Carla Orellana, a Hawaiʻi Island mother who works with wounded warriors, confronted her deepest fears when her son was deployed to Afghanistan. Carla is a Blue Star Mother — a mother who has children serving in the military, guard, reserves or who are veterans. In this recording, she talks about what it was like learning that her son had been severely injured.
In June 2022, StoryCorps, the Brooklyn-based organization focused on preserving and sharing stories, teamed up with HPR to gather military-related stories from Hawai‘i residents.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Carla Orellana: Good morning, world. My name is Carla Orellana. I am 72 years old this year. I'm recording from the very north point of the Big Island of Hawaiʻi out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean where King Kamehameha was raised. It's a place that makes you strong. I'm grateful to be here.
I am a Blue Star Mother. My son was in the Air Force and he's a wounded warrior. He was severely injured in Afghanistan at just the precious age of his early 20s. I was raised to be a naturalist. I also was introduced to Ahimsa — nonviolence through yoga. I had just graduated with a certification in yoga for veterans with PTSD. There were no military members in my family. We kind of joke about being Scottish and losing the castle because we were all lovers instead of fighters.
A family member encouraged Carla's young son to join the Air Force where he would help to train pilots in emergency survival techniques.
CO: The only reason I agreed was because he was going to go into the SERE program: Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. If he wanted to carry on the family tradition of being a naturalist by helping Air Force pilots to survive in the wilderness when they were shot down, I accepted that. I filled out the paperwork that said he is the last of his line. There are no other cousins, brothers, or sisters on my side or his late father's side.
He was in an armored vehicle in Afghanistan down in some valley and an RPG came in through the gunner's port and blew up inside and blew off his fingers. Now, you know when you are a mother or a father, and your child is first born and you count those precious little fingers and toes and you see that they're all there? You did a good job, you ate well, you didn't drink or smoke or do drugs when you were pregnant. You wanted to give your child the best of everything. He lost those precious fingers. It also blew up the back of his leg. I'm grateful to his companions who were able to tie it off so he didn't bleed all the way out. Somehow he was able to get dragged or crawled out of the vehicle and lie there in the dirt while bullets were going all around him and he thought that was it. I'm so grateful that I'm a Blue Star Mother but let me tell you, I feel for every single Gold Star Mother.
Gold Star Mothers are those who have experienced the loss of an immediate family member serving in the military during wartime.
The full interview will be preserved in the Library of Congress. Access the full recording by Carla Orellana at the StoryCorps Archive.
In June 2022, HPR teamed up with StoryCorps to gather audio conversations from Hawai‘i residents about their military experiences. The Military Voices Initiative provides a platform for veterans, service members, and military families to share their stories. In doing so, we honor their voices, amplify their experiences, and let them know that we — as a nation — are listening. These interviews were facilitated by Hazel Diaz, Isabella Gonzalez, Cole Johnston and Franchesca Peña.
The audio segments were produced for Morning Edition and All Things Considered by John Kalani Zak. He shares his perspective on working with the Military Voices Initiative segments in his producer's notes. HPR and StoryCorps encourage our community to tell their own stories using the StoryCorps app. Learn more at StoryCorps.org.
Local support for this series comes from Hawai‘i Pacific University.
