MARINE CORPS BASE HAWAII, KANEOHE BAY, Hi -- Racism was the topic for the two day extremist training, Jan. 8 and 9, at the MCB Hawaii, Kaneohe Bay, theater when T.J. Leyden, former Marine and skinhead, came to talk to base personnel about his life as part of a hate and separatist group.
He began his presentation by talking to Marines about his life from the beginning of his skinhead affiliation, to his racist family, and ending with his current mission of making people aware of the dangers of racism.
The path to racism for Leyden began with his involvement in the punk rock movement during the 1980's. This is where skinheads saw his violence towards other people. Soon he was one of them.
At the age of 21, Leyden found himself in trouble and needed to escape. So he joined the Marine Corps in 1988.
Once stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Kaneohe Bay, he kept his devotion to the white movement through a swastika flag and racist books kept in his wall locker.
According to Leyden, the old order on being part of a gang was that the Marine had to be a "passive member."
Even the countless tattoos with racist intentions were considered passive.
"I think the only time the Marine Corps knew I was a racist was in the last few months of my career," said Leyden. "I had Nazi SS lightning bolts tattooed two inches high on my neck."
With the books, tattoos and flags, Leyden did not receive an other than honorable discharge for racism. In fact, received it for alcohol abuse and fighting.
"My discharge papers said that I was an outstanding Marine eight hours a day," Leyden said.
So once out, he went back to his skinhead group and continued to recruit, but now with more knowledge.
"Separatist groups use the military as a training ground," explained Leyden. "People from all over the world want to train with the best in the world."
After getting out of the Marine Corps, he met a girl, and 15 months later she became his wife. One year after that, his first of two children was born.
One day, while watching a children's television show, his oldest son came into the room and turned off the television set because there was a man of dark skin as the host of the show.
"I was in front of a mirror that I couldn't turn away from," said Leyden. "The biggest monster that my two boys would ever meet in their life was sitting on the couch not more than five feet away."
This was when Leyden realized that his two sons would some day end up like him, a man who has spent countless days in county jail, been shot at and stabbed. Or they could become like the six friends he had to bury or the handfuls that fill state and federal prisons.
Still, he did not leave the movement. The final blow was at a skinhead compound in Idaho that was later closed, according to Leyden.
There he asked a question that gave him an answer that "awakened" him.
"What if we wake up tomorrow and the Aryan race has won the race war, then what?" questioned the now 15-year skinhead. "Before the man could answer me, another of my fellow skinheads looks up at me, tells me to sit down because 'we'll discuss hair color next."
This was when he realized that no matter which race becomes "supreme," they would start to turn-on themselves. They will fight over hair color, shades of skin color, eye color and even physical defects such as glasses.
He then decided to move in with his mother in California. Shortly after moving to California, he returned to Idaho and kidnapped his kids, then filed for divorce and custody of his children.
Currently, he and his wife have joint custody of the kids, but she is still a skinhead. The courts also allowed his wife to take the children to racist rallies as long as she is there to supervise.
In August 1996, Leyden made his first speech to a Junior High School and has been doing so ever since with the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
There is one draw back to his attempt to educate people on racism and their goals; he now lives in solitude. Even though he was on a military base, he had security guards at the doors.
"I own two pistols, an AR-51 automatic rifle and a magnum load shotgun," Leyden explained. "Plus I have inside and outside surveillance cameras."
These measures are needed due to the hatred that his former skinhead friends now have for him. One of their websites even has a picture of him with the words "terminate on sight," below it.
"I have given up my freedom for this," Leyden said. "All I hope for is that one person took what I said to heart and now has a tool to fight back with."
If a Marine or Sailor is suspected of being a racist or has been approached by a racist group, report the incident to the chain of command.
Two other contacts are the unit equal opportunity representative or base equal opportunity advisor.