Kadena Air Base on Okinawa Urges Service Members to Prepare for Typhoon Vongfong

Just days after Typhoon Phanfone left three American servicemen dead on Japan's Okinawa Island, Typhoon Vongfong is pushing toward the island for a tropical curtain call that U.S. military officials are taking seriously.

About 50,000 American troops are stationed in Japan, and nearly half of them are on Okinawa, the Associated Press reports. With the center of Vongfong expected to pass within 100 miles of Okinawa, military bases are preparing for major impacts to their base. Conditions on the island are expected to go downhill quickly Friday. As a result, officials have raised the Tropical Cyclone Condition of Readiness, or TCCOR, to level 3.

According to Stars and Stripes, servicemen and women at Kadena Air Base have been urged to begin preparations for the storm. They request that all loose objects be tied down or brought inside, and other preparations be made to ride out the storm for as many as three days.

"PST (Pacific Storm Tracker) will not soon forget one photograph of a trampoline lodged into a power transformer a couple of years ago," a base official wrote in the report.

As with any tropical system, Stars and Stripes, which reports on matters affecting the U.S. military, has suggested that service members get storm-ready. That includes getting a flashlight and portable radio, non-perishable food and water, money and gas to last several days.

Preparations are likely to have a serious tone after last week's tragedy on the base. Three airmen were killed by the raging seas off the coast of Okinawa in the wake of Typhoon Phanfone. The bodies of all three men have been recovered.

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