Navy’s helicopter drone tests at expansive California base

Meet the MQ-8C Fire Scout, the latest unmanned system to reside at Point Mugu naval base and the first of its kind to be tested there.

Although windowless and gray like many plane-type drones, the Fire Scout is a helicopter, perfect for takeoffs and landings from naval ships, making the coastal base an ideal site for the Fire Scout to practice.

“It’s 36,000 square miles of controlled airspace that the Navy can test in,” said Matthew South, a senior engineer with the Navy’s Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, which is handling the Fire Scout’s testing and evaluation. “It’s a major maritime evaluation facility.”

Success with the Fire Scout under Point Mugu’s high-tech test program could potentially make the base a top choice for testing the Navy’s newest unmanned systems, those in charge of the program say.

“This is opening the door for a significant amount of unmanned systems testing of fixed wing (planes) and rotary wing (helicopters) aircraft” at Point Mugu, said Lt. Joe Collins, head of the VX-30 test squadron that is coordinating and assisting the program.

At a time when military bases need to promote their viability and compete to stay alive amid military budget cuts that threaten to close or scale them down, such niche roles could help sustain a base like Point Mugu,

In 2005, Naval Base Ventura County, which encompasses Point Mugu and the Port Hueneme base and is the county’s largest employer, lost about 400 staffers to budget cuts. The base and its supporters no doubt hope that as a top drone-testing test site, it would survive similar actions. The next round of cuts is expected as soon as 2015.

“With the Point Mugu Sea Test Range and Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division’s decades of experience with unmanned technologies, we believe that we are the logical choice for locating new projects like the Fire Scout,” said Kimberly Gearhart, public affairs officer for NBVC.

PRACTICE

The MQ-8C Fire Scout’s nickname Charlie distinguishes it from its predecessor, the MQ-8B, or Bravo. Charlie is the third and latest version of Fire Scouts the Navy has bought since the 2000s but the first to go through Point Mugu’s high-tech testing and evaluation process.

A “decent chunk” of airspace around Point Mugu, easy access to combat ships to practice on and the base’s existing infrastructure for testing drones gives it a unique advantage over other naval bases that do testing and evaluation, said South and the others involved in the program.

The 50-plus person team involved in testing and studying the Fire Scout is no small effort.

They include South’s civilian division, Collins’ squadron of helicopter pilots and test specialists and a team from the Fire Scout’s manufacturer, the Falls Church, Va.-based aerospace defense giant, Northrop Grumman Corp.

The Navy has liked Northrop Grumman’s series of Fire Scout helicopters but tasked the manufacturer to build a new version of the Bravo that flies higher, longer, faster and carries more weight.

“This will provide relief for ships’ crews, and keep a consistent tracking of targets,” said Capt. Patrick Smith, the Fire Scout program manager from Patuxent River, Md., who oversees the complete process from research and request for the aircraft to its purchase, testing and delivery.

The Charlie’s mission and use will be the same as the Bravo, he said.

The Bravo is stationed these days on guided missile frigates in the Mediterranean Sea and off the coast of Africa, Smith said. Its sophisticated sensors perform surveillance and reconnaissance and identify ships or other “high-value interests or targets” for its cameras to videotape.

“In the past, we used that capacity to support anti-pirate and anti-smuggling operations,” Smith said.

The Bravo has been tested with weapons but they haven’t been used, Smith added. The option to weaponize the Charlie will start in 2015, he said. Collins’ squadron is providing a temporary home for the Charlies, a large hangar where Northrop Grumman’s flashy banners promoting the drone cover the walls like tapestries in ancient castles.

Northrop Grumman’s pilots fly what are Charlie prototypes, but Navy helicopter pilots, such as Collins, oversee all test flights.

Juan Villasenor, a pilot with Northrop Grumman who has been flying Fire Scouts since 2006, has been taking the Charlie to near San Nicolas Island and back, testing its stability and performance while slowly taking it higher and faster with heavier and heavier loads.

“It’s pretty good,” Villasenor said, about the machine’s hovering ability. “Most pilots are impressed by it.”

When operating the Fire Scout, Villasenor and other pilots sit in a small, windowless closet of a space outside the hangar with a joystick, trackball and keyboard as their flight commands.

But they don’t really “fly” the Fire Scout, said Darryl Abling, Northrop Grumman’s flight test lead.

“They (the Fire Scouts) are completely autonomous,” Abling said. They fly under autopilot until a pilot needs to change course, he added, and then they respond to those commands.

While the Fire Scouts practice taking off, hovering, flying and landing, about 10 test engineers monitor and study “thousands of parameters,” such as pitch control and voltage, Abling said. The real-time data, sent from sensors all over the aircraft, fill 17 computer screens.

“You’ll never see that in a cockpit,” Abling said.

NEXT STEPS

As of March 12, the two Fire Scouts have flown 65 trips and spent more than 100 hours in the air, according to Abling.

But neither prototype has landed on a ship yet. They have been practicing landing and taking off on a squarish metal platform just outside the hangar that wobbles and pitches like a ship’s tumultuous surface, while small enough to mimic its landing area.

When it’s time to practice on a real ship — in April, Smith says — Point Mugu will be use a littoral combat ship stationed in San Diego.

By the summer, a 28-member maintenance and service unit will permanently move to Point Mugu to support the Fire Scout. The testing and evaluation should finish by September, Smith said.

The Navy has bought 14 Charlies and plans to eventually buy 30 for the full program, said Jamie Cosgrove, who handles public affairs for the Navy’s Unmanned Aviation and Strike Weapons division at Patuxent River.

During 2015, the MQ-4C Triton unmanned system, a high-altitude plane also made by Northrop Grumman, is scheduled to reside at Point Mugu.

Once the Fire Scout Charlies graduate from the program, Collins said his test squadron plans to have a bigger role testing future unmanned systems and is developing an operating standard for testing and evaluating unmanned systems within California.

“This is good for NBVC, in that it’s potentially going to bring jobs and more money to the base, and the community at large,” Collins said.

Original Tuskegee airman Walt Richardson dies at age 85

When Walt Richardson and his wife, Helen, were blessed with eight children, he worked multiple jobs to support them.

When he was selected to be one of the first black men to integrate the Air Force, he rose above the racism that surrounded him.

“You don’t let these things make you bitter,” he taught his children. “You use them to make you better.”

Richardson was 85 when he died early Saturday morning at his home in Fort Walton Beach. Funeral arrangements are pending.

He was one of the original Tuskegee airmen, a gifted entertainer, a recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal and a deacon at St. Mary Catholic Church.

Despite the cancer that had spread through his body, he worked right up to the end of his life, with a March 21 fall at his house triggering a rapid decline.

“He said, ‘Let me go with my boots on,” said Pat Richardson, his second oldest son. “Don’t put me in a home. Let me take it to end.”

And he did, breathing his last at 4:05 a.m., hours after his son, Henri, sang “Wind Beneath My Wings,” to him from California.

“I think all he did was he hung on until he heard everybody’s voice, and he was done,” Pat said. “Henri sang him into where he needed to go.”

His wife called him Walt, friends called him Deacon Richardson, his children called him Dad.

To Pat – his only son to follow him into the military – he was “Chief,” short for Chief Master Sergeant, the rank Richardson achieved in the Air Force.

Born and raised in Pensacola, Richardson joined the Air Force in 1949 and was stationed at Eglin Air Force Base in 1951.

He was one of 1,000 black enlisted men selected to integrate the Air Force. The men were warned that it would be the biggest fight they would face.

Richardson didn’t know he was one of the original Tuskegee airmen until Congressman Jeff Miller’s office found his name on a list a few years back.

“He knew he was something,” says Pat. “He just didn’t know what.”

When Richardson came to Eglin, he and his family were not allowed to attend squadron dinners. In fact, some members of the squadron would give Richardson money to take his wife and children somewhere else.

He was also not allowed to drink out of the water fountain. Instead, he filled up an empty Coke bottle with water when he was thirsty.

Pat remembers going to pick up his dad at work and being handed a Coca-Cola bottle full of water to drink – something Pat didn’t question. As a child, he couldn’t conceive of a world where his lips wouldn’t be allowed to touch a water fountain because he was black.

He didn’t realize it was part of the discrimination his dad faced every day.

The Richardson family stayed close over the decades even as the children grew up and moved to other states.

They had regular family conferences, using Skype and Facetime. They prayed the rosary together on Sunday mornings, using technology to bring them together.

One of Richardson’s most powerful legacies was as a father. He taught his children to pray often and well.

“Let’s say a Hail Mary on that,” he’d say. And his children learned, no matter where they were to do just that.

He taught them how to be good parents by example. He was fun, but took time to listen before guiding them to a decision.

“As a parent, you don’t get a report card,” says his son, Bill. “I made sure he understood he got an A-plus from me.”

After his fall on March 21, his health declined rapidly. In his last days, their small Fort Walton Beach home filled with people who’d been touched by Richardson.

One was a young man with a cast on his leg. He told Helen that he’d gotten in an accident and her husband had stopped to pray with him while they waited for the ambulance.

“He’s such a people person,” Helen says. “They’re attracted to him. They stop and listen. He guides them.”

Every day with her husband was an adventure, she says, one that they’d sit down at night and discuss.

“You can’t solve the problems of the world,” she says.” But we tried.”

Family photos cover the wall of the living room.

But right around the corner, Richardson’s small office is papered in religious art and quotes that he copied and taped on the wall.

A wheelchair he never allowed himself to use is parked in there, along with the walker that allowed him to work until the last days of his life.

Next to his desk is a television and a DVD player, along with multiple copies of his favorite movie, “Pretty Woman.”

He watched it hundreds of times, delighting in the story of a young woman who picks herself up and recognizes that she can be somebody.

Richardson had his own 11th commandment – one familiar to those who knew and loved him best. “Thou Shalt Not Quit,” was the rule he lived by.

And he didn’t.

“He ran a full race,” his son Bill says.

Philippine supply ship evades Chinese blockade

SECOND THOMAS SHOAL, South China Sea — A Philippine government ship slipped past a Chinese coast guard vessel Saturday and brought food and fresh troops to a marooned navy ship used as a base by Filipino troops to bolster the country's territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea.

The incident was witnessed by journalists who were invited by the Philippines military to accompany the resupply mission.

It was a rare close-up look at the tensions in the waters and the determination of all sides to press their claims. China's growing assertiveness is alarming smaller nations that have competing territorial claims and worrying the United States, which is neutral in the disputes but jockeying for influence with Beijing in the region.

About one hour away from Second Thomas Shoal, where the detachment is based, a Chinese coast guard ship marked "1141" twice crossed the bow of the smaller Philippine vessel in an attempt to stop it from proceeding. Another tailed the Filipino boat.

The Chinese radioed the Filipinos, telling them to stop. "You will take full responsibility for the consequences of your action," the voice said in English.

