Rnaf

Military will not pay for you to ship a car to Japan.

I was not stationed at Okinawa but elsewhere in Japan a few years back.....You will NOT be able to ship a car to Japan per Japan rules. The Gov't will pay for one car to be stored at certain facilities in the US while stationed in Japan.

You might feel differently after you've deployed a couple of times and been shot at and rocketed constantly. These people want you dead for no other reason than you are American. Nothing like helping save the terrorists' lives after they tried to overrun the hospital in Bagram. Force feeding as torture....oh please

I came in at 42 with 3 years prior service.

A couple of more things. If you do work at one of the "joint" bases, remember if you are Navy your performance reviews will be done by Navy even if you work directly for an AF officer. Need time off, your departmental direct AF commander will not be the approval you need, it will be a Navy OIC that will ok it ( even if you don't work with/ for them directly)...at least in my case this is how it has been done. You can see where joint base is sometimes in name only. Yes, we work together but we are two completely different branches and follow our own branch rules and regulations while working together for better or worse. Also, concerning your example above about switching jobs....I think the big key here is a Navy Captain (which is an AF Colonel equivalent) did the switch.

Don't let the name joint base confuse you. Until (if ever) there is one medical command for the military each branch will work primarily separately. The Navy has primary command at Hickam and 100% staffs the OR nurses. Each military branch has control of the slots (jobs). There are no AF slots in the OR at Hickam, therefore, you can not work as an OR nurse at Hickam if you are AF. I think you are in for a nightmare with one being AF and one being Navy. The AF will do their best but will not guarantee the same base for military to military. Now you want them to coordinate with the Navy for PCS, deployments,etc for you both....they don't call it red tape for nothing. Also, the more specific you are in your specialties the less bases that are available to you. In the AF, med surge nurse...alot of bases you can work at, OR nurse, not so many( as an example ). Remember the needs of the AF and Navy will come first and that is not just talk.

Anything is possible but I wouldn't hold my breath. I'm AF stationed at an Army base but my orders were for the local AF base. I'm an AF OR nurse and I can't be stationed at the Joint base Pearl Harbor Hickam but an AF med surg nurse could. The variables for your scenario are endless.

I was stationed at Misawa a few years back and it is a very small hospital. You may be able to get a job in one of the clinics. It just depends on what job openings there are. There are no other applicants to choose from other than the spouses so it might not be as bad as you think....timing and luck.

I'm an AF OR nurse getting ready to deploy for the 3rd time to and honey by the grace of God there won't be another war in a very long time. I expect the tempo to be low key this time versus the my last two deployments as the war is winding down. I hope nobody ever has to see what I've seen with my eyes in this war. I've also gone on 2 humanitarian efforts in the last 6 years and they are not trauma situations. You are mainly there to assist in human deformities( cleft palate, eyes, cysts, etc). You do realize that OR nurses don't perform the surgeries and in the majority of the time aren't even in the surgical field (that's a scrub tech's job). Maybe you need to become a trauma surgeon?