Sgt. Gary Cabacongan Jr.'s flight home from Kuwait was more than 36 hours, stopping in Germany, Iceland, Maine and California before touching down in Honolulu on Thursday.

At Schofield Barracks, the 27-year-old Hawai'i National Guard soldier was reunited with his wife and got reintroduced to the year-old son he's seen only a few times in the past year.

Over the next week, he will be briefed and counseled, go through mental-health screening, head for a sergeant's school for two weeks, and return to civilian life and his job in the meat department at the Iwilei Costco. After 10 months of active duty in the desert of Kuwait, he will contemplate his future.

Hawai'i's citizen soldiers returning from Iraq and Kuwait face a whirlwind demobilization and a raft of uncertainty as they seek old or new jobs, reintegrate into families who've survived without them, and deal with issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder.

The challenges may equal those faced overseas.

Lisa Nisenfeld, executive director of the Workforce Development Council in Washington state, recently testified before a Senate panel that when 4,500 National Guard soldiers returned to that state from Iraq, they were changed in more ways than one.

Those who worked low-wage, low-skill jobs, for example, were no longer satisfied with them.

"During their deployment, they learned many technical skills (and) lived in intense and demanding situations," Nisenfeld said. "They developed maturity unlike that of others their age."

Expectations for work and family changed substantially, Nisenfeld said, yet the soldiers often came home to minimum-wage jobs, debt, changed family situations, and physical and mental challenges.

"So they're given three weeks or less to decompress prior to entering civilian life," she said.

How the transition will go in Hawai'i remains to be seen.

The process will be repeated for several months as the 2,200 part-time soldiers of the 29th Brigade Combat Team come back from Iraq and Kuwait.

Seventy-seven soldiers with the 1st Battalion, 487th Field Artillery, and the 227th Engineer Company returned Thursday from Kuwait, hundreds more will return early next month, and the remainder, serving in Iraq, are expected back in January.

Not since Vietnam has there been a deployment of this size for Hawai'i's citizen soldiers. In 1968-69, 4,000 Guard and Reserve soldiers were mobilized, and about 1,100 were sent to Vietnam as replacements for other units.

"None of us really has the historical background with any certainty to say (what the transition will be like)," said Hawai'i Air National Guard Col. Ann Greenlee, executive director of Hawai'i Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve. "But common sense tells you, absolutely, it's a challenge."

Families are a "huge challenge."

"Folks have had to do for themselves for (more than a year)," she said. "It's start the marriage all over again."

Her agency acts as an advocate for employer and employee, and as ombudsman to mediate job disputes. The Uniformed Services Employment and Re-employment Rights Act of 1994, or USERRA, requires an employer to provide a job of equal pay, equal rank, equal seniority and equal duties, but not necessarily the same job that a Guard member or reservist left, or even at the same location, Greenlee said.

In many cases, an employer has had to replace a worker.

"So the employers have a real decision to make," Greenlee said. "How do they meet the requirements of USERRA and deal with their organization's (needs)?"

Employer and employee may disagree on what constitutes a job with equal responsibility and status. If the soldiers didn't know the specifics of the act before they left, they are told of them during demobilization.

The good news, Greenlee said, is "this is a wonderful time for this to happen because our economy is good and employers are expanding." Hawai'i also has a culture of valuing military service and aloha for people, she said.

Cabacongan, who lives in Kane'ohe and has been in the Guard for 10 years, said Costco has been a great employer, keeping his job for him as a wrapper in the meat department and giving him raises while he was gone.

But he's thinking about joining the active-duty Coast Guard or Air Force. Although soldiers with high-paying civilian jobs can take a pay cut going to war, for others, coming home means a reduction in pay.

"Some guys could be making like $8 an hour, and then be an E5 (sergeant) or E6 (staff sergeant) in the Guard making $5,000-something a month," he said. "That's a big difference in pay."

Staff Sgt. Rory Souza, 46, and Staff Sgt. Vernon De Soto, 33, are reservists who served with the 411th Engineer Battalion for a year in Iraq and got back about seven months ago. Both got their jobs back — Souza as a Honolulu police officer in the juvenile division and De Soto as a guard at Waiawa Correctional Facility.

De Soto said there have been other issues to face from the deployment.

Used to having soldiers around him in Iraq, De Soto still feels a little edgy with just inmates around him now. He came under grenade and small-arms attack while driving on a convoy in Iraq, and still is extra vigilant while driving.

"For a lot of us, if we got engaged during convoys, it still comes back when we are sleeping, or even when we're driving out on the freeway; we're so used to being aware of what's on the road," he said.

He had 25 soldiers to worry about in Iraq. Three found out their wives were cheating on them back home.

"For them to get that news, being so far away, it messed them up," he said.

One survey showed 30 percent of U.S. troops said they developed stress-related mental-health problems three to four months after coming home, according to the Army's surgeon general.

About 4 percent to 5 percent are diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder when anxiety and other problems — often common in the short term — do not go away.

Fred Ballard, spokesman for the VA Pacific Islands Healthcare System, the health administration for veterans in Hawai'i, said returning Guard and Reserve soldiers are of particular concern.

"They shrug their problems aside because they have to get back with their family, with their life, with their jobs," Ballard said. "(So), they are probably more hesitant to seek medical care."

De Soto said jobs were a big concern for returning soldiers, as were medical benefits. De Soto said soldiers he knew weren't informed adequately about applying for VA benefits.

Weekend retreats at the Turtle Bay Resort were offered to married couples to work on communication, and De Soto said the program helped a lot.

Greenlee of Hawai'i Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve said companies like Servco Pacific, which had employees deploy to the Middle East, not only hold jobs for workers, continue medical benefits and make up loss of pay, but also show extra sensitivity to returning troops.

A reorientation to the workplace and counseling are provided, and representatives also talk to fellow employees, saying, "Well, you might not want to ask questions like, 'Did you kill anybody?' " Greenlee said. "You need to be sensitive that they can be really stressed out."

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com.