LOS ANGELES � His 5-year-old sister keeps asking when Marine Cpl. Carlos Pineda will come home. Although more than a 100 people packed into his funeral, she insists the man in the wooden box was a doll, not her brother.

�What do I say to her?� asked Pineda�s mother, Silvia Hernandez, on Thursday from her home in Los Angeles. Hernandez buried her oldest son last week after the Camp Lejeune, N.C.-based Marine was killed during combat in Fallujah, Iraq.

�I can tell her that he died doing what he believed in, but the pain is the same,� she said.

Pineda, 23, died July 1, as a result of wounds from enemy small-arms fire. He was assigned to 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force.

Pineda, a native of El Salvador, grew up fast in East Los Angeles. His father was murdered by local gang members when Pineda was 9, and he quickly became the man of...