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PALAUExperience the wondersof this tropical paradise

NORFOLK, Va. — Lt. Cmdr. Karen Sankes-Rit-land never imagined life outside the military.

Her father was a Marine. Her husband is an explosive ordnance disposal officer. She’s a Na-val Academy graduate.

But more than a decade into her career, the strains of family life and a dual-military house-hold were taking a toll. Her father had recently died, her third child needed open-heart surgery and she was pregnant with her fourth child. Meanwhile, her husband was scheduled to de-ploy soon.

“I just felt like I was starting to drown,” she said.

Something had to change. She needed a break. But she didn’t want to leave the Navy.

So after her fourth child’s arrival in 2016, she took advantage of a program that lets enlisted sailors and officers take a sabbatical. For a year, she was a stay-at-home mom.

“I will forever be grateful for that year off be-cause that was a very important time for me to be able to spend that time with my very young children,” she said. “And I can tell you stay-at-home moms definitely have a really tough job.

BY BROCK VERGAKIS, THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT

A cultural shift is helping keep talented mothers in the Navy

SEE MOTHERS ON PAGE 4

AIRMAN STAYS CONNECTED TO HER

GUAM HERITAGEPAGE 2

UCT-2 DIVES INTO TO WORK IN POHNPEI

PAGE 6

GUAM MICRONESIA ISLAND FAIR KICKS

OFF MAY 29PAGE 12

A WOMAN TACKLES THE PANIC ATTACKS THAT

KEPT HER FROM FLYINGPAGES 14-15

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BM1 Natasha Jones gets a hug from her daughter after her ship arrives in San Diego. Photo by Britney Odom,U.S. Navy

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P eople come together from all walks of life to become the most impor-tant asset of the United States Air

Force: Airmen. That diversity in back-ground, experience, demographics, per-spectives, thought and organization play a key role in AF mission success in an in-creasingly competitive and dynamic global environment.

Throughout May, Team Whiteman cel-ebrates Asian-American and Pacific Is-lander Heritage Month.

Two Airmen from across the 509th Bomb Wing shared how they have man-aged to stay connected to their cultural roots while immersing themselves into Air Force life, thousands of miles away from all they have ever known.

“I had never been off of Guam before,” said Airman Maria Benavente, assigned to the 509th Logistics Readiness Squadron. “I wanted to explore and have my education paid for.”

Benavente joined the AF in August of 2018 as the first in her family to join the military. Her brother has since joined the Guam Army National Guard as an infan-tryman and her older sister moved to Alas-ka with her husband.

“This is the first time we have all been spread out like this,” said Benavente. “It can be so lonely and heartbreaking to hear about what they are going through

sometimes and to not be able to be there for them.”

She said she and her family do their best to stay in touch with regular phone conver-sations.

“It makes the times we do talk, that qual-ity time, even more special,” she said. “It feels like it has brought us closer together.”

20-year-old Airman 1st Class Elaiza Jane Andora, assigned to the 509th Force

Support Squadron, said she moved to the Washington state with her family from the Philippines when she was 16.

“I joined the Air Force in June of 2017,” she said.

Her father supported her decision to join, while her mother was more cautious and protective.

STORY AND PHOTO BY STAFF SGT. KAYLA WHITE,

509TH BOMB WING

Airman stays connected to her Guam heritage

“I had never been off of Guam before. I wanted to explore

and have my education paid for.”

- Airman Maria Benavente,509th Logistics Readiness Squadron

SEE AIRMAN ON PAGE 5

STRIPES GUAM 3MAY 24 – MAY 30, 2019 A STARS AND STRIPES COMMUNITY PUBLICATION


Very tough, but very rewarding.”She returned to the Navy in 2017 and

now serves as the training officer aboard the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush. The time off rejuvenated her. She said it made her a better officer.

“If I had stayed in, I honestly don’t think I would be where I’m at right now,” she said. “And that’s due to needing the ability to take care of my family. And if I can’t take care of my personal life, it would be very hard for me to perform in my professional life.”

Sankes-Ritland is one of 217 sailors who have used or are using the Career Inter-mission Program since it was first offered as a pilot program in 2009, with 79 of those choosing to take time off for family rea-sons that could include having or adopt-ing a child or taking care of an ill parent, according to Naval Personnel Command. Sailors can take up to three years off, but must serve an additional month after they return for every month they’ve been gone.

The program is one of a series of chang-es the Navy has recently made to be more accommodating to working parents in an effort to retain talented sailors. Surveys show the top reasons people leave the ser-vice are the Navy’s impact on the family, on their ability to have or adopt children and work-life balance.

But some working mothers say they’ve seen a cultural shift over the past 20 years in how leadership treats sailors with chil-dren. A 2018 survey indicated that women planning to remain in the Navy were more likely to have children than those who are undecided or planning to separate from the service.

In recent years the Navy has extended the hours child care is available, doubled its maternity leave to 12 weeks and re-moved the 40 person cap on the number of people who can go on sabbatical each year. Leaders — many of whom are wom-en with children — are also being taught the importance of making sure those they’re in charge of are taking care of their home lives so they’re not distracted on a job where lives are at stake. Some-times, the Navy now says, a family issue needs to take priority.

“The bottom line is that women can be wives, mothers and Sailors all at the same time,” said Lt. Cmdr. Jessica McNulty, a

spokeswoman for Navy Recruiting Com-mand, which is specifically targeting women to join the service.

Other efforts to be more supportive include an update to the Navy’s Preg-nancy and Parenthood Mobile App, the creation of a “Breastfeeding in the Navy” campaign and a new Command Advisor on Pregnancy and Parenthood that’s de-signed to support parents and normalize conversations on parenthood in the Navy, according to Chief of Naval Personnel spokesman Lt. j.g. Stuart Phillips.

Chief Petty Officer Renea Powers, a Virginia Beach-based Riverine with three children ages 17 to 4, said the Navy treat-ed working mothers much differently when she had her first child.

“It wasn’t very conducive to women wanting to stay in. A lot of the females around me who were pregnant, like as soon as they had their baby and their time was up, they were getting out,” Powers said.

Powers had praise for the extended hours and level of care offered at the Na-vy’s child development centers, as well as how affordable they are. Sailors are charged on a sliding scale based on their pay, but it’s not uncommon for sailors to pay half the price for daycare that they would at a comparable accredited private

facility.Powers sends her youngest child to

one of the Navy’s centers. The only prob-lem is that the centers can’t handle more children, she said. Wait lists to get in are common. Each center maintains low care-taker-to-child ratios and they’re limited in how many children they can accept.

The one for Naval Station Norfolk can handle 300 children and is at capacity. The wait list has 300 names on it. The children of active-duty sailors and single parents get priority.

The Navy also offers a 24/7 care pro-gram for sailors who work overnight watches. That program can handle 20 children and offers to certify in-home caretakers that may allow children to have more personal attention closer to where they live.

Chief Petty Officer Sheri Bergeman, who works at Fleet Forces Command in Norfolk, was someone who thought about getting out of the Navy after she had the first of her three children. But she stayed in largely because she and her husband still had contracts to serve and she was able to transfer to shore duty. When she had her first two children, she only got six weeks off.

But for her third child, she got 12 weeks.

“It’s important to have that additional time for bonding. So six weeks, you’re go-ing back to work, you kind of have a little bit of resentment, like ‘Oh my gosh, I don’t spend this time with my baby.’ Your mind is not at work,” she said. “You’re there, but you’re really not focused.”

Bergeman would spend her lunch hours at the daycare with her baby. “Be-cause that’s where my heart was. That’s where my mind was.”

For her, the Navy’s new extended leave policy also came with another benefit: pa-ternity leave. For her third child, her hus-band was also able to take time off work and take some of the burden off her.

“You have a baby and you’re tired,” she said. “You’re up all that time. So having them there to be able to care for the baby and, you know, be awake — that’s huge.”

Since June, the Navy also has offered more flexibility in its parental leave policy by allowing whoever the primary caregiv-er is to take six weeks off even if it’s not the birth parent. It also increased time off for the secondary caregiver from 10 days to 14.

The service “recognizes the diversity of our Navy families,” Phillips said. “As our dual-military, dual-income, same-sex and single parent families continue to grow, so must our focus on family-friendly policies.”

Bergeman said she’d like to see the Navy help more women who can’t have children by paying for in vitro fertiliza-tion.

“Right now that’s not covered,” she said. “I think that would be huge because there are a lot of women that want to have children that can’t. I’d like to see the Navy actually support that.”

Sankes-Ritland believes the Navy is on the right track. She’s especially a fan of the sabbatical program.

“I am a huge proponent of it,” she said.She talks up the program to other wom-

en sailors, especially single moms: “I al-ways let them know that there are these opportunities and resources everywhere in the Navy that you can take advantage of.”

©2019 The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, Va.)Visit The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, Va.) at pilotonline.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

MOTHERS: Trying to retain talented sailors

Lt. Cmdr. Karen Sankes-Ritland aims at a target with a .50-caliber machine gun during a live-fire exercise aboard the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush. Photo by Joe Boggio, U.S. Navy

+81 (3) 5441-9800


Anastacia What a regal name for such a regal kitty! Anastacia is a beautiful 6 year old lynx point Siamese with deep crystal blue eyes that are searching for a home! She would be best in a home on her own, so she can keep her humans all to herself!

