[C320-list] Japan

[Stord at aol.com]

ilove2sail,
Interesting rules.   Welcome to leadership by bureaucracy (or  those who want 
to get promoted).  I spent over 20 years in the  USAF.  It did the same 
thing.  Instead of just punishing  those who overstep the rules/laws, they wrote 
rules that restricted  everyone in order to prevent a future occurrence of 
anything that may be  problematic.  It made it look like they were being proactive 
in preventing  problems.
 
Thank you for serving, in spite of some of the rules you must abide  by.
Steve
 
In a message dated 1/3/2008 6:10:57 PM Eastern Standard Time,  
ilove2sail at verizon.net writes:

Adam,  what do you do in the Navy? (I mean besides go sailing) 
GET YOUR LIBERTY  PLAN READY.

Kitty Hawk sailors chafe  under liberty rules
By  Gidget Fuentes - Staff  writer
Posted : Tuesday Dec 18, 2007  17:48:15  EST

SAN  DIEGO - So you've got liberty in   Japan? First, fill out this form.
Then, get your chief's OK. And if you  want to drink, don't forget your
Liberty buddy. And remember to phone in  each day, even on your weekend   off.


Those are just some  of the rules for sailors stationed in Japan  aboard the
carrier Kitty  Hawk, at least until  the ship hands over its berth next
summer to the  George Washington before its  eventual decommissioning.


Kitty  Hawk sailors are living with some of the strictest liberty rules in
the  Navy, even when their ship is at its  home port in Yokosuka with  other
forward-deployed Naval  Forces commands.


Every  Kitty  Hawk sailor E-6 and below, and anyone planning to drink  off
base,  must have an authorized liberty buddy and a detailed  individual
liberty plan  that requires approval from his superior. Any  change to that 
plan must
be reported and approved by the first khaki in the  command chain. The 
liberty restrictions - often tightened after a spate of  off-duty and 
alcohol-related incidents involving sailors - don't always end  there, according to sailors 
an fleet spokeswomen.

Several incidents  occurred the week after Kitty Hawk returned from
Deployment Nov. 27. In  response, the command tightened the policy by
requiring departmental chiefs  or officers to reach by phone or physically 
see each of their sailors E-6 and  below every evening - even on weekends and 
regardless of marital status - to  make sure they were following approved 
liberty  plans.

The  restrictions infuriated some sailors.

"Kitty  Hawk has entered a  new phase of stupidity with its liberty plan
requirements. 100 percent  contact of every sailor by a khaki every night!"
an unidentified sailor  wrote in an e-mail to Navy Times. "The good are being
punished with the  bad."


Another Kitty  Hawk sailor, in a posting on a blog,  lamented the newest
restrictions.

"It's just sickening the way we  are treated. The biggest sting of all is
watching the 16-year-old  dependents of  other sailors walk the base freely
by  themselves."

And it's not necessarily any better for sailors on the  other Japan-based
ships.

One petty officer first class aboard the  destroyer Mustin, in an e-mail to
Navy Times relayed by another sailor,  wrote about an impromptu date with his 
wife to a local restaurant, thanks to  a  helpful friend's offer to baby-sit 
their son. But before they could  sit down to dinner and drinks that night, he 
had to go back to the ship to  fill out a  liberty plan and get his command's 
OK.

Considering his  age and rank, "[I] should not have to ask for approval to
consume a drink  in public with my  wife."

But Navy officials say the liberty rules  are needed to ensure good
relations with the local community at their   home ports or other foreign 
liberty ports.


Alarmed by some  high-profile crimes and allegations involving sailors,
officials rewrote  liberty rules in 2003,  setting new off-duty and liberty
restrictions  for junior sailors, and  instituted a system of color-coded
liberty  passes for sailors with U.S. Naval  Forces-Japan.

"Relationships  with our friends and partners can be negatively impacted by
the poor  conduct in foreign ports,"  Cmdr. Dawn Cutler, a 7th  Fleet
spokeswoman, said by telephone  Wednesday.

An off-duty  incident that gets little attention in the U.S. often   becomes
a  firestorm of controversy in Japan, officials  said.

Kitty   Hawk's recent spot checks were temporary, "since most   liberty
incidents in the past have occurred in the first few days after  a   return
from deployment," she said.

The carrier did  throttle back to require spot checks on 20 percent of
sailors E-6 and  below, Cmdr. Jensin  Sommer, a spokeswoman for Task Force 70 
aboard  Kitty  Hawk, said Friday via e-mail. Sommer said that is a normal 
fleet  requirement, noting that spot checks are at each ship  commander's
discretion.

"These spot checks are a way to re-emphasize  the point that if you want to
deviate or make a change to your   original plan, it is OK to do so, as long
as you contact the first khaki  in  your chain of command and inform him/her 
of the change," Sommer said.  "This allows the sailor the flexibility to make 
a change to enjoy his/her  liberty."

While officials laud the "flexibility" such rules provide,  sailors call
them restrictive and little more than   baby-sitting.

"In my 21 years of service in the Navy and 10 years  served under 7th fleet,
[I've] never seen [it] this bad," an unidentified  Kitty Hawk chief petty
officer wrote on a blog. "Hopefully, the   future is more promising with the
GW."

Some sailors said tight  restrictions have hurt morale.

"The ships are so paranoid about people  messing up because if they do, the
ship has to formally address the  incident,  why it happened, why they didn't
prevent it and what  they'll do to ensure it  doesn't happen again," one
sailor assigned to  a Yokosuka warship wrote to Navy  Times.

The recent crackdown in  Kitty Hawk's liberty came about the same time as
the publicized arrest of a  petty officer  second class, who allegedly 
punched a Japanese woman Dec.  2 in Yokosuka and is assigned to 7th Fleet command 
ship Blue Ridge, according  to articles in Stars  and Stripes.

The sailor who wrote the e-mail  said the Blue Ridge doesn't require its
sailors to  submit individual  liberty  plans.




----- Original Message ----
From:  "esquirecatering at rcn.com" <esquirecatering at rcn.com>
To: C320-List  <c320-list at catalina320.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 3, 2008 3:28:59  PM
Subject: Re: [C320-list] Japan

Is there anyone on the list in  Japan? The Navy might be sending me there in 
the middle of the month and I  would love to go sailing.

Adam







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