Misawa Air Base

Misawa Air Base is the home for 35^th Fighter Wing which is situated in the northern side of Japan and is the only joint service unit in Western Pacific which is a home to the US Army, US Navy, US Air Force and Japan Defense Forces which can be seen once in a while. It houses the 5,200 US armed employees, 350 US national personnel and the 900 Japanese personnel.

The Misawa Air Base has a space for Passive Radio Frequency surveillance which functions as a tracking satellite. It also houses a Security Operations Center which is in the northern part of the base and considered as largest ECHELON station.  The base also serves as joint military-civilian airport making it open for commercial flights to Tokyo and Osaka under the operation of the Japan Airlines. Recently, the Misawa Airport and the Misawa Air Base experienced flight delays because they are using only one runway.  This leads to the proposal of a new runway to lessen the congestion in a single runway.

35^th Fighter Wing which serves as a host unit the area carries out flight training to F-16 for their combat readiness. There are five groups that are under the jurisdiction of 35^th Fighter Wing namely, 35^th Maintenance Group, 35^th Mission Group, thirty fifth operations Group, 3th Intelligence Group and the 35^th Medical Group. Misawa Air Base has outstanding amenities for recreation and education and a great deal of improvement in the education system was made to facilitate quality education for the children of the servicemen.

Misawa Air Base has insignificant damage during the March 2011 earthquake and this does not stop them from assisting in the disaster recovery program. They help in the 1,400 families that voluntary left the base for another place outside of Japan.