A U.S. Navy strike group's flagship aircraft carrier left its Japanese home port on Thursday, wrapping up nearly nine years of deployment in the Indo-Pacific, where it served a key role in the U.S. effort to bolster defense ties with Japan and other partners in the region.
Family members and friends of the crew were on hand to wave the carrier off from Yokosuka Naval Base after its final patrolling mission earlier in the day. Hundreds of sailors stood along the rails while others on the flight deck stood forming the Japanese saying 'dewa mata,' or 'see you.' The carrier was accompanied by two guided-missile destroyers, USS Robert Smalls and USS Howard. Speaking at the ceremony, U.S.
Ronald Reagan first arrived in Yokosuka in 2015. Earlier, during its deployment near the Korean Peninsula, the carrier contributed in Operation Tomodachi, following the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in northeastern Japan. USS Ronald Reagan was the only American aircraft carrier deployed as a flagship of the Carrier Strike Group 5 under the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet, to a home port outside the U.S.
Japanese and Chinese coast guard ships repeatedly face off in the waters there. Former Defense Minister Tomomi Inada, who recently joined an environmental survey trip near the disputed Senkaku islands, which Beijing calls the Diaoyu, said Thursday that cooperation with the U.S. and other like-minded countries is key to defending the international order. 'We have a sense of urgency that we must not let the East China Sea become another South China Sea,' she said.
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