Every Christmas the US Air Force Makes This Beautiful Mission for a Group of Tiny Islands (VIDEO)

By Eric Corpus, Friday, December 27, 2013

Every year, there's one mission that everyone at the U.S. Air Force's Yokota Air Base in Japan wants to be part of: Operation Christmas Drop. Since 1952, Airmen have flown over the islands of Micronesia and airdropped essential food, water, tools and clothing for the 30,000-plus natives of this region east of the Philippines in the Pacific. It's the longest-running humanitarian airlift mission in the world. Over the years, practice has made perfect, taking the failure rate of these shipments to virtually zero.

Airman magazine asked an island chief why Operation Christmas Drop was so important to his people. In a surprising statement from a community that has no capability to make or import anything, the supplies were not the main thing. The Micronesians most appreciate that despite the United States' involvement on countless matters on a global scale, the Air Force takes time to help them every year without fail.

For the people of Micronesia – as I'm sure was uttered yesterday from Maine to Hawaii – it's the thought that counts.