"This is the Republic of the Philippines," replied Philippine navy Lt. Ferdinand Gato, who was in charge of the supply mission. "We are here to provision the troops."

The marines on board the supply boat waved the "V'' for peace sign toward the Chinese vessel.

The Filipino captain maneuvered his vessel to shallow waters where the Chinese ships couldn't sail to reach the marooned vessel, BRP Sierra Madre, which has become an awkward symbol of Philippine sovereignty in the remote offshore territory.

On March 9, Chinese vessels blocked a resupply mission to the shoal, called Ayungin by the Philippines.

Philippine air force planes have airdropped life-sustaining food and water at least twice since then.

The confrontation at sea was witnessed by Associated Press journalists and more than a dozen other media members who were invited by the Philippine military to board the government vessel to show what Manila has described as "China's bullying" in the disputed waters.

As they approached the shoal, one of the marines raised the Philippine flag on the supply ship. Once inside the shoal, the marines and the crew applauded and exchanged high-fives.

Gato said he was determined to complete his supply mission despite the Chinese presence. "I will not let them stop us because our marines will starve," he said.

The supply ship carried about 10 tons of food, including rice and canned goods, and water, Gato said. The provisions were placed in sacks and transferred to the marooned ship using ropes pulled with pulleys. The two vessels were surrounded by the calm turquoise waters of the shoal.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea. The two countries were in a two-month standoff at the Scarborough Shoal to the north, which the Chinese eventually occupied after Philippine ships left the area because of a storm in 2012.

The Philippines has questioned China's claims before the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea.

Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also have claims over the territory, which is believe to be rich in oil and gas and is also a major shipping lane.

Vietnam POW Jeremiah Denton Jr. dies in Va. Beach

Jeremiah Denton Jr., who as an American prisoner of war in Vietnam made the world aware of the abuse POWs were suffering, died Friday at 89 in a Virginia Beach hospice.

He was a naval aviator based at Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach when his A6 Intruder was shot down over Vietnam in 1965. He subsequently endured seven years and seven months of confinement.

Denton was incarcerated in several prisons including the infamous Hoa Lo complex, which became known among U.S. servicemen as the Hanoi Hilton. A commander at the time, he was one of the highest-ranking American officers to be captured in Vietnam and became known for his defiant attitude toward his captors.

He wrote a book about his POW experience, "When Hell Was in Session," co-written by Ed Brandt, a former editor of The Virginian-Pilot, and published in 1975. It includes a well-known episode in which Denton, in a TV propaganda interview, spelled "torture" in Morse code by blinking.

After his release, Denton became commandant at the Armed Forces Staff College, now the Joint Forces Staff College, in Norfolk. He retired from the Navy as a rear admiral in 1977 and went into politics, serving six years as a Republican U.S. senator from his home state of Alabama in the 1980s.

An updated version of his book, published in 2009, picks up his story after his military career and details his subsequent engagement in another kind of combat: the culture war.

Always known as an uncompromising conservative, Denton was a vocal proponent of a strong military. But even more important, he came to believe, was rescuing the nation from what he regarded as a slide into moral degeneracy.

The signs were everywhere, he wrote in his book: abortion, pornography, drug abuse, premarital sex, gay marriage.

"In this world of weapons of mass destruction, yes, we could get wiped out tomorrow," he said in a 2009 interview with The Pilot.

"But I think the decline in our culture is a surer poison. Every nation that has gone the same route has disappeared within 200 years. I'm trying to draw our national attention to that."

During his captivity, God once spoke to him out loud, Denton said.

It was 1967, two years into his incarceration. He was pacing in his cell, shackled in irons, on the brink of despair. The prison was quiet except for an occasional scream from the torture room.

In his hyper-conscious state, he heard a soft voice -- authoritative, kind, well modulated -- telling him: "Say, 'Sacred heart of Jesus, I give myself to you.' "

It was a prescription for prayer, Denton said: "He meant, 'Don't sweat it. You can't control anything. Just give your thoughts, yourself, to me.' "

Denton was the recipient of numerous military decorations, including the Navy Cross.

"The valor that he and his fellow POWs displayed was deeply inspiring to our nation at the time, and it continues to inspire our brave men and women who serve today," President Barack Obama said in a statement Friday.

"He was a man of grit and character that can't be manufactured," U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said in a statement. "Vietnam's most ruthless interrogators couldn't break the iron will of this rock-ribbed Alabama native."

Denton lived in Williamsburg. He is survived by his wife of three years, Mary Belle Bordone; seven children, Jerry Denton and Bill Denton, both of Virginia Beach; Don Denton of Haverford, Pa.; Jim Denton of Washington, D.C.; Madeleine Doak of The Woodlands, Texas; Michael Denton of Richmond; and Mary Beth Hutton of Atlanta; a brother; 14 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

His first wife, Jane Maury Denton, to whom he was married 61 years, died in 2007.

Funeral arrangements are incomplete.

Military pay and pension panel hears concerns in San Diego

SAN DIEGO — The last time the military pay and retirement system saw a significant reform, Truman was president and gas cost a quarter a gallon. Since then, the demographics and culture of the military have changed dramatically, and many have proposed changes to the compensation and benefits system, but none have taken hold. Yet.

Now, an independent commission appointed by Congress is examining everything from recruitment to retirement, paychecks and housing allowance to health care, and will make recommendations early next year on how best to bring those systems into the 21st century.

First, though, the nine-member Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission is traveling the country, and talking to troops, veterans and spouses about what they want and what they don’t.

The commission was not responsible for rolling back the cost of living adjustment cap for retirees under 62, or any of the other pay-and-benefits-related proposals in the fiscal 2015 budget, said commission chairman Alphonso Maldon Jr., a former assistant secretary of defense for force management and policy. But that didn’t stop several veterans from taking the commission to task about some of Congress’ recent actions.

As a moderator passed a microphone around to some of the three dozen people in a Carlsbad hotel conference center Tuesday evening, a retired Army veteran stood to say he takes exception to statements by Rep. Paul Ryan that younger military retirees don’t live off of their military pensions.

The man said he had a very difficult time finding a job after he retired, and he bused tables while he went to night school to support himself.

Infantrymen, he said, “live a hard life, a dirty life.” But they look forward to the fact that they will have a retirement plan and health care guaranteed for life, he said, and if Congress “messes with retirement,” troops will leave.

The wife of a man who has served 39 years in the military said she also believes Congress must keep its promises to troops and their families. Young military spouses should not have to stand in line at the food bank to keep their families fed, she said, and families should be better compensated for the high costs of moving every few years.

Other active-duty and retired troops also offered suggestions for the commission to consider, including a 401(k) plan or guaranteed retirement account with matching funds, which could be used by troops who leave the military before the 20-year mark.

Still, the commission stressed, any changes in the retirement system will not affect current troops; active duty and already retired veterans are grandfathered into the current system.

On Wednesday, the commission hosted three Congressional hearing-style panel discussions at a hotel in San Diego.

One spirited discussion started with questions from commissioner and retired general Peter Chiarelli, the former vice chief of the Army.

Chiarelli said he went through a very extensive retirement physical at Walter Reed as he was leaving the Army, but when he arrived at his first VA appointment — in a city 50 miles from the city he lives in — he was told that the doctors there could not access the records of the physical and would need him to reschedule his appointment and bring in the paper copy.

“The medical records don’t talk to each other,” he said. “If you’re going to have a seamless transition, it needs to be truly seamless.”

Local VA and Navy medical representatives said the VA and military medical systems work together well in San Diego, but commissioner Christopher Carney, a former congressman, said that is not the case in other areas.

The system should just work without requiring ad hoc fixes like those here, he said.

The VA system “seems to be where we’re not keeping faith with the troops,” Carney said. “But the problem is so insidious that troops don’t even know it’s a problem.”

In another panel, military leaders agreed that retirement plans are not high on the list of concerns for recruits and young servicemembers, though they appreciate it later in their careers.

“I don’t think most people start thinking about retirement until they’re past the halfway point,” said Vice Adm. Thomas Copeman III, commander of the Navy’s surface forces. What keeps sailors in the service, he said, is job satisfaction, engaged leadership, opportunities for advancement and being able to get the training and equipment they need to do their jobs well.

However, he said, the commission should consider a retirement system that rewards troops extra pay for the time they served deployed. Right now, troops who have deployed six and seven times get the same retirement pay as those who never left the United States. An increase for time served away would reward what the military values, Copeman said.

The commission also should consider fixes to smoothe the transition from the military world to the civilian sector — for retirees and for those who leave before retirement, retirees and active-duty career counselors said.

Patricia Reily, director of the Troops to Engineers program at San Diego State University and a retired Navy officer, said she has been able to place every one of her students in paid internships and jobs after they graduate. But, she said, most are not able to get any college credit for military training in their fields because of the way the military courses are designed.

Veterans and servicemembers in other fields echoed that sentiment, saying that certifications earned in the military rarely transfer for civilian jobs.

Additionally, Reily said, the way the promotion and education system is set up now actually discourages some troops from following their passions. Servicemembers know they have a better chance at promotion if they earn a degree, so they are apt to seek out the fastest and easiest programs, rather than those that might be more useful in the long-term, she said.

And many servicemembers don’t want to stay in the same field when they leave the military, but aren’t sure what path to take, said Maurice Wilson, president of National Veterans Transition Services, which offers three-week workshops for troops transitioning out of the military.

Senior Chief Petty Officer Michael Hill, the region career counselor for Navy Region Southwest, said the military system should take a life-cycle approach, perhaps making changes at the recruiting and retaining stages so that troops are better prepared when they leave the military, whether it’s after four years or 40. Additionally, he said, troops need more transition support, even after they leave the service.

Throughout the hearings, commission members said that they are driven by a desire to improve the compensation and retirement programs, not simply to pinch pennies.

“The purpose of this commission is not driven by cost-cutting,” Maldon said. “We know how important this is to our military members and their families … we’re looking at this in the long term.”

The commission was appointed by Congress last year and held its first town hall meeting in November. Commissioners also have met with active-duty troops, spouses and servicemembers getting ready to transition out of the military, and are conducting a worldwide survey of troops and their families. The commission will submit an interim report next month and a final report by Feb. 1, 2015.

Dov Zakheim, a commissioner who served as DOD comptroller during the George W. Bush administration, said he hopes the group can find ways to update outdated programs and improve what needs improving.

“The parts that aren’t broken, we won’t mess with,” he said.

And once the report is complete, he said, “we’re going to make sure that this thing gets seen and heard” and actually considered, he said.

The commission will hold its next public hearings at Fort Benning, Ga., in April. The public can leave comments for the commission at mcrmc.gov.

Hlad.jennifer@stripes.com

Twitter: @jhlad

Stalking hogs: Army vets take tactical solutions to pesky porkers

Thick Georgia mud, courtesy of heavy rains earlier in the day, squishes and slurps against our boots as we move single-file through the night.

