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KURE PIER 6, Japan – Considering the mere 2.9 acres of land it takes up, nestled in a small inlet in Hiroshima Prefecture between a boat-building company and a Japanese submarine base, one might mistakenly think there isn’t much to Kure Pier 6.
But a closer look at the Army installation reveals a large and diverse workforce of Soldiers, civilians and local-national employees carrying out a critical, geographically dispersed mission.
The mission of the 10th Support Group Ammunition Depot largely revolves around the stocking, storage and transportation of a wide array of munitions at three facilities in Kure—Akizuki, Kawakami and Hiro—and a facility on Okinawa. And directly supporting that mission is U.S. Army Garrison Japan, headquartered at Camp Zama, 475 miles east of Kure, but which has a garrison element located at the small installation. In fact, the garrison and the 10th SG headquarters are in the same building.
Carlos Esmurria-Diaz, who has been the installation manager at Kure for six years, describes the garrison presence there as being a “hub to collect and disseminate information and guidance provided not only by the 10th SG, but also the garrison headquarters.”
The garrison team there works to collect data from the activities at Kure, analyze it, and “paint a picture” for the USAG Japan commander on the status and overall readiness of the installations there, he said.
The relationship between the 10th SG and the garrison is one in which the two organizations are in constant communication, with a great effort to understand each other’s needs and requirements, Esmurria-Diaz says.
“In order to get things done here … you have to be willing to establish some partnerships and be forthcoming with information,” he says. “I’ve been here through three different commanders. Each commander is different, but I think whoever comes down here to execute this job, very quickly realizes that in order to make things happen here, everyone on the raft must row together and in the same direction, and that requires communication, collaboration and teamwork.”
10th SG mission, storage facilities
Pier 6 is located in Kure City, where it has been since 1987 after moving from its previous location on the 35-square-mile Etajima Island. The depot’s history is a storied one that includes its establishment in 1950 at the former site of the Japanese Imperial Naval Academy and its move to the area of Hiro three years later. It was placed under the operational control of U.S. Army Japan and the 6th Logistical Command in 1959, followed by a handful of name changes in the 1970s and ‘80s, including the depot’s re-designation as the 83rd Ordnance Battalion in 1987. The 83rd transferred to Okinawa in 2002 and was inactivated in 2013, followed by the depot’s re-designation under its current name.
Many of the Kure facilities the 10th SG Ammunition Depot uses now were built pre-World War II and encompass 90 structures, including 15 “caves”—large, reinforced underground storage units.
R. Baxter Alexander, the Distribution Facilities and Watercraft Operations supervisor assigned to the 10th SG, oversees maintenance of the storage facilities at each location, as well as the watercraft used to transport ammunition to them. With visible eagerness and an encyclopedic knowledge, Alexander will list off arcane bits of fact and history about the structures.
The caves have undergone refurbishments in the subsequent decades, but Alexander can’t help but marvel at the immaculate construction the Japanese used when they built them in the 1930s. They are lined with watertight cedar planks in the shape of what Alexander describes as the “upside-down hull of a boat—like Noah’s Ark,” engineered as such to keep out rainwater from above and prevent it from damaging the materials stored inside.
“Anything that looks new, the darn Americans did that, OK?” Alexander says with a grin. “Anything that looks so beautiful you’d want to stain it and move your grandma in, the Japanese did back in the ‘30s. This is native cedar. The nails—all brass; they don’t corrode.”
The intent of the caves when they were first built was singular: protect the ammunition inside. The 323,000-square-foot facilities each have what Alexander likens to a “Volvo ‘crumple zone’” on the top and sides that is meant to absorb any kinetic energy from an outside blast and dissipate it.
“That’s why you have these steel doors that swing in, and if a blast happened outside, it would hopefully stop anything from coming in,” Alexander says, pointing to them. “If it doesn’t, there is a second set of steel doors there. And beyond there is a third set of doors.”
The ingenuity of the protective design of the caves is evident, but in the decades since then, they have been upgraded and reengineered to protect everything around them, as well.
“We’re going to protect the ammo, but in case it goes off, we’re also going to protect the people outside,” Alexander says.
Transporting the ammo safely
Before the ammunition is stored at Akizuki, Kawakami and Hiro, it has to be brought there by ships. Michael Crees, chief of the Area Transportation Office at Kure, said he and his team receive requests for ammunition transportation. They coordinate them through a point-to-point land transportation service known as Common-User Land Transportation, which then coordinates with organizations like local prefectural governments and police for the safe and efficient movement of ammunition throughout Japan in support of bilateral exercises and training requirements.
Crees’ office is also the oversize cargo coordinator for all services for southern Japan, minus Okinawa. The ATO manages a fleet of 50 vehicles that support both ammo and administrative operations, and also funds the maintenance for all government-owned vehicles used throughout Kure and the ammunition depots.
“When we support these larger bilateral exercises in Japan, it’s our shop doing 98 percent of the coordination for ammunition transportation to the final destination and back,” Crees says. “Basically, everything you would have in a normal installation transportation office, we’re trying to offer all of those services, just on a much smaller and much more remote scale.”
That remoteness can be a challenge, Crees says. Ideally, he says, the ammunition depot would be located closer to the headquarters of U.S. Army Japan and U.S. Army Garrison Japan.
“With that remoteness, it’s our job to figure out how to meet the customers’ needs, and how to meet the [USARJ commanding general]’s vision for bilateral exercises and demonstrations throughout the Indo-PACOM region,” Crees says.
