Our assignment to Kadena AB, Okinawa Our assignment to Kadena AB, Okinawa
Our assignment to Okinawa was my ninth assignment overall (basic and tech school included) and our fifth assignment since being married. This would be our second overseas tour and hopefully not our last visit to the Far East. We really loved it over there as so many people who know us can attest to our passion of the Okinawan people. We made many lifelong friends.
We arrived on Kadena AB, Okinawa in March 1993 and decided to stay until March 1999. We loved basically every last minute of it. Yes, even the typhoons!! And really now, who doesn't love a super-typhoon? (That's a category 5 to you stateside people.) They're quite harmless, really. Evacuate, yeah right. Where to? Super-typhoon Kirk passed directly over the island on my birthday back in 1996. The eye took almost 12 hours to pass. This storm didn't do hardly any damage at all to the base. The worst storms are the ones that barely miss a direct hit but you get stuck in the eyewall for several hours. That's what happened this past summer of 1999.
Click
below for weather forcasts around the Pacific Rim.
Click here for a really cool satellite picture!
Okinawa afforded us many opportunities to travel. Most of the time we went to the Philippines to visit family. The last time was right before we got came back to the States. All three of these trips for me were fantastic! Enjoyed almost every minute of them. As a family, we did take a shopping trip to Osan AB, Korea, by way of mainland Japan. We had a nice stay there except for the fact we got stranded at Yokota AB for a few days. But it was fun none-the-less. We saw the Imperial Palace and the Tokyo Tower and basically just wandered around the world famous Ginza while waiting for the next flight out to Osan.
Workwise, I bounced around between units and jobs like a pinball machine. I started out in 67th Fighter Squadron in my usual job. Vacated that to work Mobility for the 18th Operations Support Squadron and soon thereafter worked in the dorms for three years. During that period the dorms fell under the domain of the 718th Civil Engineers. Finished my tour there in the 18th Operations Group again. This time working with Quality Assurance in T.O.D.O. as an inspector. You can check out the various units in the link near the top of this page.
Click here for some photos from around
the Pacific Rim.
