Torrance’s 63rd annual Armed Forces Day Parade will be held Saturday with the U.S. Army as the honored military branch and Lt. Gen. Jonathan P. Braga as the grand marshal.
The parade is set to begin at 1:30 p.m. at Crenshaw Boulevard and travel one mile west on Torrance Boulevard to Madrona Avenue. It is expected to end at approximately 3:30 p.m.
It will feature active-duty military units, marching bands, ROTC groups, military vehicles and surprise flyovers.
The honorary grand marshals will be actress Katey Sagal and her husband Kurt Sutter, a screenwriter, director, producer and actor, best known as the creator of the 2008-14 FX action crime drama “Sons of Anarchy,” and a co-creator of its spinoff, “Mayans M.C.” which ran from 2018-23.
Braga is the commander of the Army Special Operations Command which mans, trains, equips, educates, organizes, sustains and supports forces to conduct special operations across the full range of military operations in support of joint force commander and joint, interagency, intergovernmental and multinational partners to meet national and theater objectives, according to the Army. It is headquartered at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Braga has served in his current role since Aug. 13, 2021, after being deputy commanding general of the U.S. Army Pacific beginning in August 2020. He was commander of Special Operations Command Pacific before that.
He was born in Attleboro, Massachusetts on June 19, 1969. He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy with a bachelor’s of degree in national security public affairs, and commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Infantry Branch in 1991.
Braga completed numerous deployments and humanitarian relief operations throughout the Caribbean, Central America and South America and multiple deployments as a task force commander to Afghanistan and Iraq and Operation Willing Spirit, the rescue of Americans held hostage by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — People’s Army.
After receiving a master’s degree from the Naval War College in 2006, Braga served as the operations officer for the Joint Reconnaissance Task Force as part of Joint Special Operations Command in Washington and deployed to lead a special operations task force across three geographical commands from 2006-08.
The parade comes 28 days before the 250th anniversary of the Army’s founding on June 14, 1775.
Torrance is one of the nation’s few cities sanctioned by the Department of Defense to honor the armed forces through an annual parade. Torrance’s Armed Forces Day Parade is the nation’s longest-running military parade sponsored by a city, according to the city.
The parade began in 1960 in an attempt to “increase public respect and understanding for military service and promote civic-military relationships,” then-Mayor Albert lsen said. It is held on Armed Forces Day, celebrated on the third Saturday in May.
Armed Forces Day is annually observed on the third Saturday in May. In his Armed Forces Day proclamation, President Donald Trump declared, “On Armed Forces Day, we pause to honor the men and women of America’s Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and Space Force. Every day, throughout our homeland and in far-flung regions of the world, our fighting forces valiantly safeguard our liberty, defend our border, and support global stability through humanitarian missions and disaster relief operations. In America’s legacy of awe-inspiring heroes, they are without equal.”