OK - I've mentioned this previously so now I want to tell you about my recent trip to the tropical island base, Diego Garcia. It's probably best if I give you a little info about it first, copied and pasted directly from Wikipedia. In case you can't tell, I really like Wikipedia a lot. Check it out for yourself sometime. Incidentally, D-Gar (slick military abbreviation of the name), has the nickname "footprint of freedom" because it has the outline of a footprint from an aerial view. It really is the "Club Med" of the Navy/Air Force. There was a short blurb about it recently in Time magazine following the president's stopover there on his way to the Far East."Diego Garcia (7°19′S, 72°25′E) is an atoll located in the heart of the Indian Ocean, some 1,000 miles (1,600 km) south off India's and Sri Lanka's southern coast. Diego Garcia is the largest atoll by land area of the Chagos Archipelago. It is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), a British overseas territory.
Since the enforced depopulation of Diego Garcia in the years leading up to 1973, it has been used as a military base by the United States and the United Kingdom. Diego Garcia hosts one of three ground antennas (others are on Kwajalein and Ascension Island) that assist in the operation of the Global Positioning System (GPS) navigational system."
"The atoll is now covered in luxuriant tropical vegetation, with little sign left of the copra and coconut plantations that once covered it. The island is 37 miles (60 km) long, with a maximum elevation of 22 feet (7 m), and nearly encloses a lagoon some 12 miles long (19 km) and up to 5 miles (8 km) wide. Depths in the lagoon extend to 98 feet (30 m), while numerous coral heads extend toward the surface and form hazards to navigation. Shallow reefs surround the island on the ocean side as well as within the lagoon. The channel and anchorage area are dredged, while the old turning basin can also be used if its depth is sufficient for the ship."
OK, now that that's out of the way, let me tell you about my trip. We departed from NAF Atsugi on a NALO flight at around 0930 last Tuesday, 13 Nov. The flight was in two legs, both going and returning. First leg was from here to Bangkok, Thailand (where the plane was refueled), then from there to D-Gar. Each leg took 6 to 7 hours, so the entire trip took about 13 hours - just like flying to the states. A real ass-burner of a trip! We spent almost 2 days there, where I mainly just gave 3 hours of CE Endodontic lectures and also took in a deep sea fishing trip out on the Indian Ocean. What an experience of a lifetime! I went with the Yokosuka base veterinarian and his assistant on a small 20foot boat manned by a crew of two. We reeled in over a dozen fish, half of which were yellowfin tuna ("hamachi" in Japanese). I've never had that thrilling experience of reeling fish of that size (about 20-25 pounds) from the fixed chair on the back of the boat! It was incredible! We gave all of the fish, except one tuna, to the two crewmen, who were totally stoked! We had our one tuna cleaned at the dock, then cooked up at a local all-hands U.S./British servicemens' club for dinner that night. It was so damn good! And it fed about 5 people, with leftover meat that we had to give away!! I only regret that we didn't get to eat any of it raw at the dock (sashimi-style, with a little soy and wasabi), especially the fatty belly meat (o-toro) which is a delicacy here in Japan (and very expensive!). We departed D-Gar around 0400 on Friday and I didn't reach home until about 2330 that night - a long-ass journey! It rained hard, torrential, monsoon-like rains almost our entire time in D-Gar, but it was well worth going! I would have taken a lot more photos, but I didn't want to ruin our camera in the rain. I think it would be a decent place to be stationed for a year as a single person. There are only about 300-350 active duty people to take care of there for two dentists, along with a handful of civilian merchant mariners. The rest of the population consists of about 1,700-1,800 Philippino and Mauritian contractors which provide a whole array of support services to the base there, including manning the Officers' Club, which was the nicest I've seen yet in the Navy (located right on the northern tip of the western arm of the atoll, overlooking the ocean and lagoon). The contractors actually have their own dentist also, which is nice. Anyway, the trip was great, and that now concludes my trifecta of boondoggles before I separate from the Navy. My next post will be about our visit to the John Lennon Museum up in Saitama last weekend. Later suckas!!
1 comment:
Glad you liked the fish. I notice you didn't say much about the Chagossians...
http://www.newstatesman.com/200711200001
New Statesman
World Affairs
Don't mention the Chagossians
Sean Carey
Published 20 November 2007
A resolution to the long-running British injustice to the Chagos islanders could have signalled a switch in UK foreign policy
The dawn of the Brown premiership could have heralded a shift in British foreign policy by resolving the long-running injustice to the Chagos Islanders.
