Over the weekend, the Navy League Honolulu Council awarded retired Adm. John “Lung” Aquilino and Hunt Companies Hawaii President Steve Colon its annual American Patriot Awards.
On Saturday night at Hilton Hawaiian Village, senior Navy leaders past and present gathered for a black-tie gala to present the awards. Previous recipients have included former prisoners of war Jerry Coffee and Jim Hickerson, U.S. Senators John McCain and Jim Webb and Hawaiian music legend Henry Kapono.
The Navy League promotes the interests of the U.S. sea services, including the Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, U.S. Merchant Marine and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps. Hawaii is one of the few places to have a presence from each.
Aquilino, who has served in each of the U.S. military’s geographic commands, closed out his military career in Hawaii as the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and, subsequently, the U.S. Pacific Command at Camp Smith until his retirement in 2024, when he passed the command to his successor, Adm. Samuel “Pappy”
Paparo.
Oahu serves as the nerve center for U.S. military power in the Pacific. Commanders in Hawaii have sought to highlight its strategic importance as they build up forces and multinational training —
including the biennial Rim of the Pacific exercise — amid tensions with China.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping reportedly has instructed his military to be capable of seizing Taiwan, a self-ruled island democracy that Beijing regards as a rogue province, by 2027. Tensions also have been on the rise between Chinese forces and the Philippines in the South China Sea, a critical waterway that a third of all international trade moves through.
Paparo said that during his time leading America’s Pacific forces, Aquilino “stressed at every point that the warfighters and civilians of U.S. Pacific Command don’t operate separately from this community.”
“We live here, our families live here,” Paparo said. “Our mission depends on the trust built here — this is listening, it’s being transparent, it’s respecting all the perspectives and everybody here in Hawaii.”
Like many former senior military leaders, Aquilino got into the defense industry soon after hanging up his uniform, joining the board of Lockheed Martin months after retirement. But in 2025 he also joined the board of Hawaiian Electric.
“I wanted to keep my connections to this amazing place, and it is an amazing place, and you will take it for granted if you don’t make that trip back to the mainland every once in a while,” Aquilino said. “The ohana spirit, the aloha spirit, only exists in this special place, and I wanted to keep my leis and support this island as I went forward.”
Aquilino’s tenure leading the Pacific Fleet and PACOM wasn’t without challenges. Shortly after he handed command of the Pacific Fleet to Paparo, fuel from the Navy’s Red Hill fuel facility entered the service’s Oahu water system that serves 93,000 people — including service members, military families and local residents in former military housing areas.
The Red Hill Facility sits just 100 feet above a critical aquifer that most of Oahu relies on for clean water.
The Navy has since removed the fuel and is working to close the facility, but the crisis gave fresh energy to activists and politicians that have been critical of
the military’s presence in Hawaii. This year marks
50 years since local activists pushed their way onto Kahoolawe, which set the stage for the end of the Navy’s use of the island for live-fire training.
Now, as the Pentagon prepares for the expiration of leases on state-owned land across the island the military has used for training and weapons testing, the military has been working to highlight economic investments and community
partnerships.
Colon, himself a retired Navy officer, recalled attending the Honolulu Council’s Patriot Awards dinner in 2012 when McCain received the award and reflected that he thought his time in
Hawaii would be brief.
But since leaving the Navy he has spent years in Hawaii in various roles, including
at Hunt and sitting on the board of the USS Missouri Memorial Association and as president of the Hawaii Military Affairs Council.
Colon said “it’s all about bringing Hawaii’s military leaders together with the community and doing what we can to showcase great things that the military does in Hawaii, which serves as a counterweight to the naysayers who would rather see that military presence diminish or end.”
Colon is expected to step down from his position at Hunt later this year, but says he intends to continue in an advisory role.