
MODESTO, Calif. — A Marine who yearned as a little boy to be a soldier was killed in Iraq when a suicide bomber drove a truck filled with explosives into a building he was guarding.
Lance Cpl. Bunny Long, 22, died Friday near Fallujah.
Long wanted to be a soldier and begged for an Army uniform when he was 6 years old, said his brother, Bunna Long, 31.
“We always felt like we needed to give something back for all the things we’ve received,” he said.
Bunny Long, who was born in the United States and graduated from Modesto High School in 2002, was the son of immigrants who arrived here after their first son starved in a Cambodian labor camp in the mid-1970s.
Sim Long, 60, and Yen Chea, 51, left Cambodia with three children after years of war and hardship in their country.
“Life was really hard for them,” said their daughter, Sokha Long, 26. “To have gone...