Marine Lance Cpl. James B. Huston Jr.

Died July 2, 2004 Serving During Operation Iraqi Freedom

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22, of Umatilla, Ore.; assigned to 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.; killed July 2 in a vehicle accident while his unit was responding to hostile action in Anbar province, Iraq.

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Oregon Marine killed in Iraq

Associated Press

HERMISTON, Ore. — An Oregon Marine has been killed in action in Iraq, according to military officials.

In a brief news release, the Pentagon said that Lance Cpl. James Huston Jr., 22, of Hermiston, died Friday in a vehicle accident while his unit was responding to “hostile action” in Anbar province, Iraq.

The military said he was a rifleman based out of Camp Pendleton, Calif.

According to Camp Pendleton spokesman Nathaniel Garcia, Huston joined the Marine Corps on Oct. 10, 2001. He had been awarded several military honors, including the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal, the Presidential Unit Citation and the Sea Service Deployment ribbon.

James’s brother Matthew, an electrician in the Navy, told the East Oregonian newspaper in Pendleton that knowing his brother’s death was an accident helps the family deal with their loss.

“I think we all take comfort knowing it wasn’t in his hands,” Huston said. “It was an accident, and accidents happen.”

James Huston had been redeployed to Iraq in March, after being in the country during the first two months of the war and in the Persian Gulf for several months in 2003, his brother told the newspaper.

A Hermiston High graduate, Huston once had worked for his parents’ excavation company, but wanted to see the world beyond Hermiston.

When he shipped out, he told his parents not to worry about him.

“Think of all of the married Marines with kids,” he wrote his parents. “Not some punk like me.”

Matthew Huston said he will remember his brother as an avid hunter, a music lover and an artist. “He was the life of the party,” Huston said. “Everyone that met him loved him.”

James Huston was the sixth Marine to die in the past month in Anbar province, a Sunni-dominated area west of Baghdad that has been a hotbed of anti-U.S. resistance. It includes the cities of Fallujah, Ramadi and Qaim, on the Syrian border.

More than 850 U.S. service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq in March 2003, according to the U.S. Defense Department. Included in that figure are at least 24 soldiers with close Oregon ties.