Kitty Hawk sailors chafe under liberty rules - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Kitty Hawk sailors chafe under liberty rules

SAN DIEGO — So you’ve got liberty in Japan? First, fill out this form. Then, get your chief’s OK. And if you want to drink, don’t forget your liberty buddy. And remember to phone in each day, even on your weekend off.

Those are just some of the rules for sailors stationed in Japan aboard the carrier Kitty Hawk, at least until the ship hands over its berth next summer to the George Washington before its eventual decommissioning.

Kitty Hawk sailors are living with some of the strictest liberty rules in the Navy, even when their ship is at its home port in Yokosuka with other forward-deployed Naval Forces commands.

Every Kitty Hawk sailor E-6 and below, and anyone planning to drink off base, must have an authorized liberty buddy and a detailed individual liberty plan that requires approval from his superior. Any change to that plan must be reported and approved by the first khaki in the command chain. The liberty restrictions — often tightened after a spate of off-duty and alcohol-related incidents involving sailors — don’t always end there, according to sailors and fleet spokeswomen.

Several incidents occurred the week after Kitty Hawk returned from deployment Nov. 27. In response, the command tightened the policy by requiring departmental chiefs or officers to reach by phone or physically see each of their sailors E-6 and below every evening — even on weekends and regardless of marital status — to make sure they were following approved liberty plans.

The restrictions infuriated some sailors.

“Kitty Hawk has entered a new phase of stupidity with its liberty plan requirements. 100 percent contact of every sailor by a khaki every night!” an unidentified sailor wrote in an e-mail to Navy Times. “The good are being punished with the bad.”

Another Kitty Hawk sailor, in a posting on a blog, lamented the newest restrictions.

“It’s just sickening the way we are treated. The biggest sting of all is watching the 16-year-old dependents of other sailors walk the base freely by themselves.”

And it’s not necessarily any better for sailors on the other Japan-based ships.

One petty officer first class aboard the destroyer Mustin, in an e-mail to Navy Times relayed by another sailor, wrote about an impromptu date with his wife to a local restaurant, thanks to a helpful friend’s offer to baby-sit their son. But before they could sit down to dinner and drinks that night, he had to go back to the ship to fill out a liberty plan and get his command’s OK.

Considering his age and rank, “[I] should not have to ask for approval to consume a drink in public with my wife.”

But Navy officials say the liberty rules are needed to ensure good relations with the local community at their home ports or other foreign liberty ports. Alarmed by some high-profile crimes and allegations involving sailors, officials rewrote liberty rules in 2003, setting new off-duty and liberty restrictions for junior sailors, and instituted a system of color-coded liberty passes for sailors with U.S. Naval Forces-Japan.

“Relationships with our friends and partners can be negatively impacted by the poor conduct in foreign ports,” Cmdr. Dawn Cutler, a 7th Fleet spokeswoman, said by telephone Wednesday.

An off-duty incident that gets little attention in the U.S. often becomes a firestorm of controversy in Japan, officials said.

Kitty Hawk’s recent spot checks were temporary, “since most liberty incidents in the past have occurred in the first few days after a return from deployment,” she said.

The carrier did throttle back to require spot checks on 20 percent of sailors E-6 and below, Cmdr. Jensin Sommer, a spokeswoman for Task Force 70 aboard Kitty Hawk, said Friday via e-mail. Sommer said that is a normal fleet requirement, noting that spot checks are at each ship commander’s discretion.

“These spot checks are a way to re-emphasize the point that if you want to deviate or make a change to your original plan, it is OK to do so, as long as you contact the first khaki in your chain of command and inform him/her of the change,” Sommer said. “This allows the sailor the flexibility to make a change to enjoy his/her liberty.”

While officials laud the “flexibility” such rules provide, sailors call them restrictive and little more than baby-sitting.

“In my 21 years of service in the Navy and 10 years served under 7th fleet, [I’ve] never seen [it] this bad,” an unidentified Kitty Hawk chief petty officer wrote on a blog. “Hopefully, the future is more promising with the GW.”

Some sailors said tight restrictions have hurt morale.

“The ships are so paranoid about people messing up because if they do, the ship has to formally address the incident, why it happened, why they didn’t prevent it and what they’ll do to ensure it doesn’t happen again,” one sailor assigned to a Yokosuka warship wrote to Navy Times.

The recent crackdown in Kitty Hawk’s liberty came about the same time as the publicized arrest of a petty officer second class, who allegedly punched a Japanese woman Dec. 2 in Yokosuka and is assigned to 7th Fleet command ship Blue Ridge, according to articles in Stars and Stripes.

The sailor who wrote the e-mail said the Blue Ridge doesn’t require its sailors to submit individual liberty plans.