ATSUGI NAVAL AIR FACILITY, Japan — Marine Sgt. Christopher David was waiting in line Thursday.

He, with 50 other Japanese and American volunteers, waited in a chilly hangar off Atsugi’s flight line Thursday morning to board a C-130 aircraft and fly to a Japan Air Self-Defense Force base on the southwestern island of Kyushu, out of the “danger zone.”

David was among a group of role-player “evacuees” in the NEO (noncombatant evacuation operation) part of the Keen Sword 2005 exercise focusing on evacuating noncombatants. Despite the chill, he said he was comfortable and thought the operation was going smoothly.

The Marine sergeant was among some 14,400 people who took part in the Japan-wide exercise simulating the defense of Japan.

The exercise was to conclude Friday. Thursday’s portion was designed to test the Evacuation Control Center operations crucial to an NEO, said NEO coordinator Capt. Craig Petersen of the Third Force Service Support Group.

“ECC is designed to transport U.S. citizens or local citizens out of a hostile area,” he said. “It’s a way to process, keep track of and account for them in an orderly fashion, out of the hostile environment.”

Volunteers were run through five different ECC processing stations Thursday, experiencing the same basic procedures as any commercial airline passenger, from identity verification and baggage checks to being scanned before boarding for weapons and contraband.

“We can process about 60 people an hour,” said Petersen.

After the “evacuees” arrived on Tsuiki, the JASDF base, they were to be turned over to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs “for the next leg of their NEO journey,” Petersen explained, “a trip by a Japanese CH-47 helicopter to another base on Kyushu representing a ‘safe haven’ or friendly country.”

In a real evacuation, he said, from there, they could be placed on a civilian aircraft “to get them where they need to go.”