The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Munro offered public tours in Juneau on Tuesday before departing to conduct flight operations with Air Station Kodiak.
It’s just the beginning of the national security cutter’s four-month patrol in Alaska. The 150 active-duty crew members vary their time at sea from three to six months.
Munro is homeported in Alameda, California, down San Francisco Bay. The ship left March 18 and headed up towards the Inside Passage for boat operations just south of Baranoff Island, before traveling through Stephens Passage and Gastineau Channel to reach “beautiful Juneau.”
“We are building the future afloat community here,” said Capt. Jim O’Mara, the commanding officer of Coast Guard Cutter Munro. “Making port visits – interacting, opening up a national asset like this to the public – that’s not only part of our job, but it’s also something that we take pride in and it’s fun.”
The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Munro docked at the Juneau Cruise Port on Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Jasz Garrett / Juneau Empire)
“Building the future afloat community”
O’Mara and members of his crew said patrolling in Alaska allows sights that only a small fraction of the Coast Guard will see.
“Not many people get up here and get to have these unique experiences, and it’s an important part of keeping our cutter community coming back,” O’Mara said. “You want to give them good experiences and show open arms to the community.”
The cutter’s crew was welcomed with open arms at a dinner hosted by the Juneau Yacht Club on Monday.
Yeoman First Class Andre Cloud opened remarks at the event, saying the best four years of his life happened while he was stationed in Juneau. In an interview on Tuesday, he explained why.
“You realize how many people come to Alaska, they fall in love with Alaska, and they don’t leave it,” Cloud said. “My previous boss had done 15 years in Alaska. I was having lunch with my old neighbor here in Juneau, and I was just discussing with him, ‘Coming back feels like home.’ It’s such a safe, easygoing community, a great place for family. I think that’s what drives the Coast Guard community to want to stay here.”
The U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Storis is set to be homeported in Juneau in the coming years. Cloud acknowledged the housing challenges, but emphasized the opportunity.
“I think you do yourself a disservice to not see such an untouched, really protected, very vital part of the United States, especially with the economic driver that the state has with the fishing industry,” he said. “Just living in a place that pushes that as well, but also being a state that’s so massive — it’s like you can still hide away a little bit, but still be around people.”
Cloud said he would consider working in Alaska again and would like to see more of the state. He took his Munro shipmates to the National Shrine of St. Thérèse, and they had the day alone in nature. He said it’s quite different from their homeport, the San Francisco Bay area, where there’s constant traffic and people.
“It’s just peaceful out here,” Cloud said, reminiscing on the Chilkat Range. “I think it’s also if you’re in the Coast Guard and you feel like you’re at a point in your life, you’re stressed in your career — Juneau, Alaska, can give you a reset. You can just get out and enjoy being here.”
Tom Dawson, a U.S. Navy veteran and former board member of the Juneau Yacht Club, toured the ship on Tuesday. Munro boasted its flight deck, 57-millimeter cannon, and small arms ranging from .240 to .50 calibers. The cutter also hosts a close-in weapon system and advanced threat indication and warning systems. O’Mara said the radars and navigation systems, as well as the weapon systems, are interoperable with the U.S. Navy and U.S. Department of Defense.
Dawson met with the captain in his office to discuss the cutter’s namesake and the Juneau Yacht Club event. After the tour concluded, he was told to wait a few moments. O’Mara presented him with paperwork detailing Munro’s history.
“Every ship that comes in, whether it’s Coast Guard, or we had a Navy ship in here, I go aboard all of them,” Dawson said. “I love going, I miss being on board. When I was in the Navy, I was aboard aircraft carriers because I was an Airdale.”
Munro’s mission
The ship will do similar community outreach when it conducts flight training at Air Station Kodiak. O’Mara said they will meet with MH-60 Jayhawk pilots on their way in and before they depart for the Bering Sea.
“Every opportunity we get, we integrate with air stations, and it’s good for their proficiency and training, and it’s great for ours as well,” he said, adding that the qualifications will be day and night. “Everything we do with training, qualifications, and proficiency does boost and enhance safety.”
Air Station Kodiak works closely with the cutter to respond to search and rescue (SAR). Munro will spend the bulk of its patrol in the Bering Sea, focusing on SAR and fisheries law enforcement.
“We can fly C-130s, H-60s, and come out from Cold Bay,” O’Mara said. “The cutter is part of a SAR system of response, but we’re definitely not the only one. There’s a lot of bench strength, backup, and reinforcement out there.”
Other commercial fishing vessels often help distressed vessels. He said problems can occur if vessels go adrift, are disabled mechanically, or encounter dangerous sea and weather conditions. Munro has three response boats that it can launch, acting like a floating air station for the Jayhawk MH-60 to refuel.
“We can extend our legs and on-scene support with multiple boats if needed, de-watering equipment, plugging and patching gear,” he said. “So we can bring a pretty robust search and rescue capability, whether the vessel is simply disabled in a drift or, heaven forbid, if there’s people in the water, or the vessel capsizes.”
