines and Laos. She was born in Hawaii when her mother was serving in the Navy at Pearl Harbor and her father was in the Army at Schofield Barracks. Her mother attended UH and went onto medical school, and Vongsy has deep family ties to the island.

But her parents ultimately relocated to the Pacific Northwest, and she spent her teenage years in Gig Harbor, Wash., on Puget Sound. When she first began college, she initially went to Washington State University. She decided quickly it wasn’t a good fit and transferred to UH.

“I think I just wanted to come back to my roots and spend time with my family and kind of see where my mom went to college,” she said. In addition to returning to the islands, she was inspired by her parents’ military service to follow in their footsteps.

“They both joined the military to give me and my brother a better life,” Vongsy said. “They’re my No. 1 supporters, and family means a lot to me.”

The UH NROTC program officially launched in August 2021, joining the already well-established Army and Air Force programs on the campus. Pacific Fleet Adm. Sam Paparo, UH President David Lassner, U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz and U.S. Rep. Ed Case of Hawaii were among those who attended the program’s launch.

It took several years to get the program up and running. After years of prodding, in 2019 then-Navy Secretary Richard Spencer approved the creation of the new unit. Ron Cambra, then an assistant vice chancellor, said UH had “always been interested in Navy (ROTC) because of the obvious Pearl Harbor (connection) and the history in the islands. It’s just that the Navy’s perception has been that they already had enough NROTC programs spread throughout the country.”

Schatz said he was able to eventually convince Spencer to approve the program by pointing out that Navy leaders in Hawaii had themselves long spoken of the university’s potential to commission a significant number of cadets “with critical language and technical skills from among an ethnically and racially diverse student body.”

“The Navy values diversity and is always working to build a community of service members who accurately reflect the rich makeup of our country,” said Cheatham. “Having service members born, educated and trained in the Pacific serve their country in the same region they grew up in is vital to ensuring their knowledge and experience is shared throughout the Navy, making us a more effective force.”

Paparo has taken a personal interest in the program, administering the midshipman oath to the 19 students who were present for the official launch of the program. Vongsy said that she’s met him several times since and that several midshipmen from the program have interned with the Pacific Fleet.

Paparo is next in line to become overall commander of all U.S. forces in the Pacific region after Adm. John Aquilino retires in 2024. The Pentagon considers the Pacific its top-priority area of operations as tensions simmer with China. China has been locked in a series of disputes over maritime territorial and navigation rights with many of its neighbors, particularly in the South China Sea — a critical trade route that more than a third of all international trade travels through.

“Especially with our future as tensions rise in the Pacific, I think I might have an upper hand with some ensigns that might be joining in the next month or two,” said Vongsy. “Being here in Hawaii has helped me gain some connections and networking and getting an idea of what the future could look like. … I definitely think that the UH NROTC unit is going to be a premier unit of ROTC in the country.”

Vongsy participated in the 2022 iteration of exercise Rim of the Pacific — the world’s largest naval exercise, held biennially in Hawaii — taking her aboard the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln and the amphibious assault ship USS Essex. This summer she did a training cruise sailing through the South China Sea from Japan to Singapore aboard the USS Blue Ridge, the flagship of the Navy’s 7th Fleet.

“That’s as close to the action as you’re going to get as a midshipman,” Vongsy said. “I got to sit in some important meetings getting to see the ins and outs of everyday life when you’re underway traveling through a highly contested area.”

But the Navy program is beginning to commission officers at a time when many Hawaii residents have become deeply suspicious of Navy leadership since fuel from the service’s underground Red Hill fuel storage facility tainted the Navy’s Oahu water system, which serves 93,000 people — including service members, military families and local civilians in former military housing areas.

The military is working to remove the last of the fuel from the World War II-era fuel farm, which sits just 100 feet above a critical aquifer most of Honolulu depends on for drinking water. For years the Navy insisted the facility was safe, but in November a state working group released a report that estimated that as much as 2 million gallons may have leaked from the facility over 80 years.

But Vongsy represents the next generation of officers who will one day lead the Navy. Vongsy said most of her fellow midshipmen at UH NROTC were born in Hawaii or had other ties to the islands, and that will inform their approach to leadership as they move up the ranks as the Navy’s future leaders.

“I think it’s important that me as the first commissioned officer from the unit is local and has family from here,” Vongsy said. “I think that sets the bar high.”