![]() He has set up phone lists and emergency procedures with local police and other officials so languages won’t be barriers to a response to Americans in need. “I was drenched,” he said of the sweaty work on the humid summer night.įor Hunter, much of the community relations means establishing safety procedures and conveniences for the Americans. SEE BASE ON PAGE 4On one of his first days in town, he, Hunter and about 20 other workers from base helped drag a 16-ton float for a festival in Goshogawara, the biggest city about 45 minutes from base. Williams has been in the Army 16 years, and this is his first assignment without soldiers to lead and with a foreign language to negotiate. Ben Williams, the only other soldier in the unit, has picked up the role as well. “I think that’s my bigger job,” he said when weighing building relationships with local residents against his other tasks, working with the contractors and ensuring security of the radar site.įirst Sgt. He’s also become a local ambassador of sorts at festivals, parades, Japanese military ceremonies and even afternoon cookouts. Hunter, the first commander of the year-old unit, has spent much of the past year making and implementing decisions like housing location. It’s an apt example of how community relations can take on special meaning when a seaside village of 5,500 Japanese residents finds itself hosting several dozen Americans. ![]() Still, showing is better than telling, and that means building a housing complex for the Americans only a five-minute drive from the site. That hasn’t happened, he says, and occasional testing by the Americans and Japanese has found the radar does not interfere with local cell phones or harm local farming. The system is serious - it could burn a person standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, Hunter says. The radar is the AN/TPY-2, which points high-powered radio waves westward toward mainland Asia to hunt for enemy missiles headed east toward America or its allies. “It implies that you don’t think it’s safe to live around the radar.” Will Hunter, whose unit in Shariki is attached to the 94th Army Air and Missile Defense Command in Hawaii. ![]() “There were some people that told us, if you build that housing (elsewhere), it will be a public relations disaster,” said Capt.
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