Senior Chief Culinary Specialist Kevin Caron from Commander, Submarine Group 7 describes the unwritten past, present, and future of the submarine sanctuary at Fleet Activities Yokosuka.
Transcript
I’m Chief Caron. I work at Submarine Group 7, and this is the Yokosuka Submarine Sanctuary. The sanctuary is designed to take care of submariners when they pull into port, specifically, chiefs and officers. I think being on a submarine in general is very challenging. Physically, mentally, it can really wear you down. And that goes the same for the leadership side of the house. I’d say probably a little bit more only because I’m not just worried about me. Right, I’m worried about the 165 other sailors on board. That can be extremely stressful. And this place is kind of designed to help you kind of plant yourself back on Earth for a second and realize, all right, you don’t have to be wound tight 24/7. You can kind of take a little bit of time to take care of yourself for once. You know, you wake up in kind of your own bed. You’re not sharing it with somebody else. You have the freedom to turn on the TV and watch what you want. Obviously, there’s barbecues, and there’s cornhole and foosball and pool and shuffleboard. So, there are amenities here that you kind of lose when you go underway obviously. But I think the biggest thing, especially being a submariner, is the friendships and the camaraderie, the people that you work with. That is the biggest thing about being in the submarine service. I think it’s one of the things we cherish the most, is kind of the brotherhood of the fin or the dolphins. As you look around and even behind me, you’ll see pictures from boats that have been out here, that have stayed here. There’s logbooks going all the way back from current to 1965, and it’s not just U.S. Navy submarines. For example, the Royal Australian Navy, you’ll see some flags from them. So, it’s a fair mix and even the JMSDF, you’ll see some of their footprint in here. If this wall could tell stories, it would have some pretty amazing stories. You know, it’s the only place on Earth that’s realistically, entirely dedicated to taking care of a submarine crew deployed.