#VeteranOfTheDay Army Veteran Coral Wong Pietsch

On March 30, 2001, Coral Wong Pietsch became the first female Asian American general officer in the Army and the first female general officer of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps’ (JAG) 230-year history.

Born in 1947 in Waterloo, Iowa, to a Chinese immigrant father and a Czech-American mother, Pietsch took a commission in the Army as a JAG officer after graduating from law school in 1974.

During six years on active duty, Pietsch served as a lawyer in the Eighth Army in Korea and at Fort Shafter in Hawaii. As a reservist, she served as deputy attorney general for Hawaii from 1980 to 1986, and became a special assistant and senior civilian counsel to the commanding general of U.S. Army Pacific (USARPAC). She served at Fort DeRussy as a contract law and claims officer for IX Corps and as a staff judge advocate (SJA) for the 9th U.S. Army Reserve Command (ARCOM).

Pietsch was labor counselor for the U.S. Army Support Command Hawaii from 1986 to 1991 before becoming senior legal officer for ARCOM’s 1995 Philippines’ Exercise Balikatan.

Recalled to active duty for six months in 1996, Pietsch served as SJA for USARPAC, holding more command SJA assignments than nearly any other Army officer.

Pietsch began working as JAG’s first female chief judge in May 2000 while serving a four-year Individual Mobilization Augmentee assignment to the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals. As USARPAC’s senior civilian attorney and chief of the civil law division, she supervised attorneys across an Army command covering half the world.

Appointed as a Hawaii Civil Rights Commission commissioner in 2003 and chair in 2006, Pietsch streamlined processes and deployed public education and school civil rights awareness programs.

After retiring from the Army Reserve in 2007, Pietsch volunteered for deployment as part of the 2007 Operation Iraqi Freedom surge. As the Department of Defense civilian deputy rule of law coordinator for the Baghdad Provincial Reconstruction Team, she helped build up the Iraqi legal community’s capability. She was involved in the Iraqi Jurist Union, law schools and various rights organizations, and she helped the Iraqi Bar Association establish the first legal aid clinic in one of Iraq’s largest detention facilities.

Pietsch was one of the White House’s 2014 “Women Veteran Leader Champions of Change,” was inducted into the Army Women’s Foundation Hall of Fame in 2017, and received the National Asian Pacific American Law Student Association’s 2022 Diversity Leadership Award.

Pietsch earned 2016’s Chief Justice John Marshall Lifetime Achievement Award that recognizes “achievements outside military service by an individual who once served as a judge advocate, left active-duty military service, and subsequently made great contributions and achievements outside the military legal system.”

In June 2012, Pietsch was appointed to a 15-year term as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims and was formally invested on Oct. 9, 2012, after being sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts.

We honor her service.

Writer: Michelle A. Shade

Editors: Ashley Shaut, Cate Manning

Researcher: John Bergstrom

Graphic Designer: Leon Saul