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thedrifter
05-04-09, 07:11 AM
Zama H.S. cadets take part in four-day training program at Camp Fuji
By Tim Wightman, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Some of them hadn’t gotten so much as a glimpse of Mount Fuji before, much less Camp Fuji.

From the top of the Marine Corps-run training base’s rappelling tower, nearly 50 teenagers from Zama American High School got a clear view of both.

Dressed in camies, the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps cadets could have been mistaken for seasoned soldiers the way they performed a combat offload during their arrival Friday on two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters.

The cadets, ages 14 through 18, took a few steps off the helicopter and lay chest-down atop their equipment on the flight line as the helicopters started back for Zama to pick up the next group. The teenage noncommissioned officers took control as the group readied for the march to the tower.

It was about 8 a.m. and everything was on schedule for the four-day field training exercise that started the night before when the cadets set up their tents at Dewey Park on Camp Zama, an Army base near Tokyo.

After rappelling, the cadets underwent pugel-stick training, where they would attempt to knock each other off their posts with padded sticks.

Their weekend was to include land-navigation and survival training, where the cadets would be required to make their own fishing hooks, catch trout and eat bugs. The training was to conclude Sunday with a 12-kilometer road march followed by a leadership reaction course that emphasizes first aid.

Encouraging leadership is what the program is all about, said JROTC instructor Lt. Col. Mike Fleetwood.

"They have to plan it, they have to coordinate it and they have execute it just like any other staff," he said. "Everything that it takes to put this thing together, that’s what they do. These are life skills that they’re learning that they’re taking with them."

On Friday, Fuji Marines assisted the cadets at the 40-foot tower. For some cadets, it was a cakewalk. Others took more time, slowly building trust in their rope.

"That was really fun," said freshman Jennifer Kaneakalau after her descent. "At first I was nervous, but once I got the rope it was actually really easy."

Senior Carlo Orciga, the JROTC battalion commander and recipient of an ROTC scholarship to Virginia Commonwealth University, said his goal is to develop cohesiveness in the unit.

"I work with cadets who have a lot of attitude and ones that actually work well with the team, and I just try to mold them into thinking the same," Orciga said. "That’s the best experience for me: teaching them to work well with each other."

See photo gallery

http://www.stripes.com/09/may09/cadets/

Ellie