Retired Army 1st Sgt. Clinton Housel is on point, scanning the field ahead with a thermal spotting scope. He raises his hand, stopping the formation.

“Turn on your scopes,” he orders with a whisper.

He passes the spotting scope to retired Army Chief Warrant Officer Chris Monhoff, who pans the expansive, scrubby peanut field ahead.

“This group has mature sentry hogs on both sides of the sounder with the piglets. We’ve got to kill those sentry hogs,” Monhoff explains. “The guys on the perimeter need to take out the left and right sentries.”

A steady northwest wind in our faces protects us against the sophisticated porcine snouts 150 yards downrange, and it mitigates any slips in terms of masking subtle noises that would alert the crop-rampaging porkers to our presence.

After infiltrating another 50 yards, Monhoff quietly says, “Spread out.”

Our small squad shifts from single file to shoulder-to-shoulder. We position adjustable tripod shooting rests that we had carried like guidons on our stalk toward the hogs.

As rehearsed, we simultaneously ready our thermal scopes and make sure our hearing protection range muffs are on and working. Our Remington R-25 rifles chambered in .308 Winchester are loaded with potent 165-grain Hornady GMX cartridges.

I’m on the far left and have a lone sentry as my initial assignment. When I hit the scope’s magnifier, the thick hair along the razorback’s neck and spine stands out, even though the pig is about 100 meters distant.

“Ready,” everyone advises as we press our eyes into the scopes’ rubber cups and center crosshairs on our targets.

“Safeties off. On my count. Three, two, one …” Monhoff whispers.

At zero, the night silence erupts with gunfire and squealing hogs.

I miss. My pig turns at the last count, offering a straight-on shot at its rear, something I’m conditioned to pass up after decades of deer hunting. My pig runs toward the group but quickly reverses course, high-tailing it — literally — for a distant tree line. The next two shots plow mud behind the running hog, but after lengthening the lead to about two to three feet, my third round thumps into the boiler room. The pig tumbles to a halt.

When it’s all over and firearm safeties are re-engaged, a scan of the field shows seven dead hogs; not as many as might have been collected had the group been more tightly bunched, but altogether a good shoot. Five of seven adult hogs are dead, including all of the sentries.

A similar stalk later yields three more hogs.

By 3 a.m., the cart behind the UTV groans under the weight of more than a half ton of feral hogs.

“A Jager Pro double-digit hog-hunting experience — that’s what we offer,” Monhoff says, later explaining his belief that the hog control company offers the best hog hunting in the country.

No argument here.

Military pedigree

For decades, feral hogs have plagued Georgia, which has one of the largest populations of wild pigs in America.

Monhoff says Jager Pro Hog Control Systems hunters average about 100 two-night hunts a year, although 2014 has the company booked for 132 excursions. Last year, they killed around 3,500 hogs.

The company launched in 2006, when its founder and CEO, retired Master Sgt. Rod Pinkston, saw an opportunity to apply military tactics and thermal optics know-how to the issue of marauding wild pigs.

Pinkston retired from the Army Marksmanship Unit’s Olympic shooting team at Fort Benning, Ga., after his soldiers won two gold medals at the 2008 Olympic Games in China. The 2008 Games were the first time U.S. shooters earned four shotgun medals in the history of Olympic shooting.

During his two tours in Germany, Pinkston earned that nation’s “Jagdschein” (certified hunter) designation. He relished hunting European boars in Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic.

Pinkston and Monhoff, the company’s director of shooting operations, met in 2009.

Monhoff, a Columbus, Ga., native, was born at Benning. He retired in 2009 after 22 years of service, including a cumulative 44 months of deployments in support of three Iraq missions. As an artillery targeting officer, he made strategic decisions relative to thermal ground reconnaissance and air-to-surface strikes on enemy targets.

During his military career, he became an avid hog hunter, popping pigs in the ample swamps and backwoods of forts Stewart and Benning.

Another soldier recruited for the Jager Pro team is former Olympic shooter, U.S. National Champion and Sgt. 1st Class Lance Dement, who directs the company’s hog trapping operations.

Housel, who served in the 1st Ranger Battalion, 4th Ranger Training Battalion and 82nd Airborne Division, among other units, began hunting when he was 7. He currently holds the company record for hogs killed in one night — 24 taken by two shooters.

Hunting and trapping

Pinkston, a member of the National Wildlife Control Operators Association, also is the inventor of the MINE (Manually Initiated Nuisance Elimination) Trapping System.

Trapping is generally more successful than shooting in terms of taking out entire sounders, as herds of wild pigs are known. Traps are monitored with video gear.

Ideally, all members of the herd become comfortable coming to the enclosure for food. When Jager Pro operators are sure all hogs are in, the trap door slams shut. Dement has used the unique trap to successfully corral 33 hogs at one time.

Sometimes, exceptionally cautious old hogs refuse to enter the enclosure. In these cases, a trap operator and shooter stake out the trap. When the entire herd is accounted for, including those pigs refusing to enter the trap, the shooter takes out the trap-wary hogs with a rifle while the others are simultaneously trapped.

Hunting and trapping are complementary operations.

“We provide the gear and expertise, the guest hunters get a tactical hog-hunting experience, and the farmers get free hog-control services. It’s a great business model,” Monhoff noted — even though ultimate success means you could put yourself out of business.

Hunts are conducted much like military operations, designed to facilitate safety as much as success.

“You’ve got guys you’ve never hunted with before using unfamiliar equipment at night. Things can go wrong. Our procedures are designed to minimize any chances of that,” Monhoff said.

Winter — before fields are planted and most leftover mast crops (natural foods such as acorns, etc.) or other foods are scarce — is an excellent time for hunting and trapping. During planting season, hogs can wipe out huge sections of freshly planted peanut or cornfields, snuffling their way along rows at night and eating all of the seeds before they can germinate, Monhoff explained.

Winter, spring and fall, soon after cornfields are cut and mature peanut fields are standing, are all good times to hunt hogs, he added. Summertime, when corn stands 8 feet tall and night is sweltering hot, isn’t a good time for trapping or hunting.

“It really comes down to what time of year people want to hunt, and what conditions they want to hunt in,” Monhoff said.

The retired soldiers and their shooter clients are denting the hog population across the seven counties and nearly 250,000 acres they patrol.

Just about every field held some hogs at night several years ago, but these days, it can take a few hours of cruising and scanning with the thermal scope to locate groups of feeding hogs.

The guides invest incredible hours during the hunting season, including scouting, gear maintenance and preparation, and about eight hours a night of hunting. Working 36 hours out of a 48-hour period isn’t unusual, Monhoff said.

“We work hard to give our hunting groups the opportunity to kill 10 or more hogs a night,” he said. “Of course, all we can deliver is the opportunity. We can’t shoot for you. Some hunters don’t shoot that well, especially when they’re using unfamiliar equipment.

“We find the hunters handle the gear a lot more proficiently on the second night of a two-day hunt,” he added.

Ken Perrotte is a Military Times outdoors writer.

Irregularities cited in student vet study

A study released by Student Veterans of America promised to bring much-needed clarity to veterans’ college graduation rates, but irregularities in how the research was done may cast doubt on its findings.

While there are multiple issues with SVA’s newly released Million Records Project, perhaps the most significant is its under-representation of students attending the most-scrutinized — and often lowest-performing — types of schools: for-profit colleges and universities.

Looking at fewer of these students may have inflated the study’s main finding that 51.7 percent of student vets using the GI Bill earned a degree or certificate.

In a budget-conscious Washington and amid anecdotes of some schools taking advantage of former troops, vets’ advocates are eager to emphasize the value of the Post-9/11 GI Bill and other education benefits as a way to protect them.

But despite a 2012 executive order to executive agencies to “develop a comprehensive strategy” for tracking student veteran outcomes, there is still little to no federal data on how vets do in college.

SVA’s study, financed by donations from private companies, could fill in some of these information gaps, but there remains work to be done. Graduation rates at for profit colleges remain unclear and the data cited in this study likely renders unreliable the overall graduation rates.

Just 10 percent of students covered by the study were identified as attending for-profit schools, with 11 percent at private schools and 79 percent at public schools.

How drastically that underestimates for-profit school attendance by vets using the GI Bill is unclear, and each of the three groups that collaborated on the project — SVA, the Veterans Affairs Department and the National Student Clearinghouse — pointed Military Times to the other for an answer.

“I think it highlights that more research needs to be done,” said Michael Dakduk, who led SVA when work on the Million Records Project began and is now with the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, a for-profit schools trade group.

Still, “It’s the best evidence of veteran progression in higher education that we have today,” he said.

But Anthony Dotson, coordinator of the University of Kentucky Veterans Resource Center, called the study “at best, misleadingand , at worst, dishonest.”

“I was just wondering if anyone was going to throw the BS flag,” Dotson said, adding that he thinks students at for-profits may have been weeded out to bolster the graduation rate.

“While I understand the motivation of SVA to positively promote veterans on campus, ignoring the truth means that we ignore the problem and therefore are actually working against student veterans.”

SVA acknowledged the undersampling of students at for-profit schools, but stood by the findings.

“At least one in five veterans who used the [Montgomery] or Post-9/11 GI Bill from the [study’s] time period were selected,” said Chris Cate, SVA vice president of research. “The size of the sample resulted in an extremely high statistical power and low margin of error.”

The project examined the records of 788,915 student veterans, including those who first used the Montgomery GI Bill from 2002 to 2010 and who first used the Post-9/11 GI Bill in 2009 and 2010.

SVA relied on VA to identify veteran GI Bill users and the National Student Clearinghouse to provide data on their academic progress.

But not every school provides data to NSC — and for-profit institutions are much less likely to do so.

During the enrollment years that the study considered for Post-9/11 GI Bill vets, the group received data from an average of 97 percent of public schools and 93 percent of private schools, but just 55 percent of for-profit s according to NSC data.

Those data go back only to 2003, one year after the study period for Montgomery GI Bill vets began, but the averages were 94 percent for public schools, 88 percent for privates and 53 percent for for-profits.

Any student attending a school when it did not submit data was excluded from the study sample.

Just how the sample was chosen is also in dispute. It its report, SVA said VA created multiple filters before choosing records to include, one of which excluded students who had received benefits while attending schools “that were known not to report data to the NSC.”

Not so, said VA spokeswoman Genevieve Billia. “VA eliminated no records of students on account of National Student Clearinghouse status in responding to SVA’s [information] request,” she said.

Meanwhile, Jason DeWitt, NSC’s research manager, said he thought VA excluded “a small number of large for-profits that VA knew were not covered by the Clearinghouse.” He declined to name those schools.

SVA and NSC both maintain that after VA eliminated some records, other records totaling just under 5 percent of the remaining sample were removed for lack of NSC data.

DeWitt said that he thought the number of such exclusions “would have been quite small.” But he couldn’t provide more detail on how many records were excluded, and how the study sample differed from the total population of GI Bill users.

