Jan. 11, 2008
Q: I have lived here for more than two years and love it. The base is great, transportation is great and the activities that are offered are great. My concern is the radio station, Eagle 810 that is based out of Yokota. They advertise so much for Zama and Yokota, but you really don’t hear much for Yokosuka. I was wondering what it would take to get our own radio station here that could actually promote events on this base. I think it would benefit all involved, by informing those here of pertinent events. Yokota’s base is half the size of ours, and I think we deserve a station; we are a great base and can use it for moral and for emergency purposes. During typhoons and tsunami warnings, what better way to get information across to the public quickly and efficiently than through a Yokosuka based radio station? During the last Typhoon warning, there was very little information given about this base and the closures on Eagle 810.

A: Radio stations in foreign countries are governed by the host nation and we are fortunate to have what we have with our one AM signal as it is. In fact, Armed Forces Network (AFN) Tokyo has one of the most powerful signals, commercial or military, anywhere. No other military station anywhere is allowed to broadcast at 50 kilowatts. In Europe, U.S. military stations are rapidly approaching going all digital due to European Union and hostnation restrictions. The Japanese government has been extremely generous in allowing us to retain our AM band and broadcast at the power that we do. It takes years to do the paperwork and get not only host-nation approval but approval of an international body that governs over-theair radio transmissions. In today's world the chances of the U.S. military obtaining a new broadcasting bandwidth in a nonwar zone situation are probably less than zero. That is something that would require extremely high-level government-togovernment negotiations. But, it does not prevent communities from using their base commander's access cable channel from getting information out to the community, a capability Commander Fleet Activities Yokosuka recognizes and does a great job of taking full advantage. We take our lead for typhoon Condition of Readiness information from U.S. Forces Japan through a well-coordinated information plan developed over several years. It does get tweaked from time to time and is reviewed every year before the typhoon season starts to see if any information is obsolete or needs changing. We can certainly look at making any and all changes necessary to better serve the Yokosuka community. We welcome any suggestions to help improve the process. AFN Tokyo serves the entire Kanto Plain, an audience of 73,000 that includes all U.S. military installations and the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. We do our absolute best to disseminate as much command information as possible in support of all of our communities. We actually produce a fairly high volume of command information products that service the Yokosuka community. Much of that is geared towards MWR services and activities. They just happen to be one of our biggest and most proactive customers. We also provide a forum for the CFAY commander once a month to address the Yokosuka community in a live, call-in radio program, one of only two communities on the Kanto that have that availability. We also do two live remote broadcasts from the Yokosuka community to promote the command and activities.