08 April 2008
Arrivals
USS George Washington (CVN-73) departed Norfolk Naval Station amid scattered rain and dense fog on 07 April, en route to its new home-port of Yokosuka, Japan. A Navy band gave the hundreds of sailors manning the rails a spirited sendoff. The Nimitz-class CVN is making history as the first nuclear-powered carrier based in Japan.
There is some baggage that goes along with that, and some social accommodations to history. It is useful to keep that as a contextual tool to look at relations between the West and Japan, and the changing face of Asia with a rising China.
En route Beijing, the Olympic Torch has been attacked three times. It is curious indeed.
The carrier will replace Kitty Hawk (CV-63), the Navy’s last conventionally powered carrier, which is due to be decommissioned later this year.
Ship’s company intelligence and information warfare personnel, will joint those Air Intelligence personnel assigned to Carrier Airwing Five, home ported at NAS Atsugi in the Forward Deployed Naval Force (FDNF).
A US Navy press release stated the advantages that the CVN brings to the forward presence mission: “Without the Kitty Hawk's need for constant refueling, the George Washington can cover greater distances through the region at higher speeds. It also will be on higher alert once it arrives in Japan as part of the Navy’s new maritime strategy. Technically, the ship could arrive one day and deploy the next.”
George Washington has been home-ported in Norfolk since its commissioning in the early 1990s. Its move leaves four carriers based at NOB Norfolk. Relations between Navy personnel assigned to Japan have recently been strained by the apparent murder of a local Yokosuka cab driver by a sailor absent without leave from the USS Cowpens (CG-63).
The American presence in Yokosuka began with the arrival of the Black Ships of Commodore Perry, which helped to spur the modernization of a closed society. The permanent presence at Yokosuka began in 1945, and has been augmented since 1973 with the forward presence of an aircraft carrier strike group, beginning with USS Midway.
The only teak wood on George Washington is a ceremonial grating on the quarterdeck. There used to be more in Yokosuka, the last good stock of it the decks of the sunken Imperial ships on the harbor.
Tom told me about that last week, and how the black market efficiently stripped the sunken official barge of Prime Minister Hideki Tojo. Tom could tell you a lot about how this all came to pass, since he was the Inspector of the Yokosuka Police, 1949-1951.
Not the American one, who has to delicately deal with the fall-out of unpleasant interactions between the sailors and the locals. He was The Man, under martial law. He took the Americans, and assigned the problems of the Japanese to his former Imperial Army detectives.
We’ll continue the adventures of the stolen teak, and the Half Chief Petty Officer, and how a war across the Straits changed everything.
Although it must be said, nearly sixty years later, some things are quite the same.
Copyright 2008 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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