Marine rushes into burning Okinawa hotel to alert sleeping occupants

Fire engulfs Hotel Hamby Resort in Chatan, Okinawa, Aug. 15, 2026. (Photo by Ryan M. Breeden/Stars and Stripes)

CHATAN, Okinawa — As bystanders recorded a hotel burning in the predawn darkness, a 25-year-old Marine ran inside, pounding on doors and shouting to wake sleeping occupants.

Lance Cpl. Marshall Martinez, of Fillmore, Calif., said he was walking home with his girlfriend in Chatan town early Aug. 15 when he noticed flames spreading through the nearby Hotel Hamby Resort.

“You got to do something because every second counts,” he told Stars and Stripes during a Friday interview at Camp Courtney.

“I saw people evacuating [but] there’s probably still people in there sleeping,” he said. “I went in there banging on doors, yelling ‘fire, fire, fire!’ ”

Okinawa Prefectural Police received a report of the fire at 3:30 a.m., a police spokesman said by phone Wednesday.