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

AIRMAN: ProudAndora said she was nervous, at first, trying to assimilate to life

in the Air Force. Tagalog, the main national language of the Philip-pines, was her first language.

“I did not feel confident with myself, trying to get to know other people,” she said. “I didn’t know if they would understand me or be welcoming.”

Andora described how her basic training and technical school ex-periences helped her to break out of her comfort zone and become more confident.

Both Andora and Benavente said the Air Force has become their second family.

“I’ve met a lot of good people who care about and look out for one another, and want each other to succeed,” said Benavente. “It’s re-ally beautiful to see how people help one another.”

While they have proudly forged their own paths as Airmen, across the globe from where their journeys began, the desire to hold onto home is strong.

“A lot of people lose their language, their culture,” said Andora. “It’s so important to me to stay connected to it all. I want to be able to share that with my children someday.”

She said participating in activities like the Asian Pacific American Heritage Association capstone event on May 31, 2019, at the National Guard Armory on base, which will feature Asian cuisine, a fashion show, as well as a martial arts demonstration, helps her feel con-nected.

Benavente said she is proud of where she comes from and she wants to share her culture with her fellow Airmen.

“I think that is one of the best things about the Air Force,” she said. “Everyone has something unique to bring to the table, some-thing they can teach other people.”

GUAM.STRIPES.COMWHAT IS HAPPENING ON YOUR BASE ATCHECK OUT


KOLONIA, Pohnpei – Sail-ors assigned to Underwater Construction Team (UCT) 2, Construction Dive Det. Alpha, completed a recompression chamber inspection and mari-time infrastructure assessment of the Pohnpei Harbor and Kapingamarangi Atoll May 7, as part of Pacific Partnership 2019.

The assessment, which be-gan April 16, will help maintain and expand the harbor port in Pohnpei and improve naviga-tion safety in both Pohnpei and Kapingamarangi Atoll.

“We came to Pohnpei for Pacific Partnership 2019 to inspect the faces of the wharf in the Pohnpei Harbor and do multiple hydrographic sur-veys, including surveying both the harbor in Pohnpei and Kap-ingamarangi Atoll,” said Con-struction Electrician 1st Class Daniel Lehne, the project su-pervisor.

Capt. Randy Van Rossum, mission commander for Pacific Partnership 2019, spoke to the PP19 common goal of creating a safer environment for future disaster preparedness.

“I am confident that the planning and hard work we’ve invested thus far will show in

our successful collaborative ef-forts for a long-lasting impact here in Micronesia,” he said.

The UCT 2 Sailors used a single-beam hydrographic sur-vey to create a map of the dif-ferent water depths along the Pohnpei Harbor and the chan-nel in Kapingamarangi Atoll.

Lehne mentioned that the

channel in Kapingamarangi Atoll is currently not only very narrow, but also has a very dif-ficult 90-degree turn. The hard turn and the narrowness pre-vent larger vessels from tran-siting during increased sea states.

“The surveys we completed will allow us to formulate a

calculated plan using [preci-sion placement of] explosives and other dredging techniques to widen the channel, making it a much safer passage for lo-cal ferries and the boats bring-ing supplies to the atoll,” said Lehne.

The UCT 2 team also per-formed a wharf inspection at

Pohnpei Harbor using special-ized equipment to test the cur-rent thickness of the metal wall in the wharf face. The mea-surements taken will be used as a baseline measurement for future inspections to help track the deterioration of the metal on the face over time.

BY MC2 JASEN MORENO-GARCIA,CTF 75

UCT-2 dives into work in Pohnpei

U.S. Navy Construction Mechanic 2nd Class Rob Norton, assigned to Underwater Construction Team 2, conducts a level 2 wharf inspection at Pohnpei Harbor. Photo by Construction Electrician 2nd Class Philip Wall

“The surveys we completed will allow us to formulate a calculated plan using

[precision placement of ] explosives and other dredging techniques to widen the channel ”

– Daniel Lehne,

Construction Electrician 1st Class


SANTA RITA – The U.S. Coast Guard responded to another report of an aircraft part located off coast of Piti on May 19.

A 45-foot Response Boat-Medium crew from Sta-tion Apra Harbor responded and recovered the part.

Coast Guard Sector Guam command center watchstanders received a call from the Port Au-thority of Guam Police at 9:15 a.m.

Port police noticed debris about 400-yards offshore in the ocean at the beginning of the seawall in Piti. According to the crew that re-covered the part, it did not have any identifi-able numbers but was approximately 8 feet in length.

The Coast Guard has not received any reports of missing aircraft. Boaters in the area advised keeping a sharp lookout for

debris that may pose a hazard to navigation.Anyone sighting additional aircraft parts in

the water or on the beach is asked to call the FAA at 671-366-6286 or the Coast Guard at 671-355-4800. It is not recommended to recover them on one’s own due to possible hazards and for the preservation of evidence that may lead to the discovery of the origin of the aircraft.

The Guam FAA has been notified and state the part recovered by the boat crew appears to be similar and could have come from the same source as an aircraft part found in Piti on May 17 — a portion of wing known as a flap from a Boeing 747.

The FAA’s Flight Standards Division, which has jurisdiction over the matter, has been noti-fied about both incidents. According to the FAA Pacific Division, the parts came off a National Airlines flight departing Andersen Air Force Base May 11. The flight landed safely in Hono-lulu.

BY CHIEF PETTY OFFICER SARA MUIR,U.S. COAST GUARD DISTRICT 14 HAWAII PACIFIC

Coast Guard recoversaircraft parts off Guam

A Coast Guard crew from Station Apra Harbor recovers aircraft debris about 400-yards offshore on May 19. Photo by Station Apra Harbor, U.S. Coast Guard


MICRONESIATOUR.COM

Lost in a great expanse of deep blue ocean, there lies a living Eden, one of the few remaining paradises on Earth - PALAU. With untouched beauty that can only be found in this remote corner of the mighty Pacific, this oasis harbors a diverse environment and an ancient island culture, still alive in the warm and inviting people. This is a country that beckons to romantic explorers, divers, and family vacationers, urging them to experience its breathtaking wonders, to encounter its 5,000 years of tradition, and to discover the lush tropical allure of...PALAU.

Palau’s 500 tropical islands offer endless attractions across both land and sea. Visitors will find a wide variety of experiences, from the wildly adventurous to the luxuriously relaxing. Palau is home to over 1,500 species of fish and 700 types of corals - a vast marine paradise. Dive or snorkel amongst living reefs, schools of colorful fish, coral gardens, and sunken treasures. Palau’s reefs are one of the Seven Underwater Wonders of the World, including the finest wall diving in all of Micronesia. One can even have a close encounter with dolphins, swimming with these fascinating creatures in their natural habitat. Kayak through shallow lagoons, jungle canopies, and mangrove channels...keep your eyes open for the 147 species of birds that inhabit Palau of which 13 of those species are endemic to Palau. Relax and enjoy to your heart’s content the world-renowned Rock Islands that just recently have been inscribed unto the World Heritage List for UNESCO. Of course, no holiday in Palau would be complete without a tour to the famous Jellyfish Lake, home to millions of sting-less golden jellyfish, this is the only environment of its kind in the world open for visitors.

All nationalities must have a valid prior to expiration date to enter Palaumay be obtained upon entry. All visitoor onward air-tickets. Mandatory Dep$20.00 per person and Green Fee is cuperson; these taxes are payable direc

As you arrive in Palau, a flight through the clouds offers a panoramic view of the dazzling coral seas and lush green islands. The Republic of Palau is easily accessible by way of flights by the following airlines:

United Airlines with daily flight direct from Guam, and 2 flights a week direct from Manila, Philippines.Delta Air Lines with 3 flights a week direct from Narita, Japan to Palau.Asiana Airlines with 4 flights a week direct from Seoul (Incheon), Korea to Palau.Korean Air with 2 to 3 flights a week direct from Seoul (Incheon), Korea to Palau.China Airlines with 4 flights a week direct from Taipei, Republic of China (Taiwan) to Palau.Palau Airways with 3 flights a week direct from Taipei, Republic of China (Taiwan) to Palau; and 2 flights a week direct from Hong Kong to Palau.Japan Airlines with regular charter flights direct from Kansei, Japan and Narita, Japan to Palau.

Palau offers the visitors a wide variety of hotel accommodations, from full-service luxury resorts and moderately priced bungalows to economical motels and bungalows modeled on traditional architectural styles. While many of Palau’s guests prefer to stay in the town of Koror, where most resorts and motels are located, some prefer the more private and secluded bungalows of the northern and southern islands. Whether price, comfort, or lifestyle are your considerations, Palau’s natural beauty ensures a pleasant experience and memorable stay.

View Accommodations Listing:https://www.micronesiatour.com/sites/default/files/Palau%2520-%2520Accommodations%2520Listing%2520.pdf

Getting around Palau at your leisurWith Koror’s roads all paved and commiles paved the road in Babeldaob (nsightseeing and visiting cultural and sites are conveniently accessible rentPalau, Palau Helicopters offers variouincluding the rock islands.

