 Military leaders from 22 nations came together to kick off the RIM of the Pacific Exercise 2012, July 2nd. U.S. Pacific Fleet is hosting the exercise in and around Hawaii. Petty Officer Jamar Balacey has more. During a press conference at Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam, Admiral Cecil Haney, Vice Admiral Gerald Beeman, Rear Admiral Ron Lloyd and Rear Admiral Fumiyuki Kitagawa announced the beginning of Exercise RIM of the Pacific, or RIMPAC 2012. The theme of capable, adaptive partners resonates as you look at what we are doing here in the world's largest international maritime exercise. RIMPAC is critical to ensuring the safety of sea lanes and the security on the world's oceans. For those of us participating in this Olympic year, it's our Olympics of sort. But instead of competing with each other, we like to consider it a gathering of gold medalists representing 22 different nations. The game for us is a realistic and relevant training exercise called RIMPAC 2012. RIMPAC is a unique training opportunity that helps participants foster and sustain cooperative relationships. Japan greatly suffered from disasters last year, earthquake and tsunami. All of the countries attending here today gave us sincere and heartfelt support. I'd like to express my sincere thanks on behalf of the people of Japan for what you have done for us during this time. From Pearl Harbor, I'm Petty Officer Jamar Balacey.