Quick question.  Once someone passes the overseas screening locally, do the medical records get forwarded to Japan and need to pass a screening there, too?  Or, are we cleared and ready to go if we pass where we are stateside?  Thanks!

They have to get sent over to the command over here. You need to go to PSD and tell them to write up your DEA/FEA and have it sent over. Once it's over here, the command will get it reviewed and sent back to PSD. Depending on where you're going and where you're leaving, depends on the time it takes to get it approved. We had ours sent out on a Friday and it was back by Tuesday morning. I left on a Wednesday to come over.  If you are doing it through Norfolk, I suggest you keep on them.  It took us three months to just get them to send it over.  They kept doing it wrong.  PSD Afloat.

You have to get the screening done in the states to be sure you are suitable for an overseas tour. Once you get to your destination overseas you do not have to do anything else except drop your medical records off...

Yeah what they said with the additon of when I left to come here , sandiego no longer allowed me to hand carry my medical record. So I went down to the record office and got a copy made. It cost $20 and took about a week. I turned in the copy of the record into my medical here on Okinawa. Otherwise they have to send for your record once you get assigned to a medical facillity once you are in Japan.You wont be assigned to a Primary Care Provider here in Japan until you are in Japan.There for there is no one to request your records. As for active duty it works differnt. They just handed over his record to him and he carried it here.

I was allowed to bring my records over with me. We just had to personally turn them over to medical.

I'll be requesting my records and my daughters records as well.. Hopefully there will be no issue..

Thanks for your responses, everyone! Another question or two.....medical in Japan will look at the overseas screening without the DEA/FEA paperwork, won't they? Or do they need that first? I guess I thought they were separate things and that we can't even get the DEA without being cleared? Argh! My husband is just putting that in that paperwork now & we're supposed to be leaving in a couple of months. I hope we have time for everything.

Regarding our medical records, we were told here that dependents don't need to bring them along, but we're supposed to put in a request to transfer them once in Japan.

You don't get your DEA until you have been cleared through medical. If you aren't cleared, then you wouldn't get a DEA. We submitted our Medical stuff and then had to wait on the DEA for a long time. We jsut got it back a week ago and we are leaving in 3 weeks. Talk about a time crunch. Our household goods office wouldnt let us set up our moves until we had it, but as soon as we got it, they were very quick about getting us the dates that we needed.
For medical records, I am sure you could probably just request them when you get to Japan, but I feel better about having them with me, so I know for sure they get there. )

Joshnabbey, thanks for your help! Good luck with your move. I'm so excited for you! You didn't run into any problems with not giving your current housing (if you're in any) 30 days notice of moving, did you? I'm kind of concerned about that if we have a similar time issue. I don't want to give notice until we know for sure that we're leaving.

Reading this is all so confusing for me. It seems like there's either no policy or no one knows what it is, and being new to the military, that may be the way it always is. Unlike some of the other people up here, my wife was in school, so Japan will be our first active duty station, she gets commissioned tomorrow. We have the overseas screening completed and signed off by everyone, we have been able to schedule our move and have been put in touch with 2 of the 3 movers, but we have been told we can't get the DEA even sent to her gaining command for approval until she goes on active duty. She has also been told that we can't schedule our flights over until she gets to ODS, at which point I'm not sure how much contact I'll have with her. Anyway, I trust it will all get done, but just thought I would share my thoughts on how different this experience seems to be for everyone.

Utralcorn, I agree with you. It seems that the military is sometimes inconsistent. I hope everything gets worked out smoothly for you. You seem to be farther along in the process than we are right now. On our end, everyone seems to expect my husband to know what to do even though we've never reinlisted or transferred before. They keep giving him incomplete information and then come back saying, "Oh yeah, you need to do this, too." Then, they're too busy to help him figure out specifically what he's supposed to do. But, I imagine it will all work out one way or another.

Ultracorn, If ODS for your spouse is like it was for mine... I talked to him everyday several times a day. It was nothing like I expected.

As for everything getting done. Stay on them. We just detached our commanded and are currently on leave. 1 week prior to our detachment we had just submitted our information for the DEA and ofcourse had NO plane tickets. Needless to say, with help from a wonderful sponsor (staying on the Yokosuka end too) we had everything back in 4 days. I was stressing big time as you might imagine. Luckily, we were able to set up our move and stuff before any of that and they placed our stuff in storage pending DEA. After we got our DEA, we faxed over a copy to the movers and they fetched our belongings out of storage (after they were only in there for a few days) and now they are in-transit.

Hope this helps!!

Thanks everyone, I trust it will work out, I'm just ready for that time to get here.

Posted By jupiterinka on 06-01-2011 7:49 PM
  It seems that the military is sometimes inconsistent.

lol, nominated for "Understatement of the Year!"

If anyone knows some good info on overseas screenings to Sasebo please message me. I have orders to Sasebo and an issue came up for one of my dependents. I have a few questions. please message me if you have a little insight on this, it is a little personal so i would prefer not to post it for all to see. Thanks for understanding.