View Transportation Listing:https://www.micronesiatour.com/sites/%2520Transportation%2520Listing_0.p

Alii! (Welcome or Hello!)

How to Get to the Palau?

Visit Palau…

Visa and EntryFormalities

How to Get Arouin the Palau?

Where to Stay in the Palau?

Guam Palau


Experience the Adventures of PalauFamous as it is credited to its diving, and as diverse as the colors

of its rich marine environment, the list of action-packed activities in Palau reveals a rainbow of color choices as well. Palau is not limited to just its glorious blue waters. The destination also offers a myriad of activities. While snorkeling is also one of Palau’s main water activities, other marine amusements include kayaking, fishing, jet-ski, sports fishing, dolphin encounters and snorkeling with millions of jellyfish at Jellyfish Lake. Recent additions to the list of activities include ZIP Lines, ATV tours, and Jungle River Boat Cruise.

There are numerous activities on land as well, such as tours to museums for more in-depth culture and historical discovery about Palau, trekking through ancient village grounds and ruins, cruise on a jungle riverboat to see crocodiles and endemic plants along

the river or visits to the local wood carving shops for a memorable souvenir. A visit to Palau is not complete

without tasting some of the local delicacies such as tapioca, mangrove crab, coconut candy even fruit bat soup.For more information, please visit: www.visit-palau.com

CulturePalau is a country rich in tradition and

culture. Today, many sites of cultural or historical importance remain intact, reminding

modern Palauans of a past long ago, while reinforcing the culture and tradition for

future generations.Despite external influences, no doubt

reflect the multifaceted aspects of Palau’s culture, even as many of its innate traits remain. Strongly representing these inherent cultural inclinations in Palau is the traditional dance. Often accompanied by chants, dances are performed mainly at ceremonies commemorative or/and special days of events.

DivingDiving is year-round in Palau. From beginners and intermediate to

expert divers, there are over 50 existing dive sites, each possessing distinct characteristics and individual personalities to appeal to everyone’s desires. Palau has been named one of the Underwater Wonders of the World. An archipelago surrounded by a fringe reef, Palau’s waters are packed with a great diversity of marine life. World War II relics randomly dot the underwater seascape with an almost perfect sense of dispersion; displaying haunting wrecks over 40 World War II Japanese seaplanes and shipwrecks that render the islands a dream for wreck diving aficionados.

SnorkelingInside the area sheltered by the Rock Islands’ tiny isles are calm

seas that afford ideal sites for snorkeling. Year-round warm water temperatures are indescribably soothing

and therapeutic, making snorkeling tours compelling. Shallow reefs reveal tropical fish and Technicolor giant clams thriving amongst a prism of corals.

SportsfishingWith water sports alone, the

opportunities are limitless. For instance, Palau has an abundance of the most

spectacular sports fishing opportunities. One can troll for game fish such as

mammoth 400-pounds blue marlin, sailfish, giant trevally, wahoo, and tuna. As a matter of fact, sport-fishing is so popular in the islands that the Palau Sports Fishing Association holds an annual fishing derby in the month of May that is open to anyone. Generous cash prizes are awarded for the biggest catches in several categories including tuna, barracuda, wahoo, and marlin, to name a few.

Jellyfish LakeAn attraction most can only dream of; this daring and

unusual phenomenon, Jellyfish Lake, departs radically from convention; for it is an enclosed body of water wherein - over the course of a millennia - resident jellyfish have completely lost their sting because they have not had to fight off predators. Instead, they spend their days in privileged leisure, pulsating gently from one side of the lake to the other while catching the sun’s rays and farming their own food supply of algae thus allowing interested adventure seekers a rare opportunity to swim amongst this truly unique water creatures.

KayakingPalau was made for kayaking. Paddle your way into any one of

hundreds of deserted bays and lagoons. With its perfectly unspoiled scenery, impeccably preserved reefs and coves, the

serenity of nature’s pure embrace and the swirling sound of your paddles breaking through

the turquoise surface and the flying birds overhead, unimpeded by the whine of a motor. Palau is probably the best place in the world for nature-loving kayakers.

Land ToursWhile Koror offers shopping and

Museums, Babeldaob is full of cultural/historic treasures, from the famous

Badrulchau, or Stone Monoliths, to ancient terraces and Stone Faces. Hear the legends

and history of these sites from a local guide and wonder about times past. Babeldaob’s terrain

transforms gracefully from steep mountains to freshwater lakes to sand dunes along the longest natural beach in Palau. Blessed with these natural as well as historic wonders, ancient stone paths carved out of the jungle centuries ago lead to fascinating remnants of old villages and ancient hillside terraces. On the islands of Peleliu and Angaur, rustic remains are found

in the scenic forests, intact after 60 years following one of the fiercest Pacific battles of WWII.

Rock Islands of PalauJust recently inscribed as a World Heritage site for UNESCO.

There have been many descriptions of the Rock Islands, including “A labyrinth of emeralds floating on a cobalt sea”. Protected by a fringe reef, the placid waters are a haven for snorkeling, swimming, fishing, kayaking, or just relaxing on the sugary white sand beaches.

ShoppingDiscover Palau’s diversity of shopping for

local handicrafts and other souvenirs.

Palau AquariumThe Palau Aquarium at the Palau International

Coral Reef Center is the best place to experience Palau’s unique marine world without even getting your feet wet. The thematic exhibits showcase outdoor pools and indoor aquarium tanks teeming with Palau’s exotic marine life.

MuseumsLearn more about Palauan culture, history, and the arts through

impressive exhibits showcased at museums in Palau. Visit the oldest museum in the Micronesian region since 1955, the Belau National Museum featuring exhibits of Palau’s culture and history. Or visit Palau’s only private museum, Etpison Museum featuring private

collections of Palauan and Micronesian artifact exhibits, history and nature, gift shop, Wyland

mural, and storyboards. In Peleliu, visit the Peleliu WWII Memorial Museum showcasing

artifacts of one of the fiercest battle in the Pacific.

DiningWhat are you craving? Search for your

favorite flavor. Palau has many different kinds of restaurants, including Japanese,

Chinese, Korean, Indian, Italian, Palauan, Mediterranean, and much more to choose

from.

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Stripes Guam is A Stars and Stripes Community Publication. This newspaper is authorized for publication by the Department of Defense for members of the military services overseas. However, the contents of Stripes Guam are unofficial, and are not to be considered as the official views of, or endorsed by, the U.S. government, including the Department of Defense or the U.S. Pacific Command. As a DOD newspaper, Stripes Guam may be distributed through official channels and use appropriated funds for distribution

to remote and isolated locations where overseas DOD personnel are located. The appearance of advertising in this publication, including inserts or supplements, does not constitute endorsement of those products by the Department of Defense or Stars and Stripes. Products or services advertised in this publication shall be made available for purchase, use, or patronage without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, marital status, physical handicap, political affiliation, or any other nonmerit factor of the purchaser, user, or patron.

The Guam Visitors Bu-reau recently announced today exciting develop-

ments for the upcoming 31st Annual Guam Micronesia Is-land Fair scheduled for May 29 – June 2, from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily, except for Sunday when the fair ends at 6 p.m. Themed “Celebrating Peace & Friend-ship in the Pacific”, GVB will welcome delegates and artisans from Rota; Federated States of Micronesia – Chuuk, Pohnpei, Kosrae and Yap; The Marshall Islands; and Palau.

The Guam delegation will be represented by cultural mas-ters and artisans through the Guam Council of Arts and Hu-manities (CAHA). CAHA has confirmed the participation of Master Ifit Carver Robert Tai-tano; Master Blacksmith Fran-cisco Lizama; Master Carver Greg Pangelinan; and Master Weaver Philip Sablan.

The Opening Ceremony is scheduled for May 29 at 6 p.m. A detailed program and event

schedule can be found on teh Guam Visitors Bureau’s web-site. GMIF 2019 is a family-friendly, free event, and all are invited to attend.

This year, GMIF 2019 will be part of a summer-long cel-ebration of peace, friendship, culture, and history through the 75th Guam Liberation fes-tivities. GMIF 2019 will kick off the Diamond Anniversary of Guam’s Liberation, themed “A Legacy of Peace and Friend-ship”, and host the fair in one of the most historic parts of our island – the Plaza de España.

“We chose the Plaza de Espa-ña for very important reasons,” said Pilar Laguaña, GVB Pres. and CEO. “The Plaza is one of the most historic landmarks on our island and bringing GMIF into the heart of our capital would encourage everyone to enjoy other historic locations in the vicinity. We also wanted to restore some of the liveliness in what was once our social center of yesteryear.”

Laguaña thanks Lt. Gov. Josh Tenorio, Honorary Co-Chair of

the 75th Guam Liberation Com-mittee, for inviting GMIF to kick off the summer calendar of Liberation celebrations, which will be centralized at the Cham-orro Village.

“We want to be sure everyone on island knows they’re invited to enjoy GMIF and Liberation festivities to their fullest. Mark your calendars and join us each day at GMIF. Let’s celebrate our island’s culture and history together all summer long,” she added.

