Photo By Daniel Sanford | Members of the Misawa Navy Snow Team, comprised of sailors from Naval Air Facility...... read more read more
SAPPORO, Japan - Anchors aweigh? How about bombs away?
That's what many spectators could have said as they watched the Misawa Navy Snow Team's giant "ice anchor" collapse yesterday, a casualty of unseasonably warm weather that's currently rolling through Sapporo just days before the city's annual snow festival is due to kick off.
The sailors had spent four full days sculpting a nine-foot block of snow in preparation for the festival's snow sculpting exhibition. This year marks the 28th year that Naval Air Facility Misawa and its tenant commands sent a team to build a sculpture on behalf of the base.
"We had just completed building this really awesome looking anchor, and were stepping back to admire it, when all of a sudden it just went down," said Misawa Navy Snow Team member, Petty Officer 3rd Class Daniel Grimes, information systems technician. "Yeah, none of us were very happy at that point. The deadline for completion was in two days."
Upon returning to their temporary quarters at Camp Sapporo, Misawa Navy Snow Team Leader, Chief Builder Billy Knox mentioned to his counterparts from the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force that their week’s worth of hard work just went the way of Davy Jones Locker.
"All my guys were disappointed, especially seeing as we were all but done," said Knox. "So when I saw some of our friends from the JGSDF that night, I communicated to them what happened."
While neither Japanese soldiers nor Knox could fully communicate in each other’s language, Knox was able to communicate that the anchor had collapsed, and the Japanese soldiers were able to tell him they would like to help the team rebuild.
Fast forward to the next morning and the Misawa Navy Snow Team was back at work building a new anchor, aptly named "The Phoenix." Right alongside them, members of the JGSDF lugged heavy buckets of wet snow to the sculpture's base; within the hour, an anchor began to take form once again.
"You know, we could have just sat around and sulked about it, but we came back today and really busted our butts to get this thing built," said Grimes. Our friends from the JGSDF were also a huge help and even showed up with tools and some crossed pipe that we used to build the core of the anchor."
As the sculpture progressed, Knox said there was a lot of humor to be found in the team's current predicament.
"As we were building up this second anchor we joked with each other and said not many people get the opportunity to build a snow sculpture in Sapporo," said Knox. "But how many folks can say that had the opportunity to build two in the same week?"
By the time the sun began to set, Navy Misawa's "Phoenix" anchor stood up proudly toward the downtown Sapporo skyline.
While perhaps not as detailed as the team's first attempt, this one was made even more special because of the close bond that was built that day through a mutual respect that seemed to transcend spoken language: hard work.
And although there weren't any long soul-searching conversations with their Japanese counterparts, Knox said it really wasn't necessary.
"We communicated just fine, but there was one word they did know, and we used it all day to refer to each other," he said. "That word was "brother."
For more news from Naval Air Facility Misawa, visit https://www.cnic.navy.mil/misawa/index.htm or check out our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/nafmisawa.
| Date Taken: | 02.04.2011 |
| Date Posted: | 02.04.2011 03:29 |
| Story ID: | 64778 |
| Location: | SAPPORO, HOKKAIDO, JP |
| Web Views: | 205 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Misawa Sailors Overcome Adversity and "Anchor Up", by Daniel Sanford, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
