Capt. Joseph Parsons, head of the Navy's support activities on Okinawa, is pinned with the command ashore insignia by his wife, Rosa Parsons, alongside their son, also named Joseph Parsons, at Camp Shields, Okinawa, Dec. 12, 2024. (Brian McElhiney/Stars and Stripes)
CAMP SHIELDS, Okinawa — A flight officer with several previous deployments to Okinawa took charge Thursday of Navy operations on the island, a unique command that encompasses naval aviators and ocean-going sailors.
Capt. Joseph Parsons relieved Capt. Patrick Dziekan, an E-2 Hawkeye pilot, as commander of Fleet Activities Okinawa, a collection of personnel and installations, including White Beach Naval Facility, during a ceremony at the Crow’s Nest Club on Camp Shields.
About 230 sailors, family, friends and guests from across the U.S. and Japanese militaries on island attended the ceremony.
Rear Adm. Ian Johnson, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Japan and Navy Region Japan, praised Dziekan, who took charge in December 2021.
“Your team supported uninterrupted fleet operations across multiple domains, executed hundreds of vessel movements and sorties while ensuring seamless logistics and operational readiness,” Johnson said at the ceremony.
He specifically cited the command’s support of exercises Keen Sword in November and Citadel Pacific in July. It also received Navy Installations Command’s excellence award in 2023, the first given to an overseas installation, Johnson said.
Capt. Joseph Parsons, left, takes command of the Navy’s support activities on Okinawa from Capt. Patrick Dziekan, right, during a ceremony at the Crow’s Nest Club on Camp Shields, Dec. 12, 2024. (Brian McElhiney/Stars and Stripes)
Dziekan called Parsons “the right person for this job” during his brief remarks right before relinquishing command.
Okinawa’s Navy command, headquartered at Kadena Air Base, traces its roots on the island to 1951, according to its website. It also has a presence on four other installations on Okinawa, including White Beach, the staging area for Marines headed out to sea.
Task Force 76 at White Beach is its primary tenant command, with multiple missions, including expeditionary and amphibious warfare and humanitarian relief efforts.
On the aviation side, it maintains two UC-12F Huron aircraft to support logistics flights throughout the Indo-Pacific, and its shore basing division supports deployed aviation units, according to the command’s website.
Parsons is the rare nonpilot to take command of Navy operations on Okinawa. He told Stars and Stripes he will draw on his experience as a flight officer on P-8 Poseidon and P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft in charge of large crews to lead an organization that encompasses 32 tenant commands and thousands of sailors and civilians.
“On a P-3 we had a crew of about 11; on a P-8 it’s about nine for a standard mission,” he said Tuesday at Navy headquarters on Kadena. “Every one of those positions is critical to the mission in its own way, none more important than any of the others, and the mission can only get done when the whole team is working together, and that’s really how I view any command that I’ve ever been in.”
Parsons said he looks forward to working with the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force and teased bilateral training in late February on a “simulated aircraft mishap.”
He most recently served as Maritime Operations Center director and deputy chief of staff for Theater Anti-Submarine Warfare at Submarine Group 7, Task Force 74 and Task Force 54 at Yokosuka Naval Base, south of Tokyo.
A native of Dryden, N.Y., Parsons was designated a naval flight officer in 2004, according to his official Navy biography. He served his first deployment on Okinawa in 2005, he said.
Dziekan is headed to Joint Region Marianas on Guam to serve as chief of staff.
