Photo By Staff Sgt. Janessa Dugan | Visitors watch as the Breitling Wingwalkers perform during the Japan Maritime...... read more read more
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IWAKUNI, Japan - The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force/Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni Friendship Day 2015 Air Show aboard MCAS Iwakuni, Japan, lasted approximately nine hours, but the planning and execution of the event was yearlong.
The first Friendship Day 2015 meeting was in July 2014, about two months after the conclusion of FD14, and the meetings continued every two months until December, when seminars provided by the International Council of Air Shows began. In February, coordination meetings between the air station and JMSDF became weekly.
“There’s a very large amount of coordination that goes into Friendship Day planning,” said Maj. Robert E. Carlson, the station operations officer. “There’s very close coordination between the airfield and Marine Corps Community Services from a marketing stand-point and also the Provost Marshall’s Office for security. It’s very important that we bring everyone together to talk to each other so that we can work out the issues because there’s always going to be something you haven’t thought of.”
With the air station undergoing constant construction due to the Defense Policy Review Initiative, an important consideration was anticipating the layout of the airfield for FD15.
“The forecast DPRI had was pretty close, you can never exactly predict construction, but it gave us a pretty good idea of what we’ll be working with,” said Carlson. “After that, we consider emergency services and where they can access the large crowd. Then from a marketing and business stand-point we think about where we’re going to put all of MCCS’s vendors and tents so that it is most profitable, because in the end the money that is earned by MCCS goes back to our station community.”
MCCS arranges all the infrastructure provided and plans everything from the roadway that leads to the areas open to the public to accounting for the number of portable toilets needed.
“Myself and about five others at MCCS coordinated all of this with the help of the MCCS maintenance team and the Marines and sailors aboard station,” said Robert Rudolph, special events coordinator with MCCS. “There are too many moving parts, we wouldn’t have been able to make this happen without all of the support we had and everyone did amazing considering it was a new location and a first for many of the events.”
Headquarters and Headquarters Squadron provided approximately 200 personnel for the event working party and considering that H&HS only has about 700 Marines, that is a dramatic source of manpower.
“That 200 man working party doesn’t include the 200 from PMO or the 75 from Aircraft Rescue Firefighting,” said Carlson.
Carlson added that it’s very impressive how the leadership here has been able to be flexible in allowing their Marines and sailors to be used for the working party and what the individual service members have done to help make this all possible.
| Date Taken: | 05.03.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 05.04.2015 19:03 |
| Story ID: | 162216 |
| Location: | IWAKUNI, YAMAGUCHI, JP |
| Web Views: | 100 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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