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Thai base stays busy
as hub of relief effort
U.S. troops pitch in to receive and
distribute items to affected areas
UTAPAO, Thailand >> During the Vietnam War, B-52 bombers carried out a very different kind of mission from this Royal Thai air base near pineapple fields and tourist beach resorts on the southern Pacific coast of Thailand.
On assignment
Star-Bulletin reporter Craig Gima is traveling through Southeast Asia to report on relief efforts for people across 11 countries devastated by the Dec. 26 quake and tsunamis.
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Instead of explosives, the planes are dropping off and loading everything from high-protein biscuits from Bangladesh to canned mackerel to rain boots for tsunami-damaged areas of Indonesia and Sri Lanka.
On a humid, rainy day on the flight line, gray military transport planes are neatly lined up waiting to go to places like Banda Aceh in Sumatra, Colombo in Sri Lanka or Phuket in Thailand. About 16 flights a day -- eight in, and eight out.
As of Thursday more than 90 planes and helicopters had flown more than 3.4 million pounds of relief supplies within the affected area.
Master Sgt. Michael Jones from Travis Air Force Base in California, who helped set up the loading and unloading operation, said the kind of supplies coming through has changed, reflecting the changing needs of the relief effort.
"At first we saw a lot of human remains pouches (body bags)," he said. "Now we see more food pallets."
Jones and the other members of the Air Mobility Operations Group and the Tanker Airlift Control Element, which services the planes, got only a few hours' notice before they were on a plane on New Year's Eve.
Because they crossed the International Dateline, New Year's Day was only four hours long for the airmen coming from the United States.
Some 800 American military personnel, liaison officers from other nations and civilians, including United Nations officials, work to coordinate the largest U.S. mission here since the Vietnam War and the largest military relief effort since the Berlin Airlift.
When she first got here, Maj. Rumi Nielson-Green, a public affairs officer from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command at Hickam Air Force Base, said there was little else but the runway and a few buildings.
Now, at what is called Camp Red Horse, U.S. military planners coordinate the efforts of about 19,500 Marines, soldiers, sailors and airmen. In temporary trailers, under fluorescent lights on folding tables and chairs, they huddle over laptop computers to figure out what is needed and how to get it to there.
The roar of jets taking off interrupts the constant low rumble of diesel generators.
"It's remarkable," Nielson-Green said. "We built the infrastructure to support all the moving pieces that are needed."
Big Macs are available at the canteen here, brought in from a McDonald's off base. During off times, troops watch videos. An Internet cafe was just set up to keep in touch with home.
U.S. officials do not yet have a timetable of when Operation Unified Assistance will end. The troops here were told they would be here at least 45 days but expect that the mission will last longer.
Most say they would like to come home but that the mission is worth the effort.
"Hawaii is a paradise. This is a different kind of paradise because you get to help," said Cpl. Jared Plotts, a Marine broadcast journalist who arrived here from Camp Smith in Halawa Heights last week to file stories for the Armed Forces Network.
Airman 1st Class Lyn Yin, a St. Andrew's Priory graduate based at McChord Air Force Base near Tacoma, Wash., volunteered to be an observer on a mission here.
Yin said she was a Cambodian refugee in Thailand until her family was adopted by Pearl Harbor Lutheran Church.
"It's an opportunity to go back and help the people that helped me," she said. "It's showing the rest of the world what America is about."
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