Complex Mission Hampers U.S. Effort

Daily News Article   —   Posted on March 22, 2011

(by Chester Dawson, The Wall Street Journal, WSJ.com) CAMP SENDAI, Japan – The series of disasters that has befallen Japan since March 11 has complicated the U.S. military aid effort, as cooperation with Japan’s government, inclement weather and a radiation fears have hampered the humanitarian mission.

U.S. military aid missions, such as the one last year to quake-devastated Haiti, are routine. And while Operation Tomodachi (Japanese for “friend”), using the many American troops already based in Japan, has delivered tons of aid and equipment to those hardest hit by the destructive forces of nature in Japan, the magnitude-9.0 earthquake, ensuing tsunami and especially the unfolding nuclear-power crisis have weighed on the U.S. armed forces relief mission.

The first U.S. Marines Corps humanitarian assistance survey teams, or HAST, raced north from bases in the southernmost Japanese prefecture of Okinawa early on the day after the quake. Just a few hours after notice of their deployment, they arrived primed and ready at bases outside Tokyo. But it wasn’t until Wednesday that the first of four teams was sent to northern Japan, and then only to deliver a few loads of bottled water shipped out of Yokota Air Force Base, along with donated food trucked in by Japanese from other parts of the country.

One clue to the delay: As the first Marine HAST team waited on the tarmac in Yokota to board a troop transport, a specially equipped U.S. Air Force plane carrying radiation-detection equipment taxied by after having flown in close proximity to the two damaged nuclear plants.

The plane was “hot,” in the words of one U.S. military aviation officer, using jargon for something on which radiation has been detected.

The U.S. military’s attention was divided between two separate missions: the well-publicized humanitarian effort and a quieter campaign to assess the extent of leakage from Japan’s troubled coastal reactors.

On Sunday, the pace of assistance picked up as three U.S. Marine KC-130J cargo planes carrying water and supplies became the first flights to land at Sendai airport since it closed after the earthquake struck.

In addition, four Marine Sea Knight helicopters flew out of a U.S. Navy base in Atsugi near Tokyo with 18 pallets of clothing and two pallets of food to Yamada Radar Site, north of Sendai. On Saturday, six of the helicopters delivered 76 barrels of kerosene to several distribution points north of Sendai.

The frustration with the delay was evident Thursday when the Marine commander in charge of the relief effort insisted the show would go on, nuclear crisis or not. “We expect to deliver more water, more blankets and more food sources once we get our hands on them,” Col. Greg Timberlake, forward commander of the III Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Sendai in northern Japan, said.

The first Marine detachment sent to Camp Sendai, which lies just over 50 miles north of the radiation-spewing power plants, came unprepared for the snowstorms, lacking standard-issue winter parkas and insulated boots. But the outfit was well-equipped with hand-held radiation detectors, full body suits with breathing hoods and ample supplies of potassium iodide, a preventive against radiation poisoning of the thyroid gland.

A map of Japan on the wall of the U.S. Marine officers’ headquarters at Camp Sendai bore a large red circle indicating the 50-mile-radius “no-fly zone” around the nuclear power facilities, which are located between Tokyo and the tsunami-stricken north. The atmosphere was tense in the Marine officers’ makeshift “war room”-a recess in a hallway of the local Japanese staff officers’ headquarters building.

In one sign of the stress as the nuclear crisis unfolded, an American official helping to coordinate activities with the Japanese Self Defense Forces grew teary-eyed when discussing these cooperative efforts. To be sure, that official said the two militaries were largely on the same wavelength. But other U.S. and Japanese military sources said language, protocol and cultural barriers had proved more daunting than expected, especially for two close allies.

Even so, it came against a backdrop of higher level joint U.S.-Japan efforts to prevent a nuclear meltdown.

In addition to advice from American experts sent by President Barack Obama, the U.S. military has provided Japan’s Self Defense Forces with equipment to help cool exposed nuclear fuel rods. But that initiative, along with the dispatch of American nuclear experts to Japan, has been separate from the humanitarian aid-focused Operation Tomodachi.  [NOTE: The Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) are the unified military forces of Japan that were established after the end of the post-World War II Allied occupation of Japan. For most of the post-war period the JSDF was confined to the islands of Japan and not permitted to be deployed abroad. In recent years they have been engaged in international peacekeeping operations. Recent tensions, particularly with North Korea have reignited the debate over the status of the JSDF and its relation to Japanese society. from wikipedia]

The commander of the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet, which is based in Japan, noted the difficulty posed by carrying out humanitarian operations amid the threat of a nuclear meltdown.

“We are dealing with a disaster of enormous scale, in a challenging environment where we have to contend with the reality of radiological contamination,” wrote Vice Adm. Scