Japan tour often leads to war zone

[unhappycamper]

F-22 Raptors fly near Kadena Air Base to support U.S. Pacific Command's security obligations in the western Pacific. Short-term tours are part of the job for tens of thousands of airmen assigned to the three Air Force-operated bases in Japan.


Japan tour often leads to war zone
By Bruce Rolfsen - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Aug 14, 2010 12:44:12 EDT

KADENA AIR BASE, Japan — You move your family halfway around the world to Japan, then you get new orders — a six-month deployment to the desert.

A decade ago, few airmen based in the Land of the Rising Sun deployed outside the Pacific region. Today, short-term tours are a fact of life for the tens of thousands of airmen and their families assigned to the three Air Force-operated bases — Kadena, Yokota and Misawa.

“Folks come out here, mostly from the U.S., and they are living a long way from their family and their friends, and their loved ones get deployed ... That’s a big deal,” said Brig Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, commander of 18th Wing here. “They can’t just jump on a plane, easily and inexpensively, and go see mom, dad, brother, sister.”

At any given time, more than 1,000 airmen in Japan are deployed elsewhere in the world.

Kadena’s HH-60G Pave Hawk aircrews and maintainers, for example, fly medical and rescue missions in Afghanistan. Yokota’s C-130H Hercules crews fly Central Command missions. Misawa’s pilots and maintainers for F-16 Fighting Falcons spend four months in South Korea. And Kadena pararescue teams rotate into the Horn of Africa.

[Obamanaut]

1. In the early 1980s, I was assigned to an airwing squadron, on the

USS Midway which was one of many vessels forward deployed to Yokosuka, Japan.

I was on a 2 year unaccompanied tour, because Miz O did not want to move that far. An accompanied tour, with family, was 3 years.

Because of various airwing detachments along with normal ship movement, I was actually separated from my family less than the married men who had their families with them. It was not uncommon for the ship to pull in one day, and the airwing to fly off someplace else three days later, return in three weeks only to board the ship and out to sea again.

That sort of schedule is hard on families.