SVA referred that question to VA; VA referred it back to SVA.

VA previously provided information to Military Times on the total number of Post-9/11 GI Bill users by school between August 2009 and June 2011. Of the top 25 schools by enrollment, totaling 234,906 students, 10 were for-profits, with 97,920 students, or 42 percent of that total enrollment.

According to NSC data, of those 10 for-profits, three, with a combined 46 percent of the for-profit enrollment, submitted data for the entire study period. Four schools, with a combined 17 percent of the for-profit enrollment, submitted no data, and three, with 37 percent of the for-profit enrollment, submitted data covering part of the study period.

The 51.7 percent completion rate figure compiled in the study was calculated by counting the number of students who started attending classes under the GI Bill from 2002 to 2010 and graduated by June 2013 with any academic credential, from technical certificates to graduate degrees and everything in between.

That way of calculating graduation rates varies widely from the standard method used by the Education Department and makes comparison of vet and nonvet data difficult to impossible.

The Education Department evaluates how many students in each year’s starting class have graduated by 150 percent of the expected completion time: six years after enrollment for four-year schools and three years after enrollment for two-year schools.

In contrast, the Million Records Project counted the number of students who started attending classes under the GI Bill from 2002 to 2010 and graduated by June 2013 with any academic credential, from a quick technical certificate to a graduate degree in astrophysics, and everything in between.

So a student who began pursuing a four-year degree in 2010 and remained on track to finish by 2014 would count negatively against the graduation rate. Yet the opposite would be true for a student who started pursuing a two-year associate degree in 2002 and didn’t finish until mid-2013.

The Education Department’s most recent available data show that 56 percent of students who began attending four-year schools in 2006 graduated by 2012, as did 33 percent of students who began attending two-year schools in 2009.

The report found that 45 percent of students who began their studies at for-profit schools earned a degree or certificate. The figures for students starting at private and public schools were 64 percent and 51 percent, respectively.

However, those results could be skewed by students who start at one type of institution, such as a public university, and transfer to another, such as a for-profit.

Ryan Gallucci, deputy legislative director for Veterans of Foreign Wars, said that while the project has some shortcomings, it represents a step in the right direction.

“This is the first time we’ve had anything even remotely statistically valid to start the conversation on how student veterans are doing” in school, he said. “We don’t know what we don’t know about the student veteran population.”

Chance encounter connects Marines with long lost rescuers

STUTTGART, Germany — As Staff Sgt. Luke Thompson examined the letter written in broken English, the first thing that jumped out was the date: Feb. 17, 2006.

The note, passed to him by a Djiboutian soldier in October, continued: “smoke, fire, crash of two helicopter.”

“I have been rescue pilots,” it read. “One man, one girl.”

Thompson instantly recognized what the Djiboutian was talking about. In 2006, Thompson was supposed to be on one of the two U.S. Marine Corps CH-53 helicopters that collided off the coast of Djibouti. The crash killed 10 service members, including two airmen Thompson had been training. Only two Marines survived the crash.

“It was just a chance encounter,” said Thompson, now a civil affairs team sergeant, in a phone interview. “He (the soldier) didn’t know if the two had survived. He was happy just to hear that.”

The chance meeting between Thompson and Sgt. Younis Ahmed Douleh in October at a Djiboutian Army English-language course, set in motion a plan to formally recognize the rescuers and reconnect them with the two Marines they helped.

On Tuesday, Younis, along with Djiboutian army Capt. Hoch Omar Darar, Cpl. Youssouf Afgada Said and Sgt. Ahmed Abdillahi Djama, received the Civilian Award for Humanitarian Service at a ceremony at Camp Lemonnier, the U.S. military base at Djibouti’s international airport.

Susan Craig, a former Marine Corps pilot, and her co-pilot, Maj. Heath Ruppert, flew in from the United States to meet with their rescuers.

“Eight years ago this accident happened and we’ve talked about these folks so many times,” Craig said during a phone interview. “Who are, they? Where are they now? They were our heroes that day.”

On the day of the crash, Craig remembers landing in water and swimming ashore. “We escaped drowning, but our adrenaline started to wear off and we were feeling the effects of the trauma,” she said.

Set against mountainous terrain, the Marines had difficulty establishing contact with the U.S. military camp. Meanwhile, the hours passed and night was setting. They began to fire flares, eventually drawing the attention of some Djiboutians in the distance. Although the soldiers didn’t speak English, it was clear they were trying to help.

“They were the most compassionate people you could think of,” Ruppert said. “They offered water, gave us first aid. Another was making radio calls. We could tell they were there to support and take care of us.”

The Djiboutians then carried the Marines a half-mile through rough terrain to reach the landing zone to meet a rescue team. When it arrived, the soldiers loaded them onto the aircraft, Ruppert said.

But the Djiboutians never learned the fate of the Marines they rescued.

“I really wanted to meet those people,” said Younis, whose translated statement was provided by Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa. “The last thing I remember was that they were in the helicopter and it disappeared. Since that day I don’t know what was going on.”

For years, Younis carried his letter around, passing it to Americans he encountered. But no one ever knew seemed to know what the cryptic note was about.

For Thompson, it was pure luck that he wasn’t on the flight back in 2006. Initially slated to ride along for a training exercise, a last-minute change in plans resulted in him staying on base.

“I sent two of my airmen up with the helicopter and later on I got a call that they (headquarters) hadn’t heard from them,” Thompson said. “I immediately got launched on the rescue and recovery effort.”

Having lost so many comrades in the crash, that day in 2006 remained etched in his memory. After meeting Younis years later, he wanted to make sure the U.S. military recognized the Djiboutian troops for their aid of the Marines.

“I just felt that it was a deed that needed to be recognized,” Thompson said. “They did a great thing for those pilots.”

Vandiver.john@stripes.com

DOD, Coast Guard civilians eligible for expedited airport screening

By Seth Robson

Stars and Stripes

Published: March 27, 2014

YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — Civilian Defense Department and Coast Guard employees will soon be eligible for the same expedited screening that servicemembers receive at 115 U.S. airports.

Beginning April 15, some 800,000 DOD and Coast Guard civilians will be able to “opt in” to the Transportation Security Administration’s pre-check expedited screening program, according to an American Forces Press Service news release. All military and Coast Guard personnel, including those in the reserves and the National Guard, already are eligible for the program, which began in March 2012.

Participating members can keep shoes, light outerwear and belts on during preflight screening, and can keep laptops inside their cases. They also may have a compliant liquids and gels bag in a carry-on bag in select screening lanes, officials said.

To participate in the program, DOD and Coast Guard civilian employees first must opt in online at: http://ift.tt/1gHl4Ws, officials said.

Military personnel and DOD and Coast Guard civilian employees who want expedited screening must also provide their DOD identification number — the 10-digit number on the back of their common access card — when making travel reservations, officials said.

robson.seth@stripes.com

Twitter: @SethRobson1

High-tech apprentice program expands

ST. LOUIS — Cody Beck slogged through four years of classes at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, a psychology major who didn’t want to treat patients, a budding entrepreneur with an affinity for business but no desire for the button-down world of business school.

Two years later, the 24-year-old Missouri native’s résumé includes a stint with a startup in Dublin and a starring role in a new high-tech apprentice program envisioned as a career-boosting alternative to the four-year college degree.

“Now when I talk to people, I don’t ever mention my degree. I tell them what I’ve done,” he said. “That seems to matter to them way more than my grade-point average.”

On Wednesday, Beck hobnobbed with local business heavyweights and a dozen Wall Street venture capitalists at the Midwest unveiling of Enstitute. The New York-based nonprofit hopes to match as many as 100 college students — or other millennials who opted out of higher education — with mentors from the local business community, with an emphasis on one- and two-year jobs in science, technology and digital media. The company touts that 90 percent of its initial crop of New York participants either landed full-time jobs paying at least $55,000 annually or started their own companies. The effort has since expanded to Washington since its 2012 rollout.

“We don’t think college is wrong,” said co-founder Shaila Ittycheria. “But it was never meant for everyone. And it wasn’t meant for everyone at the age of 18.”

Enstitute hopes to grow into “the first national apprenticeship program for 21st-century careers,” co-founder Kane Sarhan told the St. Louis audience. While its efforts so far remain modest, the organization has attracted some boldface names in the local business community, including Build-A-Bear Workshop founder Maxine Clark, who serves on Enstitute’s local board of directors; and Tom Hillman, a self-described “serial entrepreneur” who is now a managing partner at FLT Capital, a private equity firm.

“The most significant bridge [in higher education] is with practicum — what’s learned outside the classroom,” said Hillman, a Washington University graduate who serves on the school’s board of trustees.

Clark, the retired CEO of the teddy bear retailer, compared Enstitute’s role in shaping future business leaders to Teach for America, on whose board she sits.

“There’s some really bright young talent who could be engaged in business” but instead pursue creative pursuits such as art or dance, she said.

While college graduates as a whole continue to substantially out-earn their peers without degrees over a lifetime, the notion of a four-year degree as the ticket to prosperity is no longer a given — an opening Ittycheria and her allies are eager to exploit.

“We’ve tied it to this American dream,” she said, referring to the notion of college as an expected rite of passage. “But people are seeing that this model, and this norm, aren’t working.”

In bloom: 2014 Cherry Blossom Festivals

As of March 19, the Japan Meteorological Agency predicts that cherry blossoms will begin blooming March 28 in Tokyo. For a more complete list, go to http://ift.tt/1dtZAvF.

The following are places to celebrate the bloom.

Japan

TSUKAYAMA PARK CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Yokosuka): March 24-April 8; about 1,000 cherry blossom trees with a view of Yokosuka Port; 25-minute walk from Keikyu Line, Itsumi or Anjinzuka Station; 046-822-2575.

GONGENDO PARK CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Saitama prefecture): March 26-April 10; 1,000 trees along a roughly half-mile-long dike is one of the best spots for cherry blossoms in Japan; 30-minute walk from Satte Station on Tobu Nikko Line or a 20-minute drive from Kuki IC on Tohoku Express, 1, parking available nearby; 0480-43-1111 ext. 538.

HAMURA FLOWER AND WATER FESTIVAL (Yokota area): March 27-April 13; this festival has food, street performers and features about 500 trees along the Tama River, illuminated 6-8 p.m.; JR Ome Line, Hamura Station; 042-555-6211.

KINUGASA CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Yokosuka): March 27-April 7; 2,000 trees which are also illuminated in evening at Kinugasa-yama Park, 25-minute walk from JR Kinugasa Station; 046-853-1611.

CHIDORIGAFUCHI (Tokyo): March 28-April 6; Chidorigafuchi, the northeastern moat of the Imperial Palace is one of the most famous sites to view cherry blossoms in Japan and illumination is 6:30-10 p.m. during the festival; Subway Tozai Line, Kudan-Shita Station; 03-5211-4185.

