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Misawa Air Base

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Aerial photo of Security Hill
American and Japanese air traffic controllers work together in Misawa's busy control tower.
Miss Veedol Marker

Misawa Air Base (三沢飛行場, Misawa Hikōjō) (IATA: MIS, ICAO: RJSM) is a United States air base located on the northeastern shores of Honshū, in the city of Misawa in Aomori Prefecture, in the Tōhoku Region of Japan. The base is home to 5,200 US military personnel, as well as 350 US civilian employees and 900 Japanese national employees. Misawa is the only combined, joint service installation in the western Pacific. It houses all four US military services (Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines) as well as the Japan Air Self Defense Force.

Misawa also has scheduled civilian flights operated by Japan Airlines to Tokyo International Airport (Haneda), Osaka International Airport (Itami) and New Chitose Airport, making it one of the few joint civilian-military airports in the U.S. defense grid.

The Misawa Passive Radio Frequency space surveillance site is used for tracking satellites using the signals they transmit. It also provides coverage of geosynchronous satellites using the Deep Space Tracking System (DSTS). It is one of the largest ECHELON ground stations.

History

What is now called Misawa Air Base has been used by the military since the Meiji period, when it was used as a cavalry training center for the Imperial Army.

Misawa was the take-off site of the world’s first non-stop trans-Pacific flight in 1931. Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon took off from Misawa on the “Miss Veedol” and landing 41 hours later in Wenatchee, Washington – successfully crossing the Pacific Ocean non-stop.

The Imperial Army transformed Misawa into an air base in 1938 when it was used as a base for long-range bombers. The base was taken over by the Imperial Navy Air Corps in 1942 and the base's mission changed to research and development. In 1944, facilities were built for Kamikaze Special Attack forces. At the end of World War II, U. S. fighters and bombers all but destroyed the base. Nearby Lake Ogawara was reportedly one of the lakes used by the Imperial Japanese Navy to practice for the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in December, 1941. The lake was reportedly used because it somewhat resembled Pearl Harbor, and its shallow depth made it an ideal place to practice torpedo attacks.

The American occupation of Misawa began in September 1945. Later, Army engineers restored the base for future use by the United States Army Air Forces. During the Korean War and Vietnam War Misawa supported fighter missions. The base was the launching point for clandestine surveillance overflights into China and the USSR during the 1950s.

Misawa's fighters departed in 1972. In 1983 it was a major deployment site for rescue and recovery operations, following the downing of a Korean Airlines 747. On July 4, 1985, fighters returned to Misawa.

Near the 1995 new year, Misawa experienced two earthquakes--7.5 and 6.9 on the Richter scale at the epicenter off the coast of Hachinohe. On September 25, 2003 a magnitude 8.3 earthquake occurred off the east coast of Hokkaidō which was strongly felt in Misawa and all of Aomori Prefecture. Damage to Misawa Air Base was limited to burst water mains, cosmetic cracks in walls and personal property damage. There were no reports of damage to the base runway. This was the strongest earthquake reported by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) for 2003.

Role in maintaining the US nuclear arsenal

Misawa air base has been used to deploy nuclear-capable weaponry. This was tied to situation by the United States of arms which were nuclear-enabled on other outlying Japanese islands, as documented by Robert S. Norris, William M. Arkin, and William Burr writing for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in early 2000. [1] [2] Whether the site is currently used for this purpose is unknown, as great secrecy surrounds the United States' siting of nuclear arms bases.

"There were nuclear weapons on Chichi Jima and Iwo Jima, an enormous and varied nuclear arsenal on Okinawa, nuclear bombs (sans their fissile cores) stored on the mainland at Misawa and Itazuki airbases (and possibly at Atsugi, Iwakuni, Johnson, and Komaki airbases as well), and nuclear-armed U.S. Navy ships stationed in Sasebo and Yokosuka."

"It is true that Chichi Jima, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa were under U.S. occupation, that the bombs stored on the mainland lacked their plutonium and/ or uranium cores, and that the nuclear-armed ships were a legal inch away from Japanese soil. All in all, this elaborate strategem maintained the technicality that the United States had no nuclear weapons 'in Japan.'"

Education

The Department of Defense operates several schools that serve the children of the soldiers stationed at the base [3].

Higher educational opportunities for those in the military and working for the Department of Defense, as well as for family members at Misawa are available through several contracted academic institutions. For example: [4]

  • The Asian Division of University of Maryland University College (UMUC)

See also

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