Ming Sun remembered

The father of a 20-year-old Cathedral City man killed in Iraq this week wants the Bush administration to pull U.S. troops from security-patrol duties, saying the assignment made his son a walking target.

Army Pfc. Ming Sun died Tuesday -- Monday California time -- after he was shot while on patrol in Ramadi, said Lt. Gregory Dorman, an Army spokesman at Fort Carson in Colorado, where Sun was stationed before deploying to Iraq in October.

Ming Sun did not talk about whether the war is right or wrong, his father, David Sun, said, as he sat at the dining room table of his Cathedral City home. Grieving family members and friends were gathered in the living room.

Ming Sun believed his duty was to follow orders, his father said.

Even so, Ming Sun believed the Bush administration had not sent enough troops to fight the insurgents. David Sun believes that it might be necessary to send more troops, as the president on Wednesday said he will. But Bush should do so only if it hastens the end of the war and only after the military transfers patrol duties to Iraqi soldiers and police, he said.

"They are not policemen," David Sun said of U.S. troops. "Don't send them in the streets to do patrol. You don't know where the enemy is. They know you're coming, and they just stay there and then shoot you. They shoot you from the window of a house."

David Sun said his son wanted to be a soldier since he was a kid playing war video games shortly after the family emigrated from China in 1994.

He joined the Army in March as the first step toward what he hoped could be a lifelong military career leading to a general's uniform, David Sun said. Ming Sun knew he would be sent to Iraq, his father recalled.

"He wanted to fight to defend for freedom," David Sun said. "He knew he could die. He was so brave."

Ming Sun was shot at often, his father said. Yet the soldier celebrated his battalion's victories. One day, a buoyant Ming Sun called his father to tell him of the capture of three men suspected of murdering a journalist, David Sun said.

"He was excited, happy," David Sun said. "I said, 'Son, I'm so proud of you. But be careful.'"

Despite the dangers and discomfort -- which included up to two weeks of patrolling small towns without showering -- Ming Sun never complained, his father said.

In Ming Sun's bedroom, his father pointed to a set of free weights, a poster of a fearsome-looking animated character with a machine gun and a photograph of Ming Sun in combat uniform in front of the family home.

Yet on the nightstand was the incongruous sight of two stuffed animals -- a dog and a bear -- and a plastic girl doll. They were gifts from Ming Sun's 9-year-old sister, and he had placed them inches away from his pillow.

David Sun's wife, Zhifeng Liu, was the first family member to learn of Ming Sun's death. She answered a knock at the door at 9:30 p.m. Monday and opened it to find two uniformed men standing there, David Sun said.

"She was in shock and crying and collapsed on the floor," he said.

Ming Sun's friend, Art Tanampai, 20, said by phone that he was having a hard time dealing with the young soldier's death.

"He was just an awesome person," said Tanampai, who met Ming Sun in seventh grade. "When I heard the news, it broke me apart."

Ming liked to play video games and loved driving cars, Tanampai said.

At one point, he owned a Mercedes-Benz and a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution.

Ming Sun graduated from Cathedral City High School in 2004 and took classes for a year at College of the Desert. Deborah Applebaum, a counselor at the high school, said he was "a quiet student, a very polite young man."

During his senior year, Ming Sun participated in a hospitality-occupation program, to learn more about the restaurant and hotel business, Applebaum said. He sometimes helped out at the family restaurant -- Palms Buffet in Palm Springs -- as a cashier, David Sun said.

From the Inland News

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