{"id":111313,"date":"2021-03-12T09:32:27","date_gmt":"2021-03-12T14:32:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=111313"},"modified":"2021-03-12T09:32:27","modified_gmt":"2021-03-12T14:32:27","slug":"1st-marine-aircraft-wing-triggers-people-on-twitter-with-photo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=111313","title":{"rendered":"1st Marine Aircraft Wing triggers people on Twitter with photo"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 1st MAW sent out what they thought was an innocuous tweet. A Marine flying over Okinawa took a snapshot of a gorgeous sunset over the Japanese city, with the Wing sharing it. As happens with some regularity, social media being the bane of modern existence, the post drew lots of ire. Why? Because there was one of those scary black metal pew-pew things.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Stars and Stripes reports<\/a>;<\/p>\n

The 1st Marine Aircraft Wing removed a tweet Monday of an Okinawa sunset photographed from a helicopter in flight after it provoked a sizeable negative response.<\/p>\n

The sunset wasn\u2019t the problem, according to local media reports, but the view included the barrel of a .50-caliber machine gun and the caption: \u201cOki views! A view down the barrel with HMH-465 \u2018Warhorse\u2019 on a recent flight in Okinawa!!\u201d The caption included the hashtags #FightNow and #FreeAndOpenIndoPacific.<\/p>\n

The photo showed two CH-53 Super Stallion helicopters from Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 465 returning to Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Ginowan city after a training mission, wing spokesman Maj. Ken Kunze said in an email Thursday to Stars and Stripes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe weapon in the lower left of the photo that is pointing away from any populated area below was locked in the up position for travel and no Marine was manning it when the photo was taken,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, The Okinawa Times, for one, reported the tweet as insensitive for depicting weaponry being flown over Okinawa cities.<\/p>\n

\u201cOrdinary residents get startled when they see guns,\u201d even though they often see service members carrying them, Takashi Kishimoto, director of Okinawa Heiwa Undo Center, or Okinawa Peace Movement Center, told Stars and Stripes by phone Thursday. \u201cIt is unthinkable from the residents\u2019 point of view to post a photo showing guns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kunze maintains the wing\u2019s Twitter account and posted the tweet Sunday, he said during a follow-up phone call Thursday with Stars and Stripes. Typically, the wing\u2019s posts get about 10,000 impressions, he said. This tweet went from about 10,000 to about 90,000 in 24 hours\u2019 time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe focus of the photo was the sunset and the weapon in the foreground was incidental,\u201d Kunze said. \u201cOur aircraft fly around Okinawa frequently with weapons mounted while transiting to training areas \u2026 Weapons are always locked in an elevated position while in transit and Marines are not manning them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kunze said the photograph drew many positive comments but also attracted many vulgar and misleading ones. He said he took the tweet down because he could not respond to all the negative and misleading remarks, not because he believed the tweet was inappropriate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe post was taken down because inappropriate and misleading comments were being made,\u201d Kunze said in his email. \u201cSome of the comments were vulgar and it was suspected that some of the responses and re-tweets were being promoted by individuals outside of Japan in an attempt to spread the misleading information.\u201d<\/p>\n

Okinawa Prefectural Officials declined to comment Thursday. Ginowan city officials did not respond to requests seeking comment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Marines have weapons? The unmitigated gall of those Devil Dogs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 1st MAW sent out what they thought was an innocuous tweet. A Marine flying over … 1st Marine Aircraft Wing triggers people on Twitter with photo<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[156,331],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guns","category-marines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=111313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111315,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111313\/revisions\/111315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=111313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=111313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=111313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}