“We ask that our tourism partners work with us to pro-vide our visitors with daily GMIF information and the schedule of events. This is a great time for us to share the culture of our region. Our visi-tors will truly enjoy this oppor-tunity to immerse themselves in the largest cultural event of the year,” Laguaña concluded.

• visitguam.com• @visitguam on Facebook,• @visitguamusa on Instagram.

THE GUAM VISITORS BUREAU

Guam Micronesia Island Fair kicks off May 29

Stomp Tip:

1) Alcohol and hiking do not mix.

2) Do not bring beverages with caffeine on hikes.

3) Bring plenty of water with you on hikes.

4) Do not hike alone and let someone know where

you are going and your return time.

5) Always carry a well stocked personal first aid kit.

6) When hiking, lots of little snacks are better than one big meal

INFORMATION PROVIDED BYGUAM BOONIE STOMPERS

Boonie Stomps Guam

May 25 Attilong Acho to Sella Bay

Difficult4 hours for 3 miles

Jun 1 Ague Cove

Medium 3 hours for 1 mile

Complete 10 Boonie Stomps

to

earn a Boonie Stomp

T

-Shirt!

We hike down the narrow, open ridge, then over the two huge black rock hills with good views the whole way. We then head over gently rolling terrain to the coastline at the head of Cetti Bay, then north to Sella Bay for swimming and snorkeling.Bring: 3 quarts water, good shoes, gloves, sun screen, insect repellent, lunch, camera, swimsuit, and snorkel gear.Special conditions: Very steep slopes, sword grass, little shade.

We descend to a beautiful isolated cove ideal for jumping, swimming, snorkeling, and possible reef walking if the water is calm. Bring: 2 quarts water, swim suit, snorkel gear, gloves, sun screen, insect repellent, lunch, and camera. Special conditions: A steep slope to ascend and a few rough rocky trail areas.

Every Saturday, Guam Boonie Stompers offers public hikes to a variety of destinations such as beaches, snorkeling sites, waterfalls, mountains, caves, latte sites, and World War II sites. We meet at 9:00 AM in the Center Court of Chamorro Village in Hagatna. The cost is $5.00 for hikers over 17. Children must be accompanied by a responsible adult. Hikers should provide their own transportation. Guam’s trails are not developed. Weather conditions can make the hikes more difficult than described. No reservations required. For more information: www.facebook.com/GuamBoonieStompersInc or call 787-4238.

Guam Boonie Stompers is a non-profit Guam corporation composed of volunteer leaders committed to leading hikes to and protecting

the unique destinations on our island.

Ague Cove


MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND: MAY 25 – MAY 28View the inspiring 3,050 flags on display at Asan Beach. The

flag display honors the 1,880 U.S. Marines, soldiers, sailors, air-men and coast guardsmen who died on Guam between 1941-1944, represented by US Flags; and the 1,170 residents of Guam who died during the war, represented by Guam flags.

MAY 25, SATURDAY: 7 a.m. at Asan Beach – “Volunteer Event – Memorial Day Flags”

Here’s your chance to make an active contribution to this year’s Memorial Day. Our annual display recognizes the thousands of Americans and Chamorros killed on Guam during World War II. Join us as a volunteer and help install our flags on the field at Asan Beach. All ages are welcome. To get involved, call 333-4050 or email [email protected]

MAY 25, SATURDAY: 6 p.m. at Asan Beach – “Lighting of Flags Ceremony”

Join us for the lighting of flags at Asan Beach. After a short cer-emony, the public will be asked to turn on each of the 3,050 flag lights. The ceremony will include a presentation of colors and a moment of silence to honor those who died on Guam during WWII and all those who died in service to our nation around the world. All ages are welcome.

MAY 29, WEDNESDAY: 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the T. Stell Newman Visitor Center – “Storytime at the National Park”

Join us for a great opportunity to introduce youth to the War in the Pacific National Historical Park and to explore park themes through story, song, and art. This program is appropriate for chil-dren age 4 and younger. For more information call 333-4050.

BY ARTAK DAVTIAN,NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

War in the PacificNational Historical Park events

GUAM.STRIPES.COMDO YOU HAVE A STORY TO SHARE? IF SO, LOG ON TO

Asan bay memorial day flag display. Photo by NPS


L ast summer, my husband and I and our two teen-age boys flew to Iceland,

then England, and then home to Virginia. For me, this was not just a vacation; it was a personal tri-umph. It was the first time I had flown across the Atlantic in al-most two decades.

In my mid 20s, I had planned a seven-week trip through Europe. But halfway across the ocean and unable to sleep, I monitored our flight path on the screen in front of me and watched as the land on both sides of the map disap-peared from view. A sickening panic gripped me as I realized that if I wanted to get off now, I couldn’t — that in case of emer-gency, our tiny icon of a plane had nowhere to land.

When I landed in London, I was leveled by tidal waves of anxiety that I didn’t understand and couldn’t shake. I was emo-tionally and physically drained, and now unable to eat as well. I barely had energy to sight-see, and spent much of the next six days on the phone talking through my unfounded despair with my bewildered parents and boyfriend back in the states. I was dead weight that my travel partners optimistically lugged around the city, for which I felt doubly guilty.

preposterous, people who ex-perience them often don’t know how to identify them and are too embarrassed to talk about them. We beat ourselves up thinking: What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just be happy? We learn to avoid triggers and make excuses.

It helped me to learn that my panic attacks, which cropped up seemingly out of nowhere after two decades of fearless travel, were probably rooted in a ge-netic predisposition coupled with a traumatic event that I hadn’t recognized as a trigger. The week before my college graduation, a stranger broke into my house in the middle of the night and at-tacked my roommate. The fact that we had been so vulnerable — that there was nothing I could to do help her, the survivor’s guilt that it didn’t happen to me — haunted me in ways that it would take me years to understand.

During pregnancies, my anxi-ety and, coincidentally, the need to travel, subsided. I wondered if it was gone for good. But the first time I tried to get on a plane without my kids, I found my panic attacks right where I’d left them, waiting for me on a Friday afternoon flight from Reagan National Airport to LaGuardia Airport in New York that was delayed on the runway. After an embarrassing moment when we pulled away from the gate and I experienced a panic attack so severe that the flight attendant asked the pilot to turn the plane around for me, I decided I was done with panic. I was sick of be-ing the problematic wife, mom, friend with anxiety — especially now that my self-imposed limita-tions would be affecting my kids’ lives, too.

I found a therapist who was able to see me during the pre-cious few hours each week when both of my kids were at pre-school. When she heard about my experience with the break-in, she suggested that my anxiety was a form of post-traumatic stress disorder, and that EMDR might help. She explained that EMDR, or eye movement desensitiza-tion and reprocessing, is a form of psychotherapy that aims to help our brains reprocess trau-matic memories by recognizing

them as past events and not present threats via a set of eye movements thought to be biologi-cally connected to the Rapid Eye Movement stage of sleep, as well as therapeutic discussion.

If this sounds kooky to you, you’re not the only one. The psychological community hasn’t wholly embraced EMDR as a valid form of treatment, but even if it didn’t cure me completely, it did help — and certainly did no harm.

It also helped me to recognize how not-alone I was — and the more open I was about my own struggle with anxiety, the less in-timidating it became. Therapist Jean Ratner, founder of the Cen-ter for Travel Anxiety in Kens-ington, Md,. says that many of the people she works with had their first panic attack while on a plane — or crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge — and so have linked the two experiences.

“They think, what if I have a panic attack on the plane and make a fool of myself? What if I’m terrified the whole trip?” Ratner says. She helps them deal with these fears and symp-toms on the ground, in everyday situations: “I design exercises for them to practice ahead of time — say, if they’re stuck in traffic or waiting in line at the grocery store — so they can figure out what techniques work for them to help calm them down in stress-ful situations.” She’ll also record calming messages and talk cli-ents through strategies that they can listen to on their flights.

A former anxious traveler her-self, Ratner knows how helpful those positive messages can be.

“I’ve gotten to the point where I can travel halfway around the world,” she says. “I’ve traveled to places like Australia and China. When I get nervous, I tell myself this: There is nothing wrong with the activity of being up in the air in this plane. What’s wrong is that it’s hard for my brain to wrap itself around the idea that it’s not unsafe.”

Steven Eskew, owner of Kent Island Express, sees this daily in his job driving

quickly points out that any sense of control is an illusion, and that not only is flying the safest form of travel, the risk of death by air travel is statistically the same as the risk of death by bathing — and that rarely do you freak out when you have to take a shower. “The desire for control is false, but ironically, when you’re look-ing for control and you start to panic, the anxiety ends up con-trolling you.”

To combat this, Hirsch em-ploys a combination of talk and exposure therapy — accompa-nying her clients into places that trigger their anxiety, then help-ing them de-escalate their fears — to help clients devise ways to deal with unexpected stress. She also works with them on accept-ing physical symptoms, such as an increased heart rate, shaking and cold sweats. “None of these symptoms is any more dangerous than when you experience them during a workout at the gym,” she says. “The key is learning how to recognize your thoughts and feelings for what they are by staying in the moment.”

But because panic attacks (and, frequently, the ensuing depression) feel shameful and

I cut my trip short and re-turned home, defeated.

At home, fear circumscribed the radius of safety around me. I forced myself to get out of the house each day but could barely get on a plane, much less leave the country. After I read a maga-zine article about someone who had panic attacks, I began to wonder if that’s what was going on with me. It was: I got a diagno-sis of panic disorder.

“Travel anxiety is very com-mon,” says psychologist Greta Hirsch. Hirsch is the clinical director of the Ross Center for Anxiety in Washington and was the first person who helped treat me after I was diagnosed. “I see people who miss family wed-dings, parents whose kids ask why they can’t go to Disney World, professionals who pass up promotions because they’re com-pletely avoiding traveling.”

Hirsch says travel anxiety comes when people give in to the anticipation of catastrophic events that never occur. It falls into two categories: claustropho-bia and fear for safety — some-times a combination of the two. Physiologically, this is often caused by an overactive amygda-la, which is the fear center of our brains and responsible for keep-ing us out of danger. Both types of anxiety stem from a perceived loss of control, although Hirsch

BY ADRIENNE WICHARD-EDDS,SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON POST

Grounded by fear

The 3 ‘R’s to good eating –

Restaurants,

Reviews & Recipes

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12-page pullout

INSIDE INFO

VOLUME 13 NO. 21

OCTOBER 13 – OCTOBER 19, 2017FREE MOC.SEPIRTS.MAUG

SUBMIT STORIES TO: [email protected]

FACEBOOK.COM/STRIPESPACIFIC

CHECK US OUT ONLINE!

A STARS AND STRIPES COMMUNITY PUBLICATION

YOUNGSTER HAS A LOVE FOR COOKINGPAGE 15

WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH ALL THOSE LAND SNAILS ON GUAM?PAGES 18-19

GUAM HIGH CAPTURES CROSS COUNTRY CHAMPIONSHIPPAGE 20

Marine park an adventure for all

VETERAN OWNED BUSINESSVETERAN OWNED BUSINESS

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mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

ul utouloooll

CHECK US OUT ONLINE!

LAND SNAILS ON GUAM?PAPP GES 18-19

GUAM HIGH CAPTURES CROSS COUNTRYRRCHAMPIONSHIPPAPP GE 20

Marinee e pp

Stripes Sports TriviaSAY MY NAME! Hockey is known as a tough guy’s sport. Playing with broken bones, missing teeth and injured organs is all part of the game. To hold the record for the most games played in the NHL, one would surely have to tough out more than a few of such injuries. The current record holder

Gordie Howe

Answer


ACROSS1 Umpire's shout5 Carnation color9 Little hooter

14 Scandinavian capital

15 Math computation

16 Poem property17 Fight site18 Essence19 Raptor's roost20 Riot-control

substance22 Camping item24 Trial partner25 Breadmaker's

need26 Powerball, e.g.29 Playground

fixture33 Industrial

mechanic37 Gardening tool38 Arrival time, for

short 3 Of an arm bone 33 Nothing more 52 Simple organism39 Oil source 4 Backscratch, than 53 Record holder?41 Naught politically 34 Anagram of 54 Like some eggs42 Jonathan Larson 5 Hemingway "mite" 55 No ___, no fuss

musical nickname 35 Pool path 56 Digging, so to 44 AARP concern 6 Tennessee's 36 Next in line? speak46 Come to light state flower 40 None too brainy 57 Male deer48 Sports complex 7 Fishing aid 43 Kind of cards 58 Give a pink slip 49 Jousting gear 8 Mexican painter 45 Bullfighter to51 Part of SSgt Frida 47 Moneygrubbing 59 Youngster55 Wrongdoing 9 Sherbet flavor 50 ____ enough... 62 Twosome58 Soft-shell clam 10 Choice word60 Pull strings? 11 Harp's cousin61 June 6, 1944 12 Mideast bigwig63 Sandwich spot 13 "Riverdale" 64 Blackjack option target viewer65 Vegas "lady" 21 Weimaraner 66 Reed section warning

member 23 Severely simple67 Water-logged 25 Part of Canis68 Oxen's harness Major69 McNally partner 27 Ancient Greek

shipDOWN 28 Fork feature

1 Special talent 30 Fit to be tried2 Wickerwork 31 Similar (to)

willow 32 Ridge on skin

The Weekly Crossword by Margie E. Burke

Copyright 2019 by The Puzzle Syndicate

Answers to Last Week’s Crossword:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16

17 18 19

20 21 22 23

24 25

26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41

42 43 44 45

46 47 48

49 50 51 52 53 54

55 56 57 58 59

60 61 62 63

64 65 66

67 68 69

T H A R S P I T E T O M EH A L E A L O H A O V A LI S L E W A T E R C R E S SS H E L F T A M H O R S E

G E E S E E L A NT R I C Y C L E A S T I RB O A T E E L Y E O M A NA W N I N T E G E R P I ER E C E N T C U T R O S E

L E A S E T A T T E R E DR U D E R E A C T

P A P A L M A D P L A I DE L E C T R O N I C A N T IE T C H A T T A R I C E DP O K E T E E N Y M E M O

Answers to Last Week’s Sudoku:

people across the Mary-land’s Bay Bridge, which spans over four miles. Es-

kew says his customers, who include airline pilots and therapists, may know that their fears are illogical but are afraid that they’ll panic on the bridge and cause an accident. He drives at least 10 to 15 people across the Bay Bridge every day, twice as many in summer months. For $35 each way, nervous bridge-crossers can meet up with Eskew and have him drive their car for them. He’ll chat with his customers affably until they’re comfortably on the other side, where a member of his staff drives him back to his office.

“The majority of people’s fear is not even the height of the bridge but the fact that it turns,” Eskew says. “People can’t see the past the crest of the bridge so they feel like they’re going to fall off — I call it ‘Christopher Columbus fear.’ Most people are fine once they’ve crested the bridge and can see the other side.”

Therapist Tom Bunn, a retired pilot who, in 1982, founded the video-based program SOAR to help people get over their fear of flying, says that this type of calming presence is exactly what anxious travelers need to help re-program their negative thinking.

“Anxious travelers have an overactive parasympathetic nervous system,” Bunn says. “They get revved up and have a hard time calming down. But what helps calm the system is

presence of someone you trust — like your best friend or a loved one who cares for you.”

Bunn tells me that if I ever get nervous on a flight, I should imagine that my best friend just walked through the door, said hello and gave me a hug. “Those three things — their face, voice and touch — will automatically start to calm you down.”

Bunn also suggests talking to the flight crew to let them know I’m a nervous traveler. (He sends clients a form letter they can hand to a flight attendant.) “You can ask to board early and visit the cockpit,” Bunn says. “Giving up control is tricky, but if you can meet the person who’s in control, that can be helpful.”

My friend Mary, a commercial airline pilot and former Navy avi-ator, likes to tell me that if I could spend one flight in the cockpit with her, I wouldn’t think twice about flying again. “Pilots are all so relaxed up there,” she assures

me. “We’re completely confident in our equipment, our skills and our crew.”

Even if there’s unexpected weather or an engine failure, she promises me it’s no big deal.

“Planes can find some-where else to land and even fly with only one en-gine,” she says. “Every nine months, all pilots go through

extensive simulator training in conditions much more dif-

ficult than would actually be en-countered.”

What us civilians know as tur-bulence, pilots call “light chop.”

“It’s just like going over bumpy water when you’re in a boat. None of us are sitting up in the cockpit thinking, ‘Oh no, here comes turbulence!’ “ she says.

After two decades, I’ve learned to expect anxiety, not fear it. If panic does start to creep in, I channel the wisdom I’ve picked up over the years to help get my-self into a calm place. I carry pre-scription medicine just in case, but I rarely use it. I continue to set goals for myself rather than avoiding the things that make me nervous: flying without my kids and letting them fly without me. My charge to myself isn’t to fly without fear but despite it.

I also celebrate my achieve-ments, anodyne as they may seem to others. Traveling re-quires me to plan feverishly, then relinquish control and be okay with whatever unfolds. I know that whatever awaits me on the other side of the plane will be worth it.

“Anxious travelers have an overactive parasympathetic nervous system.”

- Therapist Tom Bunn

FRIDAY, MAY 24, 2019Volume 6, No. 15 ©SS 2019

Soldiers compete in the first Friday Night

Fights combative tournament at

Sitman Fitness Center at Camp

Humphreys. There were 17 bouts on the evening’s fight

card. IAN VEGA-CEREZO/Courtesy

of the U.S. Army

FRIDAY NIGHTFIGHTSNew tournament at Camp Humphreys aims to promote hand-to-hand combat readiness

Page 2

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 2 F3HIJKLM

BY MATTHEW KEELER

Stars and Stripes

CAMP HUMPHREYS, South Korea — The 2nd Infantry Division has launched a Friday Night Fights tournament featur-ing progressively more difficult hand-to-hand combat to promote readiness within its formations.

The tournament, which began Friday, will bring soldiers from all major subor-dinate commands under 2nd ID to Sitman Fitness Center on Camp Humphreys each week to determine who will advance to the next round and fight to be the first Friday Night Fights champion.

