MARINE CORPS AIR STATION IWAKUNI, JAPAN -- More than 20 Station volunteers worked side by side with more than 300 volunteers from various local business and civic organizations within the Iwakuni community during the annual Tsuzumigaura Beach clean up effort, July 14.
The annual cleanup is designed to prepare the beach for Tsuzu's beach opening, Wednesday. The day's events got off to a clean start with an opening ceremony consisting of local community leaders thanking all the volunteers for sacrificing their time in order to give back to the community.
"We take advantage of so many resources within the community," said U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Christopher A. Valgardson, 374 Communication Squadron site chief. "Since we don't pay taxes here, this is one of the ways we can give back and contribute to the community."
Each group was assigned a small section of the 500-meter stretch of the beach and tasked with picking up all visible trash.
"We worked with one of the civic groups from the community and basically adopted a little camping area next to the beach for the day," said Valgardson, who has been a part of the beach clean up for the past two years. "We've kind of made cleaning the camping area our tradition."
The environmentally conscious volunteers collected more than 6,000 pounds of combustible trash and 220 pounds of noncombustible garbage. Not only did the community appreciate the volunteers' efforts, but the Station volunteers got the rare opportunity to work side by side with their Japanese volunteer counter parts.
"They're all really polite and very hard workers," said Seaman Dolph Lackey, Marine Aviation Logistics Squadron 12 aviation electrician technician. "I really enjoyed working with them."
When the project neared the finish, the volunteers looked at the beach and were able to see first hand how much of a difference their hard work was making.
"It looks a lot better than when we got here," said Lackey. "It was a lot of fun coming out here for the day. We got to be on the beach instead of work and we're also helping out the community."