By Atsuko Sakurai

Having served 11 years on active duty, I can say unequivocally that I got just as much out of the military as I put into it. As Veteran’s Day approaches and I reflect on my military career and the lessons that I learned, I cannot help but contrast those lessons, particularly on leadership and teamwork, to what I see happening in our country today.

Many of my fellow citizens, and our political leaders, have taken an “America First” attitude. This rhetoric has translated into policies. Earlier this month, for example, President Trump set the refugee admissions goal at only 45,000, a historic low and a sharp pivot from a long track record of U.S. leadership.  

Though at first breath “America First” may sound patriotic, it is nothing more than a cynical worldview that stands in opposition to the best that our country has to offer. Of course it is important to secure our borders, and to ensure that Americans in need are cared for. But closing our doors to immigrants and refugees, and claiming that we get nothing in return for the aid that we provide to other countries is in no way patriotic. It is a shortsighted failure of leadership.

In the military, I always saw my job as a team sport. It wasn’t important whether or not the guy next to you was the smartest guy in the room. What was important was that he had the right attitude—that he cared enough to perform the most mundane tasks with careful precision, because he understood what was ultimately at stake. It was whether or not you could trust him to take a bullet or to deliver a bullet when the moment called for it.

It was about being held accountable for someone else’s actions, whether the consequences you suffered as a result of those actions were fair or not. And finally, it was about the fact that the more you progressed in your career, the more your job became about helping other people achieve their goals.
I recall one afternoon, in August of 2011, I was one of over one hundred people gathered in an auditorium at the Naval Support Activity in Manama, Bahrain to hear a three-star admiral speak.

He told us that there were a handful of other people in his academy class who boasted that they would someday become admirals. But none other than he did, and by his reckoning, there was really only one explanation: “I’m willing to bet, that at some point in their careers, everyone of them decided to put themselves before others.”

It took me a while to understand the significance of his message, but it has stayed with me. And as I reflect on what I observed about good leadership in the military, it’s clear that he was right.

By my observation, generosity was the most valuable measure of the credibility of a military leader. This wasn’t a moral imperative, it was a practical one. Unless you had earned the trust of others by proving that you could take care of them, success would always be elusive. This was not a system where the leader got nothing in return. Through generosity you earned respect, with respect you gained influence, and with that influence you were more likely to achieve positive results in any mission, as well as the ability to set the agenda for future missions.

Society at large is also, in a way, a team sport. We give up certain individual rights in order to collectively secure other rights that we deem more important. We take care of the person to our left and right, and in return, we can trust that they will take care of us. In America, part of our national identity has also always been our commitment to something larger than ourselves: we are united by a set of ideals—of liberty, justice, and of opportunity—that make us a leader among nations, and a beacon to people all over the world.

As a world leader, we must act accordingly. We would be wise to heed the admiral’s message: You do not get ahead by shortcutting your values, or by putting yourself ahead of the good of the team, and the mission at hand.

Here’s what it means to me to be truly American: it’s about being a good teammate. You move past your differences to unite around a common goal. You watch out for the people to your left and right. It’s also about being a real leader. You take care of people other than your own, and you put the mission above your own personal gain. You do that not only because it is right, but because it is in your strategic interest to do so.

Those are the American ideals I swore an oath to protect. And those are the ideas I will continue to fight for. 

Atsuko Sakurai is a former Chief Petty Officer in the U.S. Coast Guard, currently studying computer engineering at City College of New York.