“We are bringing the soldiers in because tournaments like this build their resilien-cy, their confidence in each other and their readiness,” Sgt. 1st Class Matthew Dillon, the division’s operations noncommissioned officer, told Stars and Stripes on Friday.

“If a soldier has the confidence to go out there, toe-to-toe with someone they don’t know, overcome that fear of essentially being in hand-to-hand combat with an in-dividual, it’s going to build their resilience, their self-confidence is going to grow and they will be more resilient when facing tough times out on missions,” Dillon said.

Also, the tournament gives soldiers something fun to do, he said.

Hand-to-hand combat training helps to instill courage and self-confidence, according to an Army field manual. With competence comes the understanding of controlled aggression and the ability to remain focused while under duress.

Command Sgt. Maj. Phil Barretto, 2nd ID’s highest ranking enlisted servicemem-ber, said the tournament is also a means for soldiers to relieve the stress they endure during their tour.

“It’s funny, we have had fights outside our gates, but we have been fighting our-selves,” he told Stars and Stripes. “Here is your outlet; bring it to the mat. Whoever wins, wins. You leave and shake hands.”

Thirty-four soldiers registered for the tournament debut, allowing for 17 bouts for the evening’s fight card.

“At work we are expected to act a certain way and say roger to everything,” said Spc. Matthew Murphy, of 2nd Combat Aviation Brigade. “When you’re on the mats you can express yourself and do what you’ve learned and trained for. It’s a good way to tap into energy that we can’t really release throughout a typical day.”

The tournament will advance in levels of difficulty and rules as it progresses each week. All of the rules of the tournament are in line with the U.S. Army Combatives School competition, rules and regulations.

Rounds one and two will consist of advanced combative techniques that focus on ground fighting, control and opponent submission. The third round and champi-onship round will incorporate intermedi-ate-level striking techniques.

“You may lose tonight, but come back and let’s do this again,” Barretto said. “The resiliency is to keep fighting to get back up, don’t stop because you lost. Keep fighting until you win.”[email protected]

Friday, May 24, 2019

MATTHEW KEELER/Stars and Stripes

Pfc. Frazer Taua, top, and Sgt. Daquon Jeffress, of 2nd Infantry Division, compete during the Friday Night Fights debut tournament May 10 at Camp Humphreys, South Korea.

COVER STORY

Camp Humphreys soldiers compete in hand-to-hand combat at new tournament

Friday Night Fights promotes readiness

IAN VEGA-CEREZO/Courtesy of the U.S. Army

Soldiers compete in the first Friday Night Fights combative tournament at Sitman Fitness Center at Camp Humphreys. There were 17 bouts on the evening’s fight card.

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S • F3HIJKLM PAGE 3Friday, May 24, 2019

Marines may begin move to Guam in 2024 BY MATTHEW M. BURKE

Stars and Stripes

CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — The transfer of Marines from Okinawa to Guam could begin as early as October 2024 and take 18 months to complete, accord-ing to a report by Japan’s Kyodo News service that cites a Marine Corps official on the U.S. Pacific island territory.

The Marine Corps’ Asia-Pa-cific realignment calls for 4,100 Okinawa-based Marines to be re-located to Guam along with 900 others from elsewhere around the globe.

About 2,700 more Okinawa-based Marines will be sent to Hawaii, while 800 will go to the U.S. mainland. Another 1,300 are to make up most of a 2,500-per-son rotational force in Australia.

It is unclear how many Marines will be left on Oki-nawa once the realignment is complete.

Approximately 1,700 of the Marines moving to Guam would be permanently stationed there, while about 3,300 would be rotated in and out, according to Marine officials citing the plan of record. The move had been scheduled to begin sometime between 2022 and 2026.

“The transfer of the III Marine Expeditionary Force is expected to begin during the first half of the fiscal year that begins in October 2024,” Kyodo reported , citing Marine Corps Activity Guam spokesman 1st Lt. Brett Lazaroff. “Approximately 2,400 dependents will be accompany-ing the 5,000 Marines. Guam currently hosts around 7,800 U.S. servicemembers.”

Lazaroff did not return calls or emails seeking comment by Stars and Stripes. A spokes-

woman for Headquarters Marine Corps declined to confirm spe-cifics or comment on the Kyodo report when reached last week.

“Per U.S.-Government of Japan statements, the Marine Corps is committed to com-mencing the relocation of the force by the end of the first half of the 2020’s,” headquarters spokeswoman Capt. Karoline Foote wrote in a statement to Stars and Stripes . “However, we are currently too far from the commencement of relocation to provide a specific movement timeline.”

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller, in testimony May 1 before the Senate Com-mittee on Appropriations, said it has not been decided how to move Marines from Guam to fight if war breaks out in the region.

Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii,

asked if the realignment to Guam made sense.

“The plan as it is currently designed, I think, is worthy of possibly a review,” Neller said. “That’s my personal and profes-sional opinion.”

Marine officials are “continu-ally” reviewing all of the plans “as situations develop and new information becomes available,” Foote said. “Changes to plans to relocate Marines from Okinawa to Guam would not occur without the input of the Department of Defense, INDOPACOM, US Forces Japan, the Government of Guam and our Japanese Partners.”

Plans take shapeThe Marine Corps’ realign-

ment in the Indo-Pacific was born out of massive protests following the 1995 rape of a 12-

year-old Okinawan girl by two Marines and a sailor. Locals also demanded the closure of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma due to safety concerns in a densely packed urban area and sought a smaller U.S. military presence there.

The southern island prefec-ture is home to about 30,000 U.S. troops — about half of all Ameri-can servicemembers based in Japan.

In 2006, some locals bristled when it was decided to keep Futenma’s air operations on Oki-nawa by moving them to Camp Schwab on the northern coast.

Air facilities at Schwab were supposed to be completed by 2014, the Government Account-ability Office reported, but progress has been slowed, most notably by unsuccessful court challenges by anti-base Oki-nawan governors. The project

was then pushed to 2022 or later.The goal posts were moved

again in March when III Marine Expeditionary Force Com-mander Lt. Gen. Eric Smith said another three or four years of delays could be added to prior es-timates due to the soft seabed en-countered by construction crews. Airfield construction there involves reclaiming a portion of the bay adjacent to Schwab.

U.S. bases on Okinawa are also being consolidated.

Wheels of progressConstruction has been mov-

ing along briskly on Guam. More than $500 million worth of projects have been completed, of-ficials said previously, most nota-bly at Andersen Air Force Base’s north ramp, which will host the aviation-combat element, along with its command and control and logistics support.

The first major piece of Marine Corps Base Guam — barracks for unaccompa-nied Marines — is expected to be completed in 2020, Marine officials told Stars and Stripes previously.

A $28.5 million contract for power upgrades for the new base is also expected to be completed next year.

The Guam portion of the re-alignment is slated to cost about $8.7 billion. About $3 billion is being paid for by the Japanese government.

The main area of the Fin-egayan Marine base will be named in honor of Marine Brig. Gen. Vicente “Ben” Tomas Gar-rido Blaz, the highest-ranking Chamorro to have served in the Marines, officials announced previously. [email protected]

XAVIER NAVARRO/Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force

Aircraft from the United States, Australia and Japan fly together off the coast of Guam on March 6. A Japanese news service reported the relocation of Marines in Okinawa to Guam could begin in 2024.

BY SCOTT WYLAND Stars and Stripes

The Navy ordered sailors to watch fitness test participants more closely for signs of distress and to allow do-overs for those having a “bad day” following a string of deaths during the past year including two young female recruits who collapsed during the tests.

Four sailors have died in the past year during “seemingly normal physical fitness exercise,” the Navy said in an administra-tive memo .

“One loss is too many and it is critical that every Sailor understands the risk factors for exercise-related death and the strategies to minimize those risks,” the memo stated.

New guidelines call for halting partici-pants’ physical activity when they show unusual distress or fatigue and allowing them to make up the training or test later.

Everyone who takes part in rigorous exercise also should be monitored during a 10-minute cool-down afterward, the policy states.

CPR-trained personnel with defibril-lators must be present during a Physical

Readiness Test, or PRT, and any training that involves moderate exercise must be conducted within an ambulance’s normal emergency response area, the memo mandated.

“No one should risk their life by push-ing through life-threatening conditions during a PRT,” the Navy said in the memo.

Seaman recruits Kelsey Nobles, 18, and Kierra Evans, 20, both collapsed during their final physical fitness tests at Naval Station Great Lakes in Illinois — Nobles in April and Evans in February. Both were about a week from graduating.

The Navy is investigating the causes of their deaths.

The similar circumstances in the fatali-ties raised questions for Nobles’ father, he told an Alabama TV station at the time of her death.

“For me, I’m just like, ‘what’s wrong?’ These young people are so excited about serving their country and going into the military,” Harold Nobles told WKRG News. “Are they doing enough to check them? Does physical testing need to be more in-depth?”

The Navy pointed to personal risk

factors that can cause overexertion, including:� Illness, accumulated fatigue or

dehydration.� Poor conditioning or excessive body

fat.� Underlying heart condition.� Exercise-induced asthma.� Sickle cell trait. � Poor performance on a past fitness

test.External factors, including heat, humid-

ity, high altitude and ingesting supple-ments or energy drinks with stimulants can cause further strain, the Navy said.

