Pasadena’s Adopted Marine Battalion to Honor the City’s Fallen

Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo has often referred to the roughly 1,000 Marines and Sailors of the 2nd Battalion, 23rd Marine Regiment — some of whom are stationed locally on city-owned land at the corner of Paloma Street and Sierra Madre Boulevard — as “our sons and daughters.” On Monday morning, the city will see them at Memorial Park.

At 10:30 a.m., the battalion servicemembers will render military honors at the annual Pasadena Memorial Day Remembrance.

Marines from the battalion will conduct a flag-folding and presentation ceremony for a local Gold Star family — the immediate family of a U.S. military service member who died in the line of duty.

A firing party from the battalion will render what the program calls “a 21-gun salute” — a popular misnomer for the three-volley rifle salute performed at military funerals.

The keynote address will be delivered by the senior active-duty Marine assigned to the unit: Lt. Col. Steven J. Uziel, who reported to Pasadena in May 2025.

The battalion relocated to the city in 2006. The Reserve Center sits on city-owned land located just south of Pasadena High School at 2699 Paloma Street.

Monday’s ceremony arrives in a year of layered anniversaries. The United States turns 250 in 2026. The United States military turns 251.

The battalion’s lineage runs through Kwajalein, Saipan, Tinian and Iwo Jima in the Second World War and through An Nasiriyah and Baghdad in the Iraq War.

Among the battalion’s distinctions: four Medals of Honor awarded to Marines of the 23rd Marine Regiment for actions at Iwo Jima in 1945, and a Navy Cross awarded to Sgt. Scott Montoya for actions in Baghdad in 2003, when the battalion became the first complete Marine Reserve infantry battalion to deploy in the Iraq War.

A predecessor of Lt. Col. Uziel — Lt. Col. Donald R. Wright, who served as the battalion’s Inspector-Instructor in 2014 — once said events like today’s Memorial Day Remembrance do not “glorify war or even commemorate some great victory of the past.”

“It is meant simply to honor those who have died in service to their country. We honor their sacrifice and remind ourselves of the need to be ready to answer our nation’s call. We also remind those who have fallen that we have not forgotten them and that we will not let them down.”

The public is invited to join the City of Pasadena and the Pasadena Veterans Day Committee at the Pasadena Memorial Day Remembrance on Monday, May 25, 10:30 a.m., at Memorial Park, 85 E. Holly St.