YASUKUNI SHRINE CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Tokyo): March 28-April 6; when predicting the bloom for the Tokyo area, the meteorological agency’s staff uses the 800 trees here; five-minute walk from Subway Tozai Line, Kudan-shita Station; 03-3261-8326.

SANKEIEN GARDEN (Yokohama): March 29-April 6, 9 a.m.-9 p.m.; seasonal flowers and historic buildings in the garden; 10-minute bus ride from JR Negishi Line; 500 yen; 045-621-0634; tinyurl.com/78ccezf.

FUSSA CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Yokota area): March 29-April 6; cherry trees along the bank of Tama River, 15-minute walk from JR Ushihama Station; 042-551-1511.

KOMATSUGAWA 1,000 CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Tokyo): March 30, 10 a.m.-3 p.m.; event with 1,000 cherry trees in bloom along the Arakawa River, has live performances, food booths and free pony ride at Komatsugawa Park, five-minute walk from Higashi Oshima Station on Toei Shinjuku Line; 03-5662-5543.

NINGYOCHO CHERRY BLOSSOMS FESTIVAL (Tokyo): March 30, 11 a.m.-1 p.m.; celebrating the bloom on Hamacho Ryokudo Street (Amasake Yokocho Intersection to Meiji-za Theater, where there were many amasake — sweet drink made from fermented rice or sake lees — stores in Meiji Period (1868-1912). A free cup of amasake is given to first 1,200 people; JR Asakusabashi Station on Subu Line or Ningyocho Station on Toei Asakusa Line; 03-3666-7662.

ODAWARA CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Kanagawa prefecture): Late March until early April; about 320 trees, which are also illuminated 6-9 p.m. during the bloom; 10-minute walk from JR Odawara Station; 0465-33-1521.

TOKYO SUMMERLAND CHERRY BLOSSOM VIEWING: March 31-April 13, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; 1,500 cherry blossoms trees, along with food booths at Family Park; free admission and free parking; 042-558-6511.

YASUKUNI SHRINE CHERRY BLOSSOM NIGHT VIEW NOH PERFORMANCE (Tokyo): April 1-3, 6:40 p.m.; at Yasukuni Shrine Noh-gakudo or Shinjuku Bunka Center if rain; 3,000-5,000-8,000-11,500 yen; Cherry Blossoms Night View Concert Jimukyoku 03-5215-2890.

YAMATAKA JINDAI CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Yamanashi prefecture): April 1-22, 8 a.m.-5 p.m.; a tree here is believed to be 1,800-2,000 years old and the best time to view it is April 5-12; Hokuto city; 15-minute ride from JR Hinoharu Station on Chuo Line or 15-minute ride from Sudama I.C. on Chuo Express; 0551-42-1351.

MOUNT YOSHINO CHERRY BLOSSOM (Nara prefecture): Early April through late April; Mount Yoshino is known as the best cherry blossom site in Japan with 20,000 trees; 75-minute ride from Nagoya Station by Kintetsu Super Express or nearly two-hour ride from Kyoto Station by Kintestu Super Express; 0746-32-1007.

ASAKUSA HANAYASHIKI NIGHT ILLUMINATION & BEER GARDEN (Tokyo): April 2-5 & 9-11, 6:30-9:30 p.m.; visitors to Japan’s oldest amusement park, founded in 1853, can enjoy the illuminated bloom, five rides, street performances, and enjoy a beer at Asakusa Hanayashiki Amusement Park, five-minute walk from Asakusa Station on Ginza Line; 500 yen; 03-5789-8686.

MIIDERA TEMPLE CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Shiga prefecture): April 2-13, 6:30-9:30 p.m.; more than 1,000 trees at the precinct of Miidera Temple are illuminated 6:30-9:30 p.m.; 20-minute walk from JR Otsu Station or a five-minute walk from Miidera Station on Ishiyamasaka Line (Keihan); 500 yen adults, 300 yen senior and junior high school students, 200 yen elementary school students; 077-528-2772.

TAKADA PARK CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Niigata prefecture): April 4-20; commemorating 400th anniversary of founding of shogunate government at Takada by Tadateru Matsudaira, celebrating cherry blossoms festival at Takada Park, which is more than 4,000 trees in bloom are illuminated by 3,000 Bonbori-handled paper lanterns sunset-11 p.m.; JR Takada Station on Shinetsu Line; 025-543-2777.

UEDA CASTLE CHERRY BLOSSOMS (Nagano prefecture): April 4-20; 1,000 trees bloom at the ruins of Ueda Castle Park and the trees are illuminated 6:30-9:30 p.m. weekends during the full bloom; 12-minute walk from JR Ueda Station; 0268-23-5408; tinyurl.com/lcq38ou.

TAKIYAMA PARK CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Tokyo): April 5; 5,000 trees on hilly terrain and traditional live performances, open-air tea services and sweet drink made from fermented rice April 5 (April 6 if rain April 5); Takatsuki-cho, Hachioji city; 042-691-5215.

INOGASHIRA PARK CHERRY BLOSSOMS (Tokyo): Through April 5; 500 trees around the pond bloom at Inogashira Park, near shopping district of Kichijoji; 10-minute walk from JR Kichijoji Station on Chuo Line; 0422-47-6900.

1,000 CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL AT TONERI PARK (Tokyo): April 5 & 6; 1,000 trees in bloom, along with 3,000 fireworks at 7-7:30 p.m. April 5; one-minute walk from Toneri Koen Station on Nippori-Toneri Line; 03-3880-5853.

SHIROISHI CASTLE CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Miyagi prefecture): April 5-30; about 300 cherry trees at Masuoka Koen, with a night illumination around the castle with 350 paper lanterns until 9 p.m.; 10-minute walk from JR Shiroishi Station or 10-minute ride from Shiroishi I.C. on Tohoku Express; free parking; 0224-24-3030.

KOISHIKAWA KORAKUEN (Tokyo): Through April 6, 9 a.m.-6 p.m.; five weeping cherry trees in bloom at Japanese garden here; 300 yen adults, kids free; three-minute walk from Iidabashi Station on Oedo and Sobu Lines; 03-3811-3015; tinyurl.com/kvjfrgs.

RIKUGIEN GARDEN (Tokyo): Through April 6, 9 a.m.-9 p.m.; this garden built in the Edo Period is famous for drooping cherry trees which are illuminated after sunset during the bloom; Subway Nanboku Line, Komagome Station; 300 yen; 03-3941-2222.

UENO PARK (Tokyo): Through April 6, until 8 p.m.; 1,200 cherry trees; two-minute walk from Ueno Station on Metro Ginza and Hibiya Lines; 03-3828-5644.

TOSHIMAEN AMUSEMENT PARK (Tokyo): Through April 6, until 9 p.m.; 800 cherry trees; 500 yen after 3 p.m., free April 4 & 5, 1,000 yen adults and 500 yen kids for ride ticket after 3 p.m. during the week; Seibu Ikebukuro Line, Toshimaen Station; 03-3990-0884.

NEODANI USUZUMI CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Gifu prefecture): April 8-15, 8 a.m.-9 p.m.; Usuzumi cherry tree is believed to be 1,500 years old, illuminated until 9 p.m.; Motosu city, 15-minute walk from Tarumi Station on Tarumi Line or 80-minute ride from Gifu Hashima I.C; 500 yen/parking; 058-323-7756.

SHIROISHI RIVER CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Miyagi prefecture): April 10-25; one of the best known sites to view the bloom, featuring 1,000 cherry trees along Shiroishi River dike, illuminated 6-10 p.m. during the event; three-minute walk from Ogawara Station on JR Tohoku-Line; 0224-53-2141.

AOBAYAMA PARK CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Miyagi prefecture): April 10-30; 480 trees; 10-minute drive from Sendai Miyagi IC or eight-minute bus ride to Hakubutsukan Kokusai Senta-mae bus stop from JR Sendai Station; 022-225-7211.

MIHARU TAKIZAKURA CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Fukushima prefecture): April 12-20; Miharu Takizakura (cherry blossom waterfall) — a cherry tree believed to be more than 1,000 years old — is illuminated 6-9 p.m.; Miharu town, shuttle buses from JR Miharu Station and nearby parking lots or a 20-minute ride from JR Miharu Station or 20-minute ride from Funahiki Miharu I.C. on Ban-etsu Express; 300 yen; 0247-62-3690.

SUMIDA RIVER CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Tokyo): Through April 14; about 1,000 trees along the Sumida River; five-minute walk from Asakusa Station on Ginza Line or seven-minute walk from Honjo Azumabashi Station on Toei Asakusa-Line; 03-5608-6951.

KITAKAMI CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Iwate prefecture): April 15-May 6; about 100,000 trees at Tenshochi Park and along River Kitakami are illuminated sunset-9 p.m.; Tenshochi Park, Kitakami city, 20-minute walk from JR Kitakami Station; 0197-65-0300.

KAKUNODATE CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Akita prefecture): Mid-April through early May; 162 weeping cherry trees around samurai district in Kakunodate town and the River Hinokinaigawa; 394-2 Kamisugasawa, Kakunodate town, Senboku city, JR Kakunodate Station on Akita Shinkansen from Morioka; 0187-54-2700.

MIDTOWN BLOSSOM 2014 (Tokyo): Through April 20; 150 cherry blossom trees in bloom and see them from an open-air terrace at Tokyo Midtown Garden, and 5-11 p.m. the trees are illuminated; Roppongi Station on Hibiya Line or three-minute walk from Nogizaka Station on Chiyoda Line; tinyurl.com/p6tdvrp.

MATSUMOTO CASTLE CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Nagano prefecture): festival starts three days after trees bloom in mid-April and features night illumination, koto and gagaku (traditional Japanese music instruments) and flute performances, open-air tea services and free admission to Matsumoto Castle during the festival; 0263-32-2902.

HIROSAKI PARK CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Aomori prefecture): April 23-May 6; about 2,500 trees around Hirosaki Castle and moat bloom and are illuminated sunset-10 p.m.; 20-minute bus ride from JR Hirosaki Station; 300 yen admission 9 a.m.-5 p.m.; 0172-35-3131.

SHINJUKU GYOEN (Tokyo): Through April 24, 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m.; 144-acre park in Shinjuku, a famous blossom viewing spot; 10-minute walk from JR Shinjuku Station; 200 yen; 03-3350-0151; tinyurl.com/nzg2mjo.

South Korea

HWAGAE CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (South Gyeongsang province): March 29-April 8; Gyeongsangnam-do Hadong-gun Hwagae-myeon Unsu-ri; +82-2-1330; http://bit.ly/xgEvhr and http://ift.tt/1dtZC6J.

CHINHAE CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (South Gyeongsang province): April 1-10; celebration started as a memorial in 1952 to remember Admiral Yi Sun-shin, a 16th century Korean military leader, then the community added the cherry blossoms celebration about 10 years later; +82-2-1330.

