Like many students still in their teens, Isshin Shiraishi arrived at UC Berkeley in 2023 with no clear plan for his education or life after graduation. Certainly, though, he had no intention to choose a military life. After growing up in the Bay Area, he wasn’t even aware that such a life existed.
Today, remarkably, Cadet Shiraishi is beginning a term as cadet commander of the Army ROTC Golden Bears Battalion. No, he says — his choice was not conventional. But after his initial hesitation, Shiraishi has embraced the challenge and camaraderie of this life, even if friends and fellow students don’t always understand.
“It’s not like I threw away my social life,” said Shiraishi, now a senior. “On the weekends, I still go out with my friends. But I’ve gained a lot more discipline, a lot of leadership experience. There’s been an unspoken awareness that I’m going a different route than my peers. Not that I’m not trying to compare or anything — it’s just different.”
ROTC — the Reserve Officer Training Corps — has a deep history on the Berkeley campus. This year, the Naval ROTC is celebrating its 100th anniversary. Berkeley hosted the first Air ROTC. The decades have brought heroic contributions in World War I and World War II, along with the sometimes violent turmoil that surrounded the corps during the Vietnam War era.