Maintaining, surveilling the ammunition
The majority of the several tons of munitions stored at Kure’s three depots come mostly during two big deliveries at the beginning and middle of each year. Each delivery can include up to 100 different 20- or 40-foot containers. That much ordnance has to be carefully inspected and monitored on a regular basis to prevent any accidental detonation.
Mike Armour, chief of the Surveillance Division, and his team monitor the condition, shelf life and other safety-related aspects of all the ammunition and explosives that come to Kure. Armour works closely with his quality assurance specialists for ammunition surveillance, or QASAS, to ensure they closely inspect all incoming munitions for serviceability.
Armour has only been in his current position at Kure for about 15 months, but he has several years’ worth of experience as a QASAS. He has been quick to familiarize himself with the operational mission at Kure, and he is very straightforward about the importance of his team’s work. Ammunition accountability and serviceability are key to keeping everyone safe, he explained.
Armour prides himself on his team’s safety record, saying they are extremely precise and comprehensive in their inspection of munitions as they come off the ships. They also do cyclic inspections of the materials once they are stored, going to the storage facilities and taking a look at each item, box by box, to ensure the ammunition is free of any damage.
“I am in awe of the organization, and the discipline of my team, and the fact that, on a professional level, there are personnel around me who provide me with great support,” Armour says. “When something is not in line or I’ve got to get something done, there is always someone I’m able to reach out to, to try to assist me to make it happen.”
Demilitarization of ammunition
When ammunition becomes obsolete or is too old and in danger of accidental detonation, it has to be properly disposed of. This process is known as “demilitarization,” and Benjamin Cunningham and his team in the 10th SG’s Demilitarization and Maintenance Branch are responsible for that.
The process is fairly simple, Cunningham says, and uses a specialized deactivation furnace on Kawakami. Any obsolete or decommissioned materials—and this includes both live rounds and “duds” that may still have explosive or propellant residue—are run through the rotary kiln in the furnace, which can reach up to 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit.
“About halfway through the kiln, the rounds get heated, and they ‘pop,’ or explode,” Cunningham says. “Once that happens, everything comes out as ‘residue.’”
Cunningham’s team also has the task of disassembling and stripping down expendable sonar buoys that the Navy drops into the ocean to monitor submarine activity. Workers break down the buoys into their smaller zinc, steel and aluminum components, which are then processed as scrap metal.
Kenta Furukawa, who has served for eight years as a supervisory production control specialist at the Demilitarization and Maintenance Branch, estimates his team of 38 local-national employees demilitarizes around 80 tons of material per month and around 1,000 tons annually.
“We have a joint de-mil function,” Furukawa says. “We receive acceptable items from the Air Force, Navy and the Marines. We demilitarize those items and send allowable generated scrap to DLA Disposition Services [Marine Corps Air Station] Iwakuni.”
Local-national workforce
Local-national employees make up more than 90% of the workforce on Kure and at each of the ammunition depots. Michiyo Awa, the general manager for the 10th SG, oversees that workforce in support of the unit’s commander. Awa has been at Kure since 1993 and says she enjoys working with her fellow local-national employees and supporting the Soldiers and Department of the Army civilians there.
Awa says she is proud of Kure’s strong relationship with the city, mentioning things like their regular bilateral interactions with the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force and Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, and joint drills with fire departments in the local area.
The 10th SG, together with USAG Japan and other units, also supports a local orphanage multiple times per year and, pre-COVID-19, took part in the annual Kure Port Festival, one of the largest events in the city. They also host annual bilateral barbecue events. They do these things, Awa says, to show that they are in Kure to be good neighbors.
“We have to let the people here know that we are safe and we are conducting ammunition movement in a safe manner,” Awa says. “The mayor of Kure, the mayor of Etajima, they welcome us. We are small, but we are a big family.”
Because the Soldiers and DA civilians cycle in and out every few years, Awa says the local-national workforce are important because they are the continuity that helps to retain the skills and knowledge needed to ensure the continued accomplishment of the 10th SG mission.
Many of the DA civilian supervisors and section chiefs are quick to praise the professionalism and dedicated work ethic of the local-national workforce.
“The Japanese personnel [we have here] are very disciplined,” Armour says. “As a QASAS, I’ve probably enjoyed my time here more than I’ve enjoyed any other assignment, and I attribute that to the local personnel.”
Adam Negri, chief of the USAG Japan Directorate of Public Works at Kure, who has a staff of 54 personnel, says he has enjoyed familiarizing himself with Japanese work culture, and he had only positive things to say about his team.
“When you have a good team and people like coming to work, it makes it so you want to come to work every day,” Negri said. “I wish every staff I had in the U.S. was like this.”
Crees says he considered the opportunity to work with a team of all local nationals as being the thing that most attracted him to the position at ATO. He called his time there so far “very rewarding.”
“I’ve been able to learn other ways of doing things and becoming more confident in my ability to manage a great workforce,” Crees said. “The employees I have do a lot on their own, and they still get the mission done.”
Alexander summed up his experience working with local-national employees perhaps most definitively.
“They’re the best employees I’ve ever worked with in my entire life,” he says. “After 40 years of working in munitions, I thought I had seen it all. The Japanese take pride in their work. Excellence is their minimum standard. When you’re around that kind of environment, that kind of work culture, you find out very quickly that you’d better step your game up.”
| Date Taken: | 03.02.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 12.29.2022 21:46 |
| Story ID: | 436085 |
| Location: | KURE, HIROSHIMA, HIROSHIMA, JP |
| Web Views: | 284 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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