New Navy Mom and Christmas

kdbax

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DS is based in Japan. He hasn't been there long and right now is working on housing. In fact, right now he's out at sea and we're not sure when his housing will be finalized. I have his Christmas presents ready to ship, and I have his ship's FPO address. Can I sent a package to him care of the ship? (DS seemed to think I should wait until he has a Japan address - but that's much more expensive.) Thanks for any help!
 
DS is based in Japan. He hasn't been there long and right now is working on housing. In fact, right now he's out at sea and we're not sure when his housing will be finalized. I have his Christmas presents ready to ship, and I have his ship's FPO address. Can I sent a package to him care of the ship? (DS seemed to think I should wait until he has a Japan address - but that's much more expensive.) Thanks for any help!

kdbax: I am no expert on this but from what I remember all navy ships and installations have a Fleet Post Office (FPO) mailing address. Mail is delivered to these ships and the Navy works hard to make sure the system works for obvious morale purposes.

I did a quick google search and you can find all the ship FPO addresses. I also saw a note about latest dates for Holiday shipments which I posted below. I hope that helps.

http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=76321
 
It should not cost you anymore to ship it to Japan because even if he lives off post/base they will have an on base/post box, thus it would be the exact same cost. The only mail when we lived off base that we ever received were the utility bills for the house we rented. The rest of all of our mail from the states went to APO Box 6944 AE XYZ12....funny I can remember the box number 20 yrs later, but not the zip.

The way the cost is determined if I recall correctly is you will be charged the cost to ship to that FPO zip code. For example, when we lived in England ours was an AE and the shipping was out of NY, so the cost was not ship to the UK, but just to NY. I believe the Pacific (AP) all went out of San Francisco.

USMC is correct they have a date for Xmas to guarantee arrival. The reason why is because they will send it to one collection base. Ours was Germany, and from there it is routed to the actual base, which added a few more days into the travel time.
 
This all sounds about right from what I can remember. Regardless of where you DS resides, on or off base, he will receive a PO Box on base. Not sure about other bases, but our PO in Oki was run by Marines. They received a late shipment of mail on xmas eve, they called all the Mail Officers (oh what a fun collateral duty that was) and said we had an hour to pick it up. The Marines were so excited when I showed up at the barracks with a lot of last second gifts from home.
 
Thanks so much - it's most appreciated. I think I'll be okay sending to the ship's FPO address for now.
 
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