Providing Context: A Brief Introduction of Pat

This is me on graduation day from Department Head School in 2009.

Now that I have provided a few posts to this blog, I realize I have not given any sort of context for the blog.  That is to say, you may have no idea who I am or why I’m writing in this blog other than the fact I’m in Japan at the moment.

My name is Patrick Drain, or Pat, or Draino, and I’m originally from Cleveland, Ohio.  I spent four years in Massachusetts for college, and I have been living in San Diego over the last 10 years since I graduated.  I’m a lieutenant in the United States Navy, and I am what we call a Surface Warfare Officer, or SWO for short, which means I work on ships.  I am a Department Head (Combat Systems Officer) on a guided missile cruiser homeported in San Diego, CA, and my ship’s Strike Group is on deployment as we speak.

“What am I doing on the ground in Japan while my ship is at sea?” you might ask.

I came out to Japan a couple weeks ago to take part in a planning conference here on the Yokosuka, Japan US Naval Base.  My Captain is the Air Defense Commander for the Strike Group, and I came here to act as his representative for the conference.  When the conference was over, my group decided it made the most sense to stay here and continue planning for other future events that would be occurring in the Far East, but all this changed when the earthquake and tsunami occurred.

The night of Friday, March 11^th, the day the earthquake occurred, the guys I’m working with and I were just about to head out into town.  We had been planning on taking the train to Yokohama that day, but all trains had been shut offline as soon as the earthquake occurred, so in our minds at the time we were thinking - we can’t really go anywhere else, so let’s go to the Honch or Blue Street, local downtown areas where restaurants, bars, and clubs are located.  Although we had seen some of the damage of the earthquake and tsunami, we did not yet appreciate the extent of the damage to this amazing nation.  Before we left to go out we received an email from our Strike Group to report to the local Task Force commander, and start assisting in the relief efforts that had just started to get underway.

We established a watchbill, and we have been providing 24/7 assistance to the local Task Force Commander since then, aiding in the planning of the recovery efforts by the US Navy here in Japan.  It has been a highly educational experience for me, as it is the first time where I have been able to see some of the highest levels of our government in action, and I have learned a lot about how we make decisions in our nation.

A night out in Tokyo before the earthquake occurred.