JEJU CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL: April 4-6; Jeju’s king cherry trees bloom in Seogwipo’s downtown area (Jeju Citizen Welfare Town) and surrounding Jeju Sports Complex, take Bus 500 and get off at New Jeju Rotary; free; +82-2-1330.

GYEONGJU CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (North Gyeongsang): April 4-13; at Bomunho Lake Resort, along with neighboring Gyeongju, the city’s most beautiful sites for viewing cherry blossoms; Dongbu Historic Complex and Heungmu Park & Geumjangdae, take a Bus 10 to Gyeongju Kyoyuk Munhwa Hoekwan bus stop from Gyeongju Express Bus Terminal; +82-2-1330; tinyurl.com/ozwl26l.

SEOMJINGANG RIVER CHERRY FLOWER FESTIVAL (Jeollanam-do): April 5 & 6; enjoy viewing cherry trees in full bloom, as well as traditional drum performance, paragliding contest, face painting and more; take an intercity bus from Seoul Nambu Bus Terminal to Gurye; +82-2-1330.

SEOKCHON LAKE CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Seoul): April 11-13; cherry blossom night walk along Seokchon Lake, plus performances, exhibitions and more; Jamsil Station (Seoul Subway Line 2 or 8); +82-2-1330.

CHEONGPUNGHOBAN CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (North Chungcheong province): April 11-13 & April 15, 9 a.m.-7 p.m.; on the shores of Cheongpunghoban Lake, with forsythias, azaleas and other wild flowers in bloom and exhibitions, performances, bungee jumping and water sports on the lake; Chungcheongbuk-do Jecheon-si Cheongpung-myeon Multae-ri, two-hour bus ride from Dong Seoul Bus Terminal; +88-43-1330; tinyurl.com/7yfxmra and http://ift.tt/P4csgD.

YEOUIDO HANGANG SPRING FLOWER FESTIVAL (Seoul): April 12-18; Seoul’s best location to see cherry blossoms on Yeouido Island when the road behind the National Assembly buildings is lined with hundreds of cherry trees; five-minute walk from National Assembly Station (Subway Line 9, Exit 1 or 6).

SILK TOWN MOUNTAIN CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (South Chungcheong): April 19; hundreds of wild cherry blossom trees in bloom in Sanan-ri village in Geumsan-gun near Bogwang-ri, Sanggok-ri and Jajeon-ri; take an intercity bus to Geumsan from Seoul Express Bus Terminal, in front of the dental clinic, take a Geumsan-Jewon route bus to Jajinbaengi bus stop; +82-2-1330; tinyurl.com/nsh2wj3 and http://ift.tt/1dtZC6N.

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DOD asks Walmart to lose logos from trucks used for Wreaths Across America

The U.S. Department of Defense has asked Walmart to remove military logos from 16 corporate tractor-trailers used to carry wreaths to veterans' graves for Wreaths Across America.

The DOD says Walmart was violating its trademarks.

The trucks sport logos for the U.S. Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force and Coast Guard above a field of snowy, wreath-covered headstones.

Jessica O'Haver, program manager for the trademark licensing office of the Marine Corps, said at least four of the five logos are official seals intended for use only by the DOD. A Marine spotted one of the trucks, took a picture and alerted her office back in December.

Walmart says the logos will be down by Memorial Day.

"It was never our intention to create controversy; we only wanted to honor the brave men and women who fight or have fought for our country," said Walmart spokeswoman Dianna Gee. "We use those trucks for specific, veteran-related events. We will be replacing the logo with the new design (for Wreaths Across America) in the near future."

Gee said it doesn't diminish Walmart's commitment to the charity, and O'Haver indicated there were no hard feelings.

"Walmart is very, very pro-military and they support us a lot, and so we work with them a lot," O'Haver said. "We certainly appreciate all that Wreaths Across America does to honor veterans and those who have fallen. It's just we can't appear to officially endorse the program with our logos."

Walmart has been involved with Wreaths Across America since 2008, last year donating $300,000 toward wreaths and $150,000 in in-kind trucking services.

Wreaths Across America spokeswoman Amber Caron said the group updated its own logo two years ago to depict three wreaths on three headstones. She said the update wasn't prompted by a DOD request.

Wreaths Across America, based in Harrington, Maine, last year placed 540,000 wreaths on veterans' graves in more than 900 locations. This coming winter, in honor of the 150th anniversary of Arlington National Cemetery, Caron said the group is hoping to place a wreath on each grave at Arlington, which would mean an additional 100,000 wreaths.

She deferred comment on the DOD's recent request to Walmart.

Navy football player Will McKamey 'lived life to the fullest'

Will McKamey was the valedictorian of his small high school class and often talked about going to medical school at Vanderbilt after he served his commitment to Navy.

McKamey saw it as a way to help people, said Rob Hammond, the headmaster of Grace Christian Academy in Knoxville, Tenn.

"Will was probably one of the most well-respected students that I've gotten to know in my years of school administration," Hammond, also an executive pastor at Grace Baptist Church, said Wednesday. "He was well-liked, very outgoing personality. He was a leader, [had] a lot of character, a lot of determination, a lot of discipline and a lot of drive. He lived life to the fullest."

McKamey, a Navy freshman slotback, died at Maryland Shock Trauma on Tuesday night, never regaining consciousness after collapsing on a practice field in Annapolis on Saturday. He was 19.

During his senior year at Grace Christian, where his father, Randy, was the head football coach, McKamey had been hospitalized after collapsing on the sideline during a playoff game. Transported to a hospital in Chattanooga, McKamey was found to have bleeding and swelling on his brain.

Navy coach Ken Niumatalolo and athletic director Chet Gladchuk were not available for comment Wednesday, but a Naval Academy spokesman said that McKamey had never demonstrated any recurrance of medical issues until this past weekend.

"I can tell you from the day he arrived here on June 13 to the day he collapsed on the athletic field last Saturday, he showed no signs of injury or distress during his time here," Commander John Schofield said. "With that in mind, we're all searching for answers, as his parents are. It's just an extremely sad time."

It marks the second time in a little more than a month that the academy is mourning the death of a Midshipman. Max Allen, a senior who was a member of the same Battalion as McKamey, was found dead after crashing his SUV into a creek on the school grounds. The investigation is still ongoing, Schofield said.

Schofield declined to answer whether McKamey or his parents signed a waiver with the athletic department to allow him to continue playing football.

His parents put out a statement Monday saying that their son "did not sustain a bad hit or unusual or extreme contact in practice" on Saturday.

Asked whether the Naval Academy had some type of moral responsibility to prevent McKamey from ever suiting up again — despite him being cleared by doctors in Tennessee — Schofield said, "I think the best way to answer that, there's nothing to indicate that Will's collapse or his death were the result of an injury sustained on the football field.

"This event is a tragedy on levels that we can't totally express. The Brigade is heartbroken as are his teammates and the athletic staff. To simply chalk this up as an injury on the football field is possibly not taking into account the entirety of the situation."

Schofield said that the main responsibility now for the academy is to help those mourning McKamey's death.

"We know that he collapsed and yesterday he died and right now our responsibility is to make sure that his parents and his brothers and sisters and family — I mean the Brigarde as well — get the support they need," he said.

An athletic department spokesman said that the team will resume practice Monday.

In a statement released by the academy shortly after McKamey's death, Niumatalolo said, "During this most difficult of times, first and foremost, our prayers and thoughts turn to Randy, Kara [his mother] and their beautiful family. Our deepest and most sincere condolences go out to their entire family and friends. As our Navy football family mourns the loss of one of our brothers, we also celebrate and honor his life. He loved his family, his friends and his teammates."

Hammond, who has known the McKamey family for several years, said that Randy McKamey had good reason to be proud of the oldest of his three sons. It went beyond the field, where Will was chosen Mr. Football among the state's 2A players as a senior.

"He was the type of kid who just made people better being around him," Hammond said. "A father would have hoped that their son would grow up to be like Will. ... He was wise beyond his years. He would serve his heart. He was a hard worker. He wouldn't run from a challenge. He would meet it head on."

Hammond said that McKamey was particularly close to his brother Sam, a sophomore at Grace Christian who suffers from cerebral palsy.

"He was very protective of Sam. They were very tight, very connected," Hammond said. "Sam was Will's biggest fan. When Will would score a touchdown and Sam would run over to him and give him a hug."

After graduating at the top of his class of 55 students at the school just outside the University of Tennessee, McKamey had set out to help people. As he told Hammond, he wanted to study medicine after graduating from Navy and completing the five-year post-graduate military commitment.

"He wanted to make better people and better himself," Hammond said.

When Rafi Montalvo heard from some of his former Navy football teammates that Niumatalolo had called for an emergency meeting at 10 p.m. Tuesday night, he knew it had something to do with McKamey.

Montalvo, who left the academy in January after Navy officials wouldn't clear him to resume his career because of the brain injury he sustained in a car accident in November 2012, said he also knew something else.

"I felt they kind of knew that something was not right. They were kind of preparing themselves for something like this," Montalvo said Wednesday.

Montalvo, who had hoped to fly to Baltimore next week to support McKamey and family as they had when he was in the hospital, said Wedneday "that I wished I got to know him more."

Montalvo still plans on sending the family a letter he wrote offering his support.

"I was just getting to know him and we were becoming pretty [close] friends when I left," Montalvo said Tuesday. "He's a really good kid. He was kind of like me. I'm kind of a quiet person, and he's kind of the same way. He kind of reminded me of myself. He was a really hard worker."

Delay military compensation reform, lawmakers and advocates say

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers and advocacy groups said this week that Defense Department requests for changing military compensation are premature, suggesting that any congressional action along these lines might be postponed for years.

To slow the growth in personnel costs in order to spend more money on combat readiness, DOD proposed the following when it submitted its fiscal 2015 budget request earlier this month:

• Limit pay raises for active-duty servicemembers.


• Reduce the basic housing allowance subsidy.


• Reduce commissary subsidies.


• Manage Tricare costs by increasing the cost-sharing burden for users.

But members of Congress on both sides of the aisle said the Pentagon should wait until the congressionally mandated Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission, which is doing its own comprehensive review of military pay and benefits, presents its findings and recommendations to Congress before moving forward with its own plans.

“DOD is moving down a path of making changes prior to the information that is supposed to be collected by this commission,” Rep. Joe Heck, R-Nev., said during a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing Tuesday. “Why aren't we waiting? Why aren't we waiting for this group that's going out and holding stakeholders meetings that's supposed to come back with an objective view of how we need to modernize compensation and retirement before we start nickel and diming all these programs?"

“The proposal before us includes numerous reductions in pay and benefits, about which many — including myself — have serious concerns,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said while chairing a Senate Armed Forces subcommittee hearing Wednesday. “Each of these reductions is significant in and of itself, but I am extremely concerned about the cumulative effect on all of these cuts, especially on the junior members of the force and their families. These benefit proposals are being made, I would note, while the [MCRMC] has yet to finish its work.”