The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Munro’s large flight deck is seen on Tuesday, March 25, 2025. The ship has two hangars to support both models of Coast Guard helicopters and an aerial reconnaissance drone. (Jasz Garrett / Juneau Empire)
Munro will monitor fishing vessel safety and regulations, and marine conservation and management. The cutter coordinates with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
O’Mara acknowledged that the Bering Sea has a multibillion-dollar commercial fishing industry that feeds the U.S. and the world, and because of that, it has a professional, well-organized fishing fleet.
“The Bering Sea Fleet, they are the most prepared, because so much is at stake, not only with their own lives and livelihoods, but because they know they’re operating in a very dangerous patch of water,” O’Mara said.
In addition to SAR and fisheries law enforcement, the cutter will focus on border security and territorial integrity. The last time Munro patrolled Alaska was in 2023. Before coming back north, the ship was in the western Pacific to counter drugs and illegal, unregulated fishing (IUF).
O’Mara said the surge of national security announced on Jan. 21 does not change the crew’s mission because they are always trained to be proficient no matter where they are deployed.
“The commanding officer is completely and inescapably responsible for the safety of the ship and her crew, no matter what mission we do, no matter where we go,” he said. “Nothing about today’s geopolitical environment or funding or budget or tomorrow’s changes what my responsibilities are to the Coast Guard.”
In Alaska, border security takes place at the maritime boundary line, where the U.S. exclusive economic zone (EEZ) presses out from the Aleutians against Russia’s EEZ.
“That maritime boundary line is over 1,000 miles long and there’s a spot in there where neither of our exclusive economic zones have claim,” O’Mara said. “It’s the high seas. It’s known as the donut hole. We may — and typically do — go out along the maritime boundary line, go into the donut hole, monitor for any fishing incursions, and if that occurs, we report it back up to OPCON (operational control), and they work with all of our interagency partners to take appropriate after-action.”
The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Munro completes a first-of-its-kind full-scale chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) exercise on March 6, 2025. (Photo by Kenneth Wiese / U.S. Coast Guard)
On March 6, before coming to Alaska, Munro conducted a chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense (CBRN) exercise, which was described online as a “first-of-its-kind full-scale event.”
Mission-Oriented Protective Posture (MOPP) level four requires full coverage of protective gear. The Facebook post by the U.S. Coast Guard Pacific Area noted that with global weapons of mass destruction threats on the rise, “it’s more important than ever for our Coast Guard members to be prepared.”
O’Mara said there was no specific threat indication or warning that drove the exercise, but higher-probability events like SAR and counter-drug usually take priority.
“It’s one of those low, low probability, but high consequence events that the Coast Guard has always had an enduring training and proficiency in posture for,” O’Mara said. “It’s not that we have just started using that gear or training on it. We took the next step and actually donned that MOPP level-four gear and got the ship underway from Alameda and moved offshore, activated our countermeasure and washdown system. It was to really test our ability to do it in a simulated, contaminated environment.”
Crew members of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Munro stand in Captain Jim O’Mara’s (center) cabin on Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Jasz Garrett / Juneau Empire)
Douglas A. Munro
In the captain’s cabin, a U.S. Marine’s seal and a Coast Guard seal hang on the wall side by side. Another sight that may only be seen aboard Munro, according to O’Mara.
The cutter’s connection to the Marines lies in the story of its namesake, Douglas A. Munro.
“There won’t be many captain’s cabins that you’ll come into, and you’ll see another organizational seal, because Douglas Munro in Guadalcanal, he was part of the landing craft party,” O’Mara said. “Because of all the Marines that were saved, we have forever been intertwined.”
Munro oversaw a group of 24 Higgins boats, engaged in the evacuation of a battalion of marines trapped by enemy Japanese forces at Point Cruz, Guadalcanal, on Sept. 27, 1942.
His Medal of Honor citation states that “after making preliminary plans for the evacuation of nearly 500 beleaguered marines, Munro, under constant strafing by enemy machine guns on the island, and at great risk of his life, daringly led five of his small craft toward the shore. As he closed the beach, he signaled the others to land, and then in order to draw the enemy’s fire and protect the heavily loaded boats, he valiantly placed his craft with its two small guns as a shield between the beachhead and the Japanese.”
When the evacuation was nearly completed, Munro was instantly killed by enemy fire.
O’Mara started his career on the Legacy 378 Munro — 24 years later, he is on the latest ship named after the only Congressional Medal of Honor Coast Guard recipient. He has been the commanding officer of Munro since May 2024.
“There will always be a ship named Munro in the cutter fleet,” he said. “It’s important to us, our namesake. We take a great deal of pride in it.”
A portrait of Douglas A. Munro is seen in the hall leading to the captain’s cabin on the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Munro on Tuesday, March 25, 2025. Beside his portrait is a chart of Munro’s homeport in San Francisco Bay. In the upper left-hand corner of that chart is the Congressional Medal of Honor, which Munro was awarded after he was killed in action in September 1942. (Jasz Garrett / Juneau Empire)
• Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz.garrett@juneauempire.com or (907) 723-9356.
Juneau residents tour the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Munro’s bridge on Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Jasz Garrett / Juneau Empire)
