Osamu Koizumi, an Iwakuni City police officer, gives a class on common traffic errors in Iwakuni, Japan, in June 2018. (Stephen Campbell/U.S. Marine Corps)
MARINE CORPS AIR STATION IWAKUNI, Japan — Members of the U.S. military community coming to this air station south of Hiroshima will have to study on their own to acquire a status-of-forces driver’s license.
Training time for the written license test has been cut from the three-day “Welcome Aboard” brief, according to a June 12 post on the air base’s official Facebook page.
New arrivals will be expected to know their Japanese traffic before they reach the air station. The 60-question test will still be administered on the second day of the briefing, Christopher Yonat, director of safety and occupational health at MCAS Iwakuni, said by email June 18 to Stars and Stripes.
A SOFA driver’s license allows the holder, who is governed by the status-of-forces agreement governing the U.S. military in Japan, to drive on the country’s streets and highways. No actual driving test is usually required.
“The original SOFA license training and testing was scheduled for two hours,” Yonat said. “Due to the change in the ‘Welcome Aboard’ process, more time was allocated to the gaining commands in order to better meet their requirements for new personnel.”
Several Navy bases in Japan have moved to online self-study, but “MCAS Iwakuni is the only known Marine Corps Installation/Base in Japan that has implemented this approach to SOFA licensing,” Yonat said by email Wednesday.
Not everyone saw the change as a good idea.
“It just infuriated me,” Kristin Cohen, a Navy spouse, said by phone on June 19.
“Something so important, that is driving safely in another country, on another side of the road with different signage, whether we have 20 years of experience driving or two years of experience driving, I just don’t think that’s the place to try to make things less and I think they should do more,” Cohen said.
Taking away that two-hour briefing in orientation will hurt sailors, Marines and their families as they adjust to their new lives in Japan, she said.
“I feel like every time we leave this base, whether we’re Navy, Marine, civilian, we have to be aware that anything and everything we do could be taken wrong or misunderstood, or we are just wrong,” Cohen said.
SOFA members can also sign up for a free off-base driving course developed by the Iwakuni city mayor, in conjunction with the Iwakuni Driving School and the Iwakuni Police Department, Yonat said.
The course provides fundamentals of driving in Japan and guidance on common violations and accidents committed by SOFA members, he said. The courses are offered on a quarterly basis throughout the Japanese fiscal year, which begins April 1.
Yonat said SOFA license training was moved online to a self-paced course, rather than a train-to-test briefing, to ensure that long-term memory of Japanese traffic laws becomes second nature.
“The amount of study time required to pass the test will vary depending on the individual,” he said. “This allows inbound personnel the ability to study for the test well in advance of their arrival to ensure that they are thoroughly familiar with traffic laws and regulations.”
These test materials can be viewed on the official MCAS Iwakuni web site via smartphone, personal computer or government computer from anywhere in the world, Yonat said.
Information on the self-study format is included in the installation’s sponsorship programs, base spokesman 1st Lt. Aaron Ellis told Stars and Stripes by email on Wednesday.
