Minasan Konnichi Wa (hello everyone)

Liz has asked me to update the blog before and I have always resisted, but I thought since I was here in Okinawa that I would share a little bit of what I have been doing. We got here to Okinawa in April and spent about a month and a half here on the island before we left to go north to the island of Hokkaido to the Yausubetsu Training Area. We got there and the weather was a total 180 from Okinawa. Oki is very hot and has the worst humidity I have ever felt; Hokkaido was cold, cloudy, and rainy and the sun starts to come up at around 3:30 A.M. which made it difficult to sleep past 4:30 (we were only 200 miles from Russia)

After we got to Hokkaido we started getting ready to go out into the training area to shoot. Now for those of you who don't know what I do, I'm a Field Artilleryman and shoot the M777A2 Howitzer. After spending a couple of days back at a base camp we went out into the training area and I had two of the most miserable days I have ever had out in the field. At first it was just a little chilly, but then it started raining and the wind started blowing and it got real bad real quick. It pretty much rained for the next two days and didn't let up. That night was even worse and some Marines from one of the other units went down with hypothermia. After two days of this we were told to go back to base camp and wait for the weather to pass. On our way out of the position my gun and truck got stuck in the mud and we had to dig it out but eventually we got out and made our way back to the camp.
The Marines are digging a ditch to get the giant pool of water away from the gun, because of the non-stop rain it was a useless effort but they didn't care because it kept them warm.

This was the muddy mess we were working in.

We spent the next two days at the base camp before we went back out to the field. This time the weather was a little nicer and we finally shot some bullets downrange.

Before we go any further let me give a quick run down of how artillery works, we have a 155mm howitzer (that's the circumference of the barrel which comes out to 6.1 inches) that shoots hundred pound projectiles and is towed by a 7-ton truck. The typical gun crew consists of 7-10 Marines and is run by a section chief (that's what I do).

High explosive rounds, these weigh about 98.5 Lbs each

White Phosphorous Rounds, these weigh just over a hundred pounds each

The back of the 7-ton that carries all the ammo

Me and my gun

My gun section

Three of our six guns

Video of us shooting in Yausubetsu

We were out in the field for 12 days and the weather ranged anywhere from beautiful to turn the truck on and get the heater running, but it was tolerable and we had a good time out there anyway.

The day after we got back from the field we went on a six mile hike with all our gear. It wasn't fast and the pack wasn't that heavy but we just weren't in the mood to go on this little nature walk. Myself and SSgt Hakim getting ready to hike

Us out for a six mile stroll

The next day we went to the town of Kushiro and spent the day there. It wasn't that fun or exciting because we went on a thursday afternoon adn nothing was open so that kind of sucked but you can't win them all.

A few days later we got on the plane and flew back to Okinawa. Since we have been back we have done a lot of maintenance on the gear because we found out not to long ago that our deployment has been cut short and we are going home 2 1/2 months early! So now we will be back in Hawaii on August 1st instead of mid October like we originally thought.

That's all I have for now, so sayo(o)nara (Good Bye) and doomo arigatoo gozaimasu dokusho (thank you for reading)