Pacific Partnership continues successful journeys
FORUM Staff
Pacific Partnership 2016 has racked up successes in Timor-Leste, the Philippines and Vietnam so far this year. The joint mission conducted by partner nations continues in Palau and Malaysia through mid-August after which participants will head to the final destination of the 2016 tour: Indonesia.
Partner nations and allies have teamed up for 11 consecutive years to enhance disaster preparedness and readiness to respond to any crisis in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. This year’s participants include members of the military from Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Singapore and the United Kingdom.
“We strongly believe our engagements between Pacific Partnership 2016 participants have improved capacity and enhanced regional partnerships and increased multilateral cooperation with the people of Vietnam,” said Capt. Takeshi Okada, commander, Landing Ship Division One, Joint Maritime Self-Defense Force, embarked aboard JS Shimokita, according to the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM) website. In the above image, the JS Shimokita cruised alongside the U.S. Naval Ship (USNS) Mercy on its way to Da Nang, Vietnam, in July 2016. They, along with the Vietnam People’s Navy ship Khanh Hoa, participated in this leg of the mission.
“With nearly dozens of complex medical engagements completed, Pacific Partnership 2016 was a resounding success due to the incredible planning and the delivery of world-class medical care by our Vietnamese colleagues,” said Capt. Peter Roberts, commanding officer of the medical treatment facility aboard Mercy, the PACOM website reported.
After completing two weeks of disaster response training, medical and engineering subject-matter expert exchanges, cooperative health engagements and community relations events with Vietnamese and U.S. colleagues in Da Nang, the Japanese Ship Shimokita departed July 28 to lead a mission to the Republic of Palau to engage “in medical exchanges, engineering projects, and cultural exchanges with our partners in Palau,” he said.
Meanwhile, the USNS Mercy arrived August 1 in Kuantan, Malaysia. This is the first Pacific Partnership visit to Malaysia. Since 2006, Malaysia has provided teams to support the annual joint mission. Malaysian civilian and military leadership planned the key activities for Pacific Partnership 2016. Personnel from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea and the United States are working together with their Malaysian counterparts to conduct subject-matter expert exchanges to improve regional disaster preparedness and resiliency. They are especially focused on multilateral cooperation and working to strengthen relationships and interoperability among participants to ensure partner nations are prepared to respond together and effectively when a disaster strikes.
“The unique nature of [the mission] is how this really is an exchange of professionals, of partners,” Cmdr. Miguel A. Gutierrez, director of medical operations and planning, Pacific Partnership 2016, told PACOM. “In every country we’ve been to, there have been different levels of medical capabilities. Malaysia, by all accounts, has world-class medical capabilities, so our big thing here is a focus on high-end medical exchange.”
In addition to medical seminars, Pacific Partnership will conduct a search and rescue seminar as well as civil engineering projects and community relations events. For example, Malaysian Armed Forces and U.S. Navy Seabee engineers are renovating two schools in Kuantan.
Construction Electrician 2nd Class Ernest Cherwin, a crew leader for an elementary school restoration project in Kuantan, told PACOM, “Most of our work is meant to improve the quality of the sites we visit and learn from our partners.”