The MCRMC’s recommendations aren’t due to Congress until February 2015, which means any changes stemming from it probably wouldn’t go into effect until fiscal 2017 at the earliest. The Pentagon said compensation changes are needed much sooner than that to preserve combat capabilities in an era where fiscal constraints are necessitating trade-offs.

“We canceled seven combat training rotations this year. It's really degrading the near-term readiness … So that friction that we're creating, it takes us so long to build that back. We've got to make these nearer-term savings in the next couple of years. Otherwise, we're going to dig ourselves into a hole that we're just not going to be able to get out of well past [2020], and then if full sequestration goes into effect, we're going to dig deeper and deeper,” Lt. Gen. Howard Bromberg, the ArmyDeputy Chief of Staff for personnel, told the House subcommittee.

“For the Marine Corps... reset is significant, based on our many years at war. Our equipment reset is critical. Our commandant recognized we can't wait for a few more years. We must support these initiatives that have gone forward,” Sheryl Murray, Marine Corps assistant deputy commandant for manpower and reserve affairs, told House lawmakers.

If Congress rejects DOD’s proposals, the military will have to cut training and weapons buys by $2.1 billion next year and $31 billion over the next five years to stay under the defense budget caps imposed by Congress, according to Pentagon Comptroller Robert Hale, who testified before the Senate subcommittee Wednesday.

Acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness Jessica Wright told lawmakers that DOD has finished its examination of the issues and doesn’t need to wait on the MCRMC to put forth its recommendations.

“We believe that we have the sufficient analysis and rigor to make the decisions on Tricare, BAH [and] commissaries,” she said at the Tuesday hearing.

DOD plans to wait for the MCRMC to finish its work before making any decisions about changing the retirement system, according to officials.

Congress has to approve any changes to pay and benefits that DOD or the MCRMC recommend before they would go into effect.

Representatives of military advocacy groups who testified in front of the Senate subcommittee Wednesday blasted DOD’s plans, saying they would hurt recruitment and retention and place an unfair financial burden on troops and their families. They said the MCRMC should be allowed to finish its work before any compensation reform steps are taken.

“The administration’s proposals to cut pay increases, reduce housing allowance, eliminate commissary savings, and increase healthcare coasts all at the same time pose significant risk to the financial wellbeing of military families,” Kathleen Moakler, government relations director for the National Military Family Association, told senators. “We can’t stress [enough] how important it is for the commission to finish their work [because] they are really doing due diligence to try to look at the entire compensation picture. [What] military families … didn’t expect was the volley of hits to their pocket book that were the budget proposals.”

Gillibrand urged military advocacy groups to keep pushing back against the Pentagon’s current proposals.

“This is going to be a very long debate, and so I urge constant advocacy in every state because I think people have to see the face and understand the family impacts of these types of decisions,” she told the panel members. “If it’s just a number it’s very easy to cut. [But] if it’s families and people and real lives, it is less easy to cut.”

harper.jon@stripes.com
Twitter: @JHarperStripes

US to commit more forces to NATO efforts in Eastern Europe

BRUSSELS — The United States plans to join with other NATO nations in increasing ground and naval forces in Eastern Europe as part of the military alliance's response to Russia's incursion in Ukraine, the White House said Wednesday.

The specifics of the NATO plan were still being finalized, including the size of the force increase. Rather than significantly boosting U.S. military presence in the region, the move seemed aimed instead at showing symbolic support for NATO members near Russia's borders.

President Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, said NATO was aiming to provide "a continuous presence to reassure our allies." While he would not detail specific countries where the additional resources would be sent, he noted that the U.S. was particularly focused on efforts to bolster Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia.

Rhodes briefed reporters as Obama traveled to Rome from Brussels, where he met with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, as well as European Union leaders. In a speech from the heart of Europe, Obama declared the crisis in Ukraine a global "moment of testing."

Obama appealed to Europeans to retrench behind the war-won ideals of freedom and human dignity, declaring that people voicing those values will ultimately triumph in Ukraine. Painting a historical arc across the major global clashes of the last century and beyond, he said young people born today come into a world more devoid of conflict and replete with freedom than at any time in history, even if that providence isn't fully appreciated.

The president also urged the 28-nation NATO alliance to make good on its commitment to the collective security that has fostered prosperity in the decades since the Cold War concluded.

"We must never forget that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom," Obama said, adding that the Ukraine crisis has neither easy answers nor a military solution. "But at this moment, we must meet the challenge to our ideals, to our very international order with strength and conviction."

Calm in Europe has been upended by Russian President Vladimir Putin's foray into the Ukrainian region of Crimea. Defying the global community, Moscow annexed that peninsula this month, stoking fears among Russia's other neighbors as Europe was plunged back into an East-West mentality that many had thought was left behind at the end of the last century.

In response to the crisis, the U.S. already has taken some steps to bolster cooperation with NATO, including stepping up joint aviation training with Polish forces. The Pentagon also has increased American participation in NATO's air policing mission in its Baltic countries.

Obama came to Europe intent on shoring up commitments from allies, but also to make a larger point about European security a quarter-century after the fall of the Iron Curtain. In a nod to the U.S. perception that America has borne too much of the burden for NATO members' security, Obama said he wanted to see every NATO partner "chip in" for mutual defense. He said members should examine their defense plans to make sure they reflect current threats.

"I have had some concerns about a diminished level of defense spending by some of our partners in NATO," Obama said. "The situation in Ukraine reminds us that our freedom isn't free."

Despite the focus on NATO resources, Obama and other alliance leaders have said they do not intend for the dispute with Russia to turn into a military conflict.

Drawing on modern struggles, such as gay rights, as well as the ethnic cleansing and world wars of a bygone era, Obama sought to draw a connection between the U.S. experiment in democracy and the blood spilled by Europeans seeking to solidify their own right to self-determination.

"I come here today to say we must never take for granted the progress than has been won here in Europe and advanced around the world," Obama said.

Obama's remarks came midway through a weeklong trip to Europe and Saudi Arabia that has been dominated by efforts to coordinate the European and American response to Putin and his government's actions in Ukraine. In Italy, where he arrived late Wednesday, he planned to meet with Pope Francis and Italian political leaders.

Another reminder of the cost of freedom came earlier Wednesday during a solemn pilgrimage to a World War I cemetery where hundreds of fallen U.S. troops are buried. Followed by the stirring sound of a bugler playing taps, Obama joined Belgian Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo and King Phillipe to lay wreaths at the memorial at Flanders Field American Cemetery and Memorial in northwest Belgium.

"To all who sleep here, we can say we caught the torch, we kept the faith," Obama said, invoking language from "In Flanders Fields," the famous war poem.

In bloom: 2014 Cherry Blossom Festivals

As of March 19, the Japan Meteorological Agency predicts that cherry blossoms will begin blooming March 28 in Tokyo. For a more complete list, go to http://ift.tt/1dtZAvF.

The following are places to celebrate the bloom.

Japan

TSUKAYAMA PARK CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Yokosuka): March 24-April 8; about 1,000 cherry blossom trees with a view of Yokosuka Port; 25-minute walk from Keikyu Line, Itsumi or Anjinzuka Station; 046-822-2575.

GONGENDO PARK CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Saitama prefecture): March 26-April 10; 1,000 trees along a roughly half-mile-long dike is one of the best spots for cherry blossoms in Japan; 30-minute walk from Satte Station on Tobu Nikko Line or a 20-minute drive from Kuki IC on Tohoku Express, 1, parking available nearby; 0480-43-1111 ext. 538.

HAMURA FLOWER AND WATER FESTIVAL (Yokota area): March 27-April 13; this festival has food, street performers and features about 500 trees along the Tama River, illuminated 6-8 p.m.; JR Ome Line, Hamura Station; 042-555-6211.

KINUGASA CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Yokosuka): March 27-April 7; 2,000 trees which are also illuminated in evening at Kinugasa-yama Park, 25-minute walk from JR Kinugasa Station; 046-853-1611.

CHIDORIGAFUCHI (Tokyo): March 28-April 6; Chidorigafuchi, the northeastern moat of the Imperial Palace is one of the most famous sites to view cherry blossoms in Japan and illumination is 6:30-10 p.m. during the festival; Subway Tozai Line, Kudan-Shita Station; 03-5211-4185.

YASUKUNI SHRINE CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Tokyo): March 28-April 6; when predicting the bloom for the Tokyo area, the meteorological agency’s staff uses the 800 trees here; five-minute walk from Subway Tozai Line, Kudan-shita Station; 03-3261-8326.

SANKEIEN GARDEN (Yokohama): March 29-April 6, 9 a.m.-9 p.m.; seasonal flowers and historic buildings in the garden; 10-minute bus ride from JR Negishi Line; 500 yen; 045-621-0634; tinyurl.com/78ccezf.

FUSSA CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Yokota area): March 29-April 6; cherry trees along the bank of Tama River, 15-minute walk from JR Ushihama Station; 042-551-1511.

KOMATSUGAWA 1,000 CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Tokyo): March 30, 10 a.m.-3 p.m.; event with 1,000 cherry trees in bloom along the Arakawa River, has live performances, food booths and free pony ride at Komatsugawa Park, five-minute walk from Higashi Oshima Station on Toei Shinjuku Line; 03-5662-5543.

NINGYOCHO CHERRY BLOSSOMS FESTIVAL (Tokyo): March 30, 11 a.m.-1 p.m.; celebrating the bloom on Hamacho Ryokudo Street (Amasake Yokocho Intersection to Meiji-za Theater, where there were many amasake — sweet drink made from fermented rice or sake lees — stores in Meiji Period (1868-1912). A free cup of amasake is given to first 1,200 people; JR Asakusabashi Station on Subu Line or Ningyocho Station on Toei Asakusa Line; 03-3666-7662.

ODAWARA CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Kanagawa prefecture): Late March until early April; about 320 trees, which are also illuminated 6-9 p.m. during the bloom; 10-minute walk from JR Odawara Station; 0465-33-1521.

TOKYO SUMMERLAND CHERRY BLOSSOM VIEWING: March 31-April 13, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; 1,500 cherry blossoms trees, along with food booths at Family Park; free admission and free parking; 042-558-6511.

YASUKUNI SHRINE CHERRY BLOSSOM NIGHT VIEW NOH PERFORMANCE (Tokyo): April 1-3, 6:40 p.m.; at Yasukuni Shrine Noh-gakudo or Shinjuku Bunka Center if rain; 3,000-5,000-8,000-11,500 yen; Cherry Blossoms Night View Concert Jimukyoku 03-5215-2890.

YAMATAKA JINDAI CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Yamanashi prefecture): April 1-22, 8 a.m.-5 p.m.; a tree here is believed to be 1,800-2,000 years old and the best time to view it is April 5-12; Hokuto city; 15-minute ride from JR Hinoharu Station on Chuo Line or 15-minute ride from Sudama I.C. on Chuo Express; 0551-42-1351.

