KADENA AIR BASE, Okinawa, Japan -- Marine Corps Installations Pacific Provost Marshall Office’s K-9 Team held its first demonstration for the Okinawa Prefectural Police K-9 Unit Oct. 20 at the Kadena Passenger Terminal on Kadena Air Base.
MCIPAC PMO’s K-9 Team held this demonstration to showcase the capabilities of their Military Working Dogs to the OPP K-9 Unit, to strengthen their future partnership and to open up training opportunities for both sides.
The mission of a MWD is to detect and locate controlled substances, explosives and illegal narcotics. Handlers continuously train in different environments with the MWDs to ensure they are both engaged and ready.
“The demonstration showed two sides of our dual-purpose dogs,” said Sgt. Rosendo Madrigal, a military police officer and dog handler with Headquarters and Support Battalion, MCIPAC-Marine Corps Base Camp Butler, Japan. “Our dogs are trained in either narcotics or explosives, as well as aggression. The bilateral training was more of a demonstration for the [OPP].”
There were two portions to the demonstration: the aggression training and the narcotics training. OPP’s K-9 unit is currently only trained in tracking. In 2017 and 2018, they are looking to introduce narcotics and aggression capabilities.
According to Takeshi Amuro, a PMO investigative officer and translator for the demonstration, MCIPAC PMO’s K-9 handlers gave OPP pointers about training their dogs, and describe how PMO’s K-9 trains. This will help them understand how to train their own handler and dog teams.
Takaharu Shimada, the superintendent of OPP, expressed his appreciation for the Marines and his excitement for future training opportunities.
“Thank you very much for today, it was great training,” said Shimada “This helped us ease our nervousness and we enjoyed coming out today. I’m very impressed by what you have demonstrated. We learned a lot, and hopefully we can continue to learn alongside you in the future. There is no bridge to gap, we are all brothers.”