It is, after all, more than 40 years since these people were evicted from their Indian Ocean home by the UK so the Americans could build an airbase.
Such a move would have had the additional advantage of introducing some political distance between London and Washington.
It might even have gone some way to revitalising Brand Britain which has undoubtedly suffered badly - both inside and outside the country - because of Iraq.
But it has now become obvious that even with the selection of left-leaning, senior figures like David Miliband and Mark Malloch Brown at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office it is, for all practical purposes, business as usual.
Gordon Brown, unlike his predecessor Tony Blair, may not always be on the phone to George W Bush but it is clear that he is still a staunch supporter of the "special relationship".
Indeed, in his Mansion House speech on foreign affairs, the British Prime Minister declared that he regarded America as the UK’s most important ally in re-energising international institutions like the United Nations in order to tackle a range of 21st century problems - from climate change and trade reform to nuclear proliferation, global terrorism and flu pandemics.
The Chagossian issue wasn’t mentioned in the Guildhall speech. Why would it be? One suspects that at the lofty heights of global government from where Gordon Brown aspires to operate he would think -- if he thinks about it at all -- that the exile of the Chagossians from their homeland in the Indian Ocean is all a bit unfortunate but, that when the political arithmetic is calculated, some sacrifices, preferably by the "little" people, are sometimes required to sort out the world’s "big" problems.
Maybe this is what the British Prime Minister had in mind when he used the now much commented on phrase "hard-headed internationalism" in his speech at the Guildhall.
But sometimes politicians can be a little too hard-headed. Indeed, there is something peculiarly cruel about the way the British government’s legal juggernaut has set off once more to crush the hopes of the Chagossians who have already won a series of victories in the courts allowing them the right of return to the islands of Chagos archipelago which were illegally detached from the colony of Mauritius three years before its independence in 1968 and now form part of the British Indian Ocean Territory.
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No sooner do the Chagossians achieve victory in one legal case, than the government appeals and the heavy, legal machinery once again clunks into gear. And this time the reason, as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokespeople are very keen to explain to anyone prepared to listen, is that there is an urgent need to define the defence status of all British overseas territories including Bermuda, Gibraltar and the Cayman Islands -- not just the British Indian Ocean Territory, you understand -- because of the Court of Appeal judgement in May this year which ruled that the British government had abused its power in evicting the Chagossians from their paradise islands.
All this legal manoeuvring very conveniently prevents the islanders returning to their homeland, of course.
Meanwhile, over the last few months the Americans have been busy upgrading some of the aircraft hangars at the Diego Garcia base in order to accommodate the B-2 stealth bombers -- equipped with new 30,000 lbs bunker-busting bombs -- that will relocate to the island from the Barksdale base in Missouri if President Bush decides to authorise military strikes against suspected illegal Iranian nuclear facilities.
And the legal moves undoubtedly buy the British government more time. Indeed, there must be a hope in London that as more and more of the original 2000 inhabitants of the Chagos Islands grow older or die - there are around 850 still alive, 700 in Mauritius and 150 in the Seychelles - the Chagossians’ campaign to return to their homeland will lose momentum. By and large, elderly people don’t make good campaigners and dead ones don’t campaign at all.
The Chagossians may be perceived in some quarters as small players in the great scheme of things but to ignore their legitimate plea to return to the archipelago after so many victories undermines the legal process -- its spirit if not the technical aspects, anyway -- and is immensely damaging to the UK’s image abroad.
This argument was powerfully put by David Snoxell, the former British High Commissioner to Mauritius, 2004-06, in a letter to The Times three days before the government made its announcement on November 6 declaring that it was going ahead with its decision to appeal to the House of Lords to seek clarification about the status of its overseas territories.
"Apart from the legal costs, which have to be funded by post closures in Africa, the UK's reputation for defence of human rights and basic freedoms is brought into question," he wrote. "For the British government to be pursuing a case that denies the Chagossian community its fundamental right to return to its homeland, a right that has been restored by our courts at each level over the past seven years, puts us on par with those countries we condemn for lesser human rights violations."
Olivier Bancoult, the leader of the Chagossian exiles in Mauritius, takes a similar line. "Why is the British government always lecturing the rest of the world about human rights when it ignores the human rights of the Chagossian people? We have already won twice in the High Court and again in the Court of Appeal so why do we now have to go to the House of Lords and waste even more of the British taxpayers’ money?” he asks.
These are simple questions which do not require the sophisticated legal responses that will no doubt be delivered by the Law Lords next summer. In the meantime, perhaps Gordon Brown or his ministers David Miliband and Lord Malloch Brown might like to answer them.
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