Three syndromes that can heighten the chance of a fatal collapse are cardiac arrest, heat stroke and exertional collapse associated with the sickle cell trait, the Navy’s memo said.

“When sailors observe an emergency during physical training, rapid recogni-tion of symptoms with a timely and accu-rate response is critical,” the memo said.

Because the sickle cell trait is more common among blacks, the Navy is advis-ing black sailors who do not know their sickle cell status to check with a medical provider to better understand their risk

factors.It also requires command fitness lead-

ers, first responders, corpsmen, recruit division commanders and supervisors to watch videos related to sickle cell aware-ness online at https://www.hprc-online.org/articles/sickle-cell-trait-awareness.

To put personal safety over test scores, commanders are encouraged to exercise a liberal “bad day PRT” policy for those who display clear signs of distress, the Navy said.

The sailor won’t fail the test for not fin-ishing it and can take it again after being examined by a medical professional, the new policy state s.

Sailors will have seven days to make up the test after getting medically cleared and must complete the test within the fitness assessment cycle, no more than 45 days after their body composition is measured.

Any sailors who fail to pass a fitness test for a second time must be screened by medical professionals for a possible medical waiver or enrollment in a fitness enhancement program, the Navy said. [email protected]: @wylandstripes

Navy calls for closer fitness monitoring following recruit deaths

MILITARY

• S T A R S A N D S T R I P E S •PAGE 4 F3HIJKLM Friday, May 24, 2019

PACIFIC

BY CARLOS M. VAZQUEZ IIStars and Stripes

CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — Master Gunnery Sgt. Michael Williams, a 25-year reservist, is the most senior enlisted Marine in his occupational field — mor-tuary affairs.

In civilian life a plant manager for a chemical company, Wil-liams, of Georgia, is one of 200 in his unit, the Personnel Retrieval and Processing Company, the only one of its kind in the Marine Corps.

“People ask me why I do it,” he told Stars and Stripes on May 8. “The price of doing war is people die, and if it were me, I would want to know that somebody is taking care of me and taking me back home to my family so they could grieve and get some closure.”

Williams recently traveled to Okinawa, Japan, to take part in a command-and-control exercise, MEFEX 19, with III Marine Expeditionary Force. Williams was there to educate sailors and Marines about the mission of mortuary affairs and brief commanders on their responsi-bilities and the support available to them, according to a Marine Corps statement last week.

Williams’ unit, part of 4th Ma-rine Logistics Group, headquar-tered in New Orleans, is based in Smyrna, Ga., and Quantico, Va. It was formed in 2003 with the intent of Marines caring for their own fallen.

There is “no harder duty, no greater honor,” he said.

Mortuary affairs personnel throughout the service branches are tasked with recovering, processing and returning home the remains of fallen servicemembers.

While deployed in 2003 and 2005, Williams and his team came in right behind the combat element headed into Kuwait and into action in Iraq.

“I feel like after 16 years of doing this, it picked me,” he said of his military specialty. “For whatever reason, it doesn’t really get in my mind.”

Strong family support and his faith play a role in helping him cope with the realities of war, which he has seen firsthand .

Williams said finding what the individual fought for helps him, but shock, sadness and a feeling of personal connection are still emotions that run through him while he’s doing his job.

“I don’t think it ever gets easy,” Williams said. “They’ve all got a different story, and you’ll eventually hear their back-story of why they joined.”

Dover Air Force Base in Dela-ware hosts the largest mortuary in the Department of Defense and is the only one in the U.S. for servicemembers, according to the Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations website.

“The goal is to get that Marine back to the family as quickly as possible,” Williams said. “It’s a 72-hour goal to get them from point of injury back to Dover.”

Prior to the Marine Corps creating the mortuary unit, many Marines were placed into mortuary affairs from various occupational roles, such as cooks or administration, leaving many without the willingness, training or mindset capable to handle the job, Williams said.

Now, only Marine reserv-ists serve in this occupational specialty .

These mortuary affairs Marines work alongside other service branches, of which the Army’s Quartermaster Corps has been the lead since before the Civil War, according to the Army’s website.

On the battlefield, the process starts with a search and recov-ery of the fallen Marine, whose remains are taken to a collec-tion point and inspected for any unexploded ordnance or hazards, Williams said.

Items recovered from the body and body markings, head

to toe, are logged and entered into a registry system that tracks individual Marine casualties until their remains are returned to their families.

“From the battlefield to home, they are always treated with the utmost respect,” said Williams. “When we pick them up, it’s feet first, just like they are walking with us.”

More intricate mortician practices, such as embalming, are not involved in processing the deceased while in theater, but detailed care is given from the moment the teams recover the remains to how they groom and prepare their uniforms for burial, he said.

Williams said he calls on all the experiences he’s gained to re-mind his co-workers in his civil-ian occupation of those who fight for freedom and their country.

“We should never forget the sacrifices made by our young men and women, and we always honor them. We honor them by finishing what they set out to accomplish, we remember them by never quitting and having the backbone and the guts to never bend to the yoke of oppression,” Williams said. “We honor them and remember them by having the courage to live free.”[email protected]: @StripesCarlos

EDWARD KNIERY/Courtesy of the U.S. Marine Corps

Marines assigned to the Personnel Retrieval and Processing Company recover fallen Marines after an attack on a military vehicle in April 2003 in Nasiriyah, Iraq.

CARLOS VAZQUEZ/Stars and Stripes

Master Gunnery Sgt. Michael Williams poses at Camp Foster, Okinawa, Japan, on May 8 .

‘ I don’t think it ever gets easy. They’ve all got a different story, and you’ll eventually hear the backstory of why they joined. ’

Master Gunnery Sgt. Michael Williamssenior enlisted Marine in mortuary affairs

‘No harder duty, no greater honor’Marines take care of their own, from the battlefield to final resting place


BY KIM GAMEL AND YOO KYONG CHANG

Stars and Stripes

SEOUL, South Korea — A rare Asiatic black bear cub was photo-graphed while crossing a stream in the Demilitarized Zone, highlighting the heavily fortified Korean border area’s role as a unique haven for wildlife.

The photo of the bear, which was captured by a motion sensor camera in October, emerged as the fate of the DMZ is in question amid efforts to improve relations between the two Koreas and persuade the North to abandon its nuclear weapons.

The 2.5-mile-wide, 155-mile-long strip of land has been large-ly a no-go zone for more than six decades due to land mines and barbed wire-lined fences in place since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice instead of a peace treaty.

Untouched by development, animals and plants have thrived with little human contact in the protected ecosystem that includes wetlands, forests, moun-tains and coastlines.

The bear is believed to have been about 8 months old, judging by its size, and most likely has parents and a sibling nearby, South Korea’s Environmental Ministry said as it released the image recently. The military, which monitors the cameras, handed over the photo in April.

The ministry also released a separate video it said was taken in 2016 showing a presumably different black bear along with other animals.

The ministry estimates that the area has an estimated 6,168 species of fauna and flora, in-cluding 102 considered endan-gered in South Korea, based on recent surveys and data gathered since 1974. Those include black-faced spoonbills, white-naped cranes, red-crowned cranes, musk deer, mountain goats and others.

The National Institute of Ecology also had 92 unmanned surveillance cameras installed in the area in 2014.

Yoo Seug-gwang, a ministry official, called the sightings “very meaningful” considering the limited information that’s available about life in the area.

“The great ecological value of the DMZ has been proven once again by the confirmation of the Asiatic black bear,” he said in a May 7 press release. “We’re planning to … prepare comprehensive measures for the systematic preservation and management of the DMZ in the future.”

Asiatic black bears, distin-guished by a white patch on their chest and known by the Latin name Ursus thibetanus, are on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list

of threatened species.They’re also considered en-

dangered in South Korea, where the population has rebounded from five in 2001 to 61 today thanks to a national recovery ef-fort, according to the ministry.

Soldiers have reported seeing the bears in the DMZ before, but the photo provides proof.

“I think this is absolutely significant because seeing is believing,” Seung-ho Lee, the South Korean-born co-founder of the New York-based conser-vationist DMZ Forum said. “We talk much, but one picture of this bear is arousing a lot of interest.”

Nature has been threatened on both sides of the border due to rapid industrialization in the post-war South and foraging for fuel and food in the North, Lee said in a telephone interview, calling the DMZ an “accidental paradise.”

The bear isn’t alone. Lee said footprints have been seen indi-cating other big mammals like tigers and leopards may be in the area.

“But people need to see the actual animal so it’s absolutely fascinating that the actual image of the black bear was captured inside the DMZ, not outside the DMZ,” he said.

Lee and others expressed con-cern that peace may be as much of a danger to the area as war, stressing the need to carefully

manage any development.The DMZ Forum has proposed

designating the eastern section of the DMZ — which is the most remote, with mountains on both sides — as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The central section could be used for sustainable ecotourism and a possible peace memorial to commemorate the thousands of soldiers from all sides who were lost there during the war.

The western section, which includes the truce village of Pan-munjom and is closest to Seoul, could be turned into a peace park, Lee said.

“The two Koreas need to coop-erate by protecting this region,” he said, while acknowledging that the fate of the DMZ is low on the government’s priority list.

