MARINE CORPS AIR STATION IWAKUNI, Japan -- Soldiers from the Japan Ground Self Defense Force and U.S. forces concluded Exercise Active Shield VII, Jan. 18.
The exercise, Jan. 16-18, included the JGSDF’s 46th Infantry Regiment, 13th Brigade, U.S. Army 83rd Ordnance Battalion from Kawakami, Japan, and Marines from the Provost Marshal’s Office here.
“For us to truly function as a base cluster, it requires that we as Marines, U.S. Army, are not only able to work together in a joint environment, but also to combine ourselves with the JGSDF,” said Maj. Christopher W. Bushek, provost marshal.
The Guard and Protect Agreement mandates that in a real world contingency JGSDF will operate with U.S. Forces and provide military security for U.S. military facilities in case of a high alert. Because of the agreement, JGSDF and U.S. Forces train together in Exercise Active Shield.
During the exercise, the Marines conducted mass casualty drills, ship boarding and hostage negotiation scenarios, among others. Because Exercise Active Shield has been conducted twice a year for the past few years, the obvious language barrier was not a problem during the scenarios, according to Bushek.
“When I first got here three years ago, the language barrier was a prevalent thing,” said Bushek. “We have been training with the Japanese for the past three years. We know each other so well now that we can read each other’s body language, habits and tones.”
“At first (three years ago), everyone was really afraid of making a mistake in front of the other person. But once we got to know each other, people started to do what they were actually supposed to do and able to make mistakes. We knew each other well enough to be able to learn from mistakes, as opposed to feeling embarrassed about it.”
This was the first Active Shield where communication and command posts were setup and run simultaneously between every installation. It has never been done before, Bushek said.
“We ran it for three days, never lost communication, and had minimal confusion,” added Bushek.
According to Bushek, overall the training was a success. They were able to architect the communication network throughout each base and train in scenarios smoothly with the JGSDF.
“It was the biggest and most complicated Active Shield we have done so far,” said Bushek. “It actually ended up feeling like the least complicated with one of the best outcomes we have had so far.”