Staff Sergeant Kelsey Kent
Power Production Specialist, 353rd Special Operations Group, Kadena Air Base, Japan

On March 11, 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake rocked Japan, triggering a 30-foot tsunami, killing thousands while devastating coastal villages and much of the Japanese countryside in the northeast. It was the largest earthquake ever recorded in Japan.

Staff Sergeant KELSEY KENT, a power production specialist from the 353rd Special Operations Group, immediately went to work. Along with 19 others, he quickly deployed to Sendai Airport to support humanitarian relief efforts there and in the surrounding region of the Miyagi Prefecture.

Upon arriving at the airport, Sergeant Kent discovered that none of the airport’s transformers worked as a result of the tsunami. The taxiways and runways were also critically damaged by flooding, so much so that the flood waters reached the second level of the passenger terminal. After assessing the damage, he went straight to work. Laboring for more than 36-hours straight, Sergeant Kent singlehandedly established diesel-run generator power, and soon the Air Force Special Tactics team was able to use Sendai Airport as a base for their humanitarian relief operations.

For three weeks, Sergeant Kent worked through countless powerful aftershocks and under the constant threat from unknown amounts of radiation emanating from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Eighteen to twenty hours workdays were the norm – all necessary to provide power to more than 250 U.S. military members and three separate command centers that brought humanitarian relief directly to the Japanese.

But just doing traditional power plant duties wasn’t enough for Sergeant Kent. Garnering the nickname “Clark” for his Superman-like efforts, he marshaled pallet loaders, drove forklifts, loaded and unloaded tons of relief supplies, and refueled vehicles. His individual efforts helped bring more than 2.4 million pounds of equipment and relief supplies to Japan, in addition to the first fuel load to a local hospital in Sendai to operate its generators.

For Sergeant Kent’s selfless determination and tireless work ethic, he was nominated for the Joint Service Achievement Medal.