President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un agreed to disarm the DMZ and turn it into a tourism mecca during their first summit on April 27, 2018.

The initiative has stalled as nuclear talks stalled and re-cent missile tests by the North threaten to revive tensions. [email protected]: @[email protected]

Courtesy of South Korea’s Ministry of Environment

This rare Asiatic black bear cub was photographed while crossing a stream in the Korean Demilitarized Zone.

Rare Asiatic black bear cub discovered in Korean DMZ

MILITARY

Mock armored battle pits Army vs. Marines BY MARTIN EGNASH

Stars and Stripes

There’s always been a fierce rivalry between soldiers and Marines. But sel-dom do they get to duke it out with armor.

About 200 soldiers from the Army’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment recently complet-ed a two-week exercise May 17 in west-ern Finland, during which they engaged in a mock armored vehicle battle against a smaller force of some 100 Marines.

Exercise Arrow began May 6 with cavalrymen fighting in their Stryker In-fantry Carrier Vehicles alongside Finnish Leopard 2 main battle tanks, against Marine M1A1 Abrams tanks and LAV-25 light armored vehicles.

The Marines, with the 4th Tank Bat-talion and 4th Light Armored Reconnais-sance Battalion, played the opposition force against the U.S. and Finnish troops.

“My team got two [vehicle] kills one day against the Marines’ LAV’s,” Staff Sgt. Zachary Brunnemer, a scout with the regiment, proudly told Stars and Stripes. But the following day, when a Marine LAV-25 took out his Stryker, one of the Marines who mock-perished the previous day jumped out of the armored vehicle to remind him that he “got us this time.”

The Army’s Strykers are significantly less armored than either of the Marine

vehicles, but they utilized their dismount-ed anti-tank weapons to get the upper hand on the Marines during parts of the exercise.

They mainly used simulated single-shot AT-4 smoothbore weapons but added some FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missiles.

One way the soldiers in their smaller Strykers successfully overcame the much more powerful Marine tanks and LAVs was to hold them off with a 30mm cannon, which the Army began using last year. Meanwhile, dismounted soldiers moved into position to take out the tanks on their flanks with shoulder-fired missiles.

“What we bring to the table, unlike the other units that are with us, is our much larger dismounted capability,” said Capt. Jimmyn Lee, a troop commander. “The Finnish units are mechanized. They’re mostly vehicle oriented, so [Finnish] tanks clashing with [Marine] tanks.”

In the final tally, the Army/Finnish team and the Marines each notched a victory against the other .

After the war games, the troops practiced live precision fires with their M-4s, 30mm autocannons and mounted machine guns . [email protected]: @Marty_Stripes

SCOTT JENKINS/Courtesy of the U.S. Marine Corps

Lance Cpl. Zackary Long, a tank crewman with 2nd Tank Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, guides a M1A1 Abrams tank during exercise Arrow 2019 at Niinisalo Garrison, Finland .


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© Stars and Stripes, 2019

BY MATTHEW M. BURKEAND AYA ICHIHASHI

Stars and Stripes

CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — Residents of a town near Kadena Air Base are being told to stay away from untreated spring water after high levels of a banned pollutant were detected last year.

High concentrations of perflu-orooctanesulfonic acid, or PFOS, and perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, were found during two underground water surveys in June and July, according to an assessment released April 26 by the Okinawa Prefectural Enterprise Bureau, administra-tors of the island’s water supply and quality.

“We talked to the neighbor-hood assemblies to tell their district people not to drink the water in these areas,” a Kadena town spokesman told Stars and Stripes . “In these spots, there are animals, like small fish, and local kids play in the water. We have asked the prefectural gov-ernment to do further research to determine where these chemi-cals are coming from, as well as study the effect on crops as there is a farming area nearby.”

The spokesman discussed mat-ters related to pollution on the Japanese customary condition of anonymity.

PFOS and PFOA are synthetic, fully fluorinated organic acids that are virtually the same, though their concentrations differ depending on the product, Okinawan officials previously told Stars and Stripes. They are found in firefighting foam, aircraft grease, water-repell ent materials and fluorine chemi-cals. They have been known to cause tumors, increases in body and organ weight and death in animals.

U.S. military officials in Japan say the source of the PFOS and PFOA pollution on Okinawa is not necessarily U.S. military facilities. They have also begun phasing out old aircraft firefight-ing foam with one featuring a new formulation.

Japan has no guidelines on how much of the acids are safe, but health advisories in the United States are issued for drinking water at levels of 0.07 micrograms per liter and above. Their manufacture and impor-tation have been prohibited in Japan since 2010.

Expanded testingEnterprise bureau officials

on Okinawa periodically test for the pollutants at two sites not far from Kadena Air Base. Both are intake pumps for the Hija and Nagata rivers and are approxi-mately a half-mile from the fence line, officials said.

However, in summer 2018 they expanded their testing to 19 sites surrounding the intake pumps because of past high levels. Some of the sites are about a half-mile from the fence line, while others are closer.

Of the 19 spots tested, 13 exceeded safe U.S. drinking water standards, the Enterprise Bureau report states. Five sites exceeded the capacity of the bureau’s testing equipment, which was designed to accurately test up to 1 microgram per liter for PFOS or PFOA.

On June 26, 2018, Yara Shiriga’s PFOS level was 1.766 micrograms, Yara Ubuga’s was 2.821 and the lower Hija River pump intake area’s was 2.145. All of those sites are in Kadena .

A month later, they were 1.673, 3.128 and 1.337, respectively.

High levels of PFOS were also detected at Yara Hijaga, which was at 3.085 on June 11 and 2.901 on June 26.

Prefectural officials have been reporting high levels of these pollutant compounds around U.S. military bases on the island for years. In response to the most recent tests, signs were posted to ensure locals stay away.

Drinking water on and off base is considered safe, a bureau spokesman added. The water — supplied to Kadena and the surrounding area by the Chatan Water Treatment Plant — aver-ages 0.029 micrograms of PFOS

and PFOA, collectively, per liter after being treated, though it has been clocked as high as 0.063.

The plant also provides water to Okinawa City, Ginowan, Ura-soe, Naha, Chatan, Kitanakagu-suku and Nakagusuku.

The 2018 average for water treatment plants in Ishikawa, Nago and Nishihara were all less than 0.01 micrograms per liter. Those treatment plants are in southern, central and northern Okinawa and are not near any military air bases.

Placing blameOkinawan officials said they

believe the pollution is coming from Kadena Air Base; however, they cannot be sure because they don’t have base access.

“It is pretty certain that Kadena Air Base is causing the

high PFOS by using firefight-ing foam containing PFOS at the flight line; however, we haven’t been able to investigate on their side to make a definitive determination,” the Enterprise Bureau spokesman said. We “asked Okinawa Defense Bureau to demand Kadena stop using the firefighting foam containing PFOS and disclose the record of usage in January 2016.”

Bureau officials said they were told in February 2016 the foam would be replaced with one not containing the pollutants.

There have been similar issues reported at nearby Marine Corps Air Station Futenma. Seven sites exceeded healthy U.S. drinking water standards in prefectural testing over the winter, an Oki-nawa prefectural government spokesman said Tuesday.

“High PFOS levels keep being detected in wells below the Futenma flight line,” the spokes-man said. “We can’t go onto the base to test or investigate, but the probability is pretty high that it comes from (aircraft) firefight-ing foam. We have asked Futen-ma to give us details on usage of the [foam], but we haven’t had any luck.”

During a lengthy interview with United States Forces Japan officials on the topic between January and March, spokesman Marine Capt. Michael Hopkins said the pollution could have

come from a variety of sources. He also said Japanese govern-

ment officials have been allowed to investigate on Kadena Air Base per established bilateral agreements, and that they agree with this assessment.

“It would be inappropriate to speculate where the presence of PFOS and PFOA in off-base waterways originated,” Hop-kins wrote to Stars and Stripes in January. “The U.S. works diligently to comply with the Japan Environmental Governing Standards and Department of Defense instructions. The U.S. is and will continue to work with the government of Japan in a methodical and tiered approach on the issue.”

Kadena currently has the com-pounds in one active foam fire-suppression system, scheduled to be replaced in the near future, and two deactivated systems, which cannot be used, Hopkins said in March.

“Industry standard practice is for the [foam] concentrate to remain in the fire-suppression system for extended periods,” he said. “The government of Japan recognizes the continued use of firefighting foam containing PFOS as change-out takes time.”

The air base is transitioning to an aircraft firefighting foam that is PFOS-free and contains only trace amounts of PFOA, Hopkins said. Foam containing the pollut-ants has already been “swapped out” of the air base’s emergency vehicles.

The Marine Corps will be phasing out the foam over the next “several years,” Hopkins said. Starting in March 2016, water has been used in all fire-fighting training at [email protected]@stripes.com

CARLOS VAZQUEZ/Stars and Stripes

A sign is posted in Kadena, Okinawa, to warn people not to drink nearby polluted spring water .

Okinawa residents near air base told not to drink water

PACIFIC

‘ We can’t go onto the base to test or investigate, but the probability is pretty high that it comes from (aircraft) firefighting foam. ’

Enterprise Bureau spokesman

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