MOUNT YOSHINO CHERRY BLOSSOM (Nara prefecture): Early April through late April; Mount Yoshino is known as the best cherry blossom site in Japan with 20,000 trees; 75-minute ride from Nagoya Station by Kintetsu Super Express or nearly two-hour ride from Kyoto Station by Kintestu Super Express; 0746-32-1007.

ASAKUSA HANAYASHIKI NIGHT ILLUMINATION & BEER GARDEN (Tokyo): April 2-5 & 9-11, 6:30-9:30 p.m.; visitors to Japan’s oldest amusement park, founded in 1853, can enjoy the illuminated bloom, five rides, street performances, and enjoy a beer at Asakusa Hanayashiki Amusement Park, five-minute walk from Asakusa Station on Ginza Line; 500 yen; 03-5789-8686.

MIIDERA TEMPLE CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Shiga prefecture): April 2-13, 6:30-9:30 p.m.; more than 1,000 trees at the precinct of Miidera Temple are illuminated 6:30-9:30 p.m.; 20-minute walk from JR Otsu Station or a five-minute walk from Miidera Station on Ishiyamasaka Line (Keihan); 500 yen adults, 300 yen senior and junior high school students, 200 yen elementary school students; 077-528-2772.

TAKADA PARK CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Niigata prefecture): April 4-20; commemorating 400th anniversary of founding of shogunate government at Takada by Tadateru Matsudaira, celebrating cherry blossoms festival at Takada Park, which is more than 4,000 trees in bloom are illuminated by 3,000 Bonbori-handled paper lanterns sunset-11 p.m.; JR Takada Station on Shinetsu Line; 025-543-2777.

UEDA CASTLE CHERRY BLOSSOMS (Nagano prefecture): April 4-20; 1,000 trees bloom at the ruins of Ueda Castle Park and the trees are illuminated 6:30-9:30 p.m. weekends during the full bloom; 12-minute walk from JR Ueda Station; 0268-23-5408; tinyurl.com/lcq38ou.

TAKIYAMA PARK CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Tokyo): April 5; 5,000 trees on hilly terrain and traditional live performances, open-air tea services and sweet drink made from fermented rice April 5 (April 6 if rain April 5); Takatsuki-cho, Hachioji city; 042-691-5215.

INOGASHIRA PARK CHERRY BLOSSOMS (Tokyo): Through April 5; 500 trees around the pond bloom at Inogashira Park, near shopping district of Kichijoji; 10-minute walk from JR Kichijoji Station on Chuo Line; 0422-47-6900.

1,000 CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL AT TONERI PARK (Tokyo): April 5 & 6; 1,000 trees in bloom, along with 3,000 fireworks at 7-7:30 p.m. April 5; one-minute walk from Toneri Koen Station on Nippori-Toneri Line; 03-3880-5853.

SHIROISHI CASTLE CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Miyagi prefecture): April 5-30; about 300 cherry trees at Masuoka Koen, with a night illumination around the castle with 350 paper lanterns until 9 p.m.; 10-minute walk from JR Shiroishi Station or 10-minute ride from Shiroishi I.C. on Tohoku Express; free parking; 0224-24-3030.

KOISHIKAWA KORAKUEN (Tokyo): Through April 6, 9 a.m.-6 p.m.; five weeping cherry trees in bloom at Japanese garden here; 300 yen adults, kids free; three-minute walk from Iidabashi Station on Oedo and Sobu Lines; 03-3811-3015; tinyurl.com/kvjfrgs.

RIKUGIEN GARDEN (Tokyo): Through April 6, 9 a.m.-9 p.m.; this garden built in the Edo Period is famous for drooping cherry trees which are illuminated after sunset during the bloom; Subway Nanboku Line, Komagome Station; 300 yen; 03-3941-2222.

UENO PARK (Tokyo): Through April 6, until 8 p.m.; 1,200 cherry trees; two-minute walk from Ueno Station on Metro Ginza and Hibiya Lines; 03-3828-5644.

TOSHIMAEN AMUSEMENT PARK (Tokyo): Through April 6, until 9 p.m.; 800 cherry trees; 500 yen after 3 p.m., free April 4 & 5, 1,000 yen adults and 500 yen kids for ride ticket after 3 p.m. during the week; Seibu Ikebukuro Line, Toshimaen Station; 03-3990-0884.

NEODANI USUZUMI CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Gifu prefecture): April 8-15, 8 a.m.-9 p.m.; Usuzumi cherry tree is believed to be 1,500 years old, illuminated until 9 p.m.; Motosu city, 15-minute walk from Tarumi Station on Tarumi Line or 80-minute ride from Gifu Hashima I.C; 500 yen/parking; 058-323-7756.

SHIROISHI RIVER CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Miyagi prefecture): April 10-25; one of the best known sites to view the bloom, featuring 1,000 cherry trees along Shiroishi River dike, illuminated 6-10 p.m. during the event; three-minute walk from Ogawara Station on JR Tohoku-Line; 0224-53-2141.

AOBAYAMA PARK CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Miyagi prefecture): April 10-30; 480 trees; 10-minute drive from Sendai Miyagi IC or eight-minute bus ride to Hakubutsukan Kokusai Senta-mae bus stop from JR Sendai Station; 022-225-7211.

MIHARU TAKIZAKURA CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Fukushima prefecture): April 12-20; Miharu Takizakura (cherry blossom waterfall) — a cherry tree believed to be more than 1,000 years old — is illuminated 6-9 p.m.; Miharu town, shuttle buses from JR Miharu Station and nearby parking lots or a 20-minute ride from JR Miharu Station or 20-minute ride from Funahiki Miharu I.C. on Ban-etsu Express; 300 yen; 0247-62-3690.

SUMIDA RIVER CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Tokyo): Through April 14; about 1,000 trees along the Sumida River; five-minute walk from Asakusa Station on Ginza Line or seven-minute walk from Honjo Azumabashi Station on Toei Asakusa-Line; 03-5608-6951.

KITAKAMI CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Iwate prefecture): April 15-May 6; about 100,000 trees at Tenshochi Park and along River Kitakami are illuminated sunset-9 p.m.; Tenshochi Park, Kitakami city, 20-minute walk from JR Kitakami Station; 0197-65-0300.

KAKUNODATE CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Akita prefecture): Mid-April through early May; 162 weeping cherry trees around samurai district in Kakunodate town and the River Hinokinaigawa; 394-2 Kamisugasawa, Kakunodate town, Senboku city, JR Kakunodate Station on Akita Shinkansen from Morioka; 0187-54-2700.

MIDTOWN BLOSSOM 2014 (Tokyo): Through April 20; 150 cherry blossom trees in bloom and see them from an open-air terrace at Tokyo Midtown Garden, and 5-11 p.m. the trees are illuminated; Roppongi Station on Hibiya Line or three-minute walk from Nogizaka Station on Chiyoda Line; tinyurl.com/p6tdvrp.

MATSUMOTO CASTLE CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Nagano prefecture): festival starts three days after trees bloom in mid-April and features night illumination, koto and gagaku (traditional Japanese music instruments) and flute performances, open-air tea services and free admission to Matsumoto Castle during the festival; 0263-32-2902.

HIROSAKI PARK CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Aomori prefecture): April 23-May 6; about 2,500 trees around Hirosaki Castle and moat bloom and are illuminated sunset-10 p.m.; 20-minute bus ride from JR Hirosaki Station; 300 yen admission 9 a.m.-5 p.m.; 0172-35-3131.

SHINJUKU GYOEN (Tokyo): Through April 24, 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m.; 144-acre park in Shinjuku, a famous blossom viewing spot; 10-minute walk from JR Shinjuku Station; 200 yen; 03-3350-0151; tinyurl.com/nzg2mjo.

South Korea

HWAGAE CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (South Gyeongsang province): March 29-April 8; Gyeongsangnam-do Hadong-gun Hwagae-myeon Unsu-ri; +82-2-1330; http://bit.ly/xgEvhr and http://ift.tt/1dtZC6J.

CHINHAE CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (South Gyeongsang province): April 1-10; celebration started as a memorial in 1952 to remember Admiral Yi Sun-shin, a 16th century Korean military leader, then the community added the cherry blossoms celebration about 10 years later; +82-2-1330.

JEJU CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL: April 4-6; Jeju’s king cherry trees bloom in Seogwipo’s downtown area (Jeju Citizen Welfare Town) and surrounding Jeju Sports Complex, take Bus 500 and get off at New Jeju Rotary; free; +82-2-1330.

GYEONGJU CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (North Gyeongsang): April 4-13; at Bomunho Lake Resort, along with neighboring Gyeongju, the city’s most beautiful sites for viewing cherry blossoms; Dongbu Historic Complex and Heungmu Park & Geumjangdae, take a Bus 10 to Gyeongju Kyoyuk Munhwa Hoekwan bus stop from Gyeongju Express Bus Terminal; +82-2-1330; tinyurl.com/ozwl26l.

SEOMJINGANG RIVER CHERRY FLOWER FESTIVAL (Jeollanam-do): April 5 & 6; enjoy viewing cherry trees in full bloom, as well as traditional drum performance, paragliding contest, face painting and more; take an intercity bus from Seoul Nambu Bus Terminal to Gurye; +82-2-1330.

SEOKCHON LAKE CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (Seoul): April 11-13; cherry blossom night walk along Seokchon Lake, plus performances, exhibitions and more; Jamsil Station (Seoul Subway Line 2 or 8); +82-2-1330.

CHEONGPUNGHOBAN CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (North Chungcheong province): April 11-13 & April 15, 9 a.m.-7 p.m.; on the shores of Cheongpunghoban Lake, with forsythias, azaleas and other wild flowers in bloom and exhibitions, performances, bungee jumping and water sports on the lake; Chungcheongbuk-do Jecheon-si Cheongpung-myeon Multae-ri, two-hour bus ride from Dong Seoul Bus Terminal; +88-43-1330; tinyurl.com/7yfxmra and http://ift.tt/P4csgD.

YEOUIDO HANGANG SPRING FLOWER FESTIVAL (Seoul): April 12-18; Seoul’s best location to see cherry blossoms on Yeouido Island when the road behind the National Assembly buildings is lined with hundreds of cherry trees; five-minute walk from National Assembly Station (Subway Line 9, Exit 1 or 6).

SILK TOWN MOUNTAIN CHERRY BLOSSOM FESTIVAL (South Chungcheong): April 19; hundreds of wild cherry blossom trees in bloom in Sanan-ri village in Geumsan-gun near Bogwang-ri, Sanggok-ri and Jajeon-ri; take an intercity bus to Geumsan from Seoul Express Bus Terminal, in front of the dental clinic, take a Geumsan-Jewon route bus to Jajinbaengi bus stop; +82-2-1330; tinyurl.com/nsh2wj3 and http://ift.tt/1dtZC6N.

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