Mansfield Fellow Assumes Command of Fleet Activities Yokosuka
July 28, 2016
Mansfield Fellow Assumes Command of Fleet Activities Yokosuka
Jeffrey Kim (United States Navy), a member of the twentieth group of Mansfield Fellows, assumed command of the U.S. Naval Base in Yokosuka (officially known as Fleet Activities Yokosuka) in a ceremony held on July 22. Fleet Activities Yokosuka is the largest U.S. naval installation in Japan and home to the U.S. Seventh Fleet Headquarters and the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan.
Captain Kim recently concluded his Fellowship year in Japan, and guests at the ceremony included Fellowship classmates Daniel Benson (United States Marine Corps) and his wife Christine, Patrick Tibbals (United States Air Force), and Rico Doss (U.S. House of Representatives) as well as Mansfield Foundation Tokyo Office Director Teruyo Kuramoto, Associate Director Chie Igarashi, and Administrative and Program Assistant Saori Kobayashi (pictured above). The family who hosted Captain Kim in Ishikawa Prefecture at the beginning of his Fellowship year also attended the ceremony, along with friends and former colleagues from Japanese government offices where Captain Kim had Fellowship placements over the past year. These included the: Ministry of Defense; Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism; Kanagawa Prefectural Government; and National Diet.
In remarks during the change of command ceremony Captain Kim paid tribute to Ambassador Mansfield’s characterization of the U.S.-Japan relationship as the most important bilateral relationship in the world, “bar none”, and closed by saying he would do his utmost to support the Japan-U.S. relationship.
