I've seen military blogs before. Actually, military blogs helped me decide to go into the military. First, a little background on myself and how I joined.
I thought I was pretty much destined to end up going to the small community college for my basics after high school but there was something about traveling that I found so interesting. I had wished I could skip college and start traveling the world immediately. I wanted to go to college... but I had just spent the last 13 years in school, did I really want to go for another 4-5 years right away?
I came up with a list of careers that traveled. The military was the first I came up with. I've known many people who served and they've been all over the world. But I continued my list to includes jobs like cruise ship worker, Red Cross, Peace Corps and airplane steward. Yes, it was a riduculous list but it gave me an idea. I even called the Peace Corps. John F. Kennedy had once asked, "Do not ask what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country." Well, turns out the Peace Corps doesn't just want bodies, they want bodies... with college degrees.
I decided to go to the recruiting office and talked with the Navy, Army and finally the Marine Corps. It was the military blogging community who I turned to for help with reading between the lines of what the recruiter's were saying. I had heard the stories, but my recruiter had said he would do everything in his power to make sure I got the job I wanted.
The day after my birthday I received a call from my recruiter. A man awaiting to go to boot camp was caught drinking and driving. The job I had wanted, combat correspondent, was now open. We had to jump on the oppertunity.
A combat correspondent is a military reporter. They do a mix of public affairs and journalism but they can also go on to do television and radio in a broadcasting billet (additional training required).
The next day I drove down to Lansing, Michigan with my recruiter and signed my name so many times I felt like a celebrity. It was April, I'd be going to boot camp in September.
Fast forward to the present. I've been in for nearly a year, I'm a private first class (E-2) in the Marine Corps. I recently graduated from the Defense Information School in Fort Meade, Maryland. I also receieved orders for the next two years to my number one choice duty station: Okinawa, Japan.My goal of this blog is to give my impressions of the Japan I see. I'd like this to be a photo blog of sorts so you can see Okinawa for what it is worth. I hear it is a great place to be stationed. It's the southern most state (they call it a prefecture) of Japan.
I learned from this link that the size of the island is 922 sq. mi. (2,389 sq. km.) and U.S. bases cover about 12% of the land. Acorrding to Wikipedia, Okinawa has a population of 1,318,218 as of October 1, 2000 with population density at about 224 / mi² (580 /km²). I'll tell more facts once I learn more, I'm sure.
I leave for Japan on Saturday. I fly from Detroit on a 13 hour flight to Tokyo. From there I'll fly to Okinawa.
I'll be updating ASAP and I'll try and get some pictures on here too.
Thanks for reading my first blog post and hopefully there will be many more to come.
Map thanks to these guys.The arrow points to the island of Okinawa.
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