After Haiti relief, Iwo Jima returns sailors and Marines to Norfolk

NAVAL STATION NORFOLK, Va. — The amphibious assault ship Iwo Jima returned here Monday to offload personnel and equipment used for relief efforts in Haiti after the hurricane.

The ship left its Mayport, Florida homeport and loaded up with supplies in Norfolk to help Haiti after Hurricane Matthew devastated a swath of that country had cut a path across parts of Haiti before heading on to the United States and up the East Coast.

Arriving off Haiti six days after Norfolk, the ship participated in the effort as part of Joint Task Force Matthew, lead by Rear Adm. Roy Kitchener, commander of Expeditionary Strike Group 2. The JTF, which included units from all the military services, delivered over 600,000 pounds of supplies to over 100,000 citizens impacted by the storm.




What his sailors and Marines did, he said, was a playbook out of what expeditionary strike groups are supposed to do — and they got some some real world training in the process.




“For readiness, it’s really good. — we took a group of disparate organizations, many different Navy and Marine Corps units, two ships at different phases in their work-up cycles and integrated them together to do this mission,” Kitchener said. “It doesn’t get any better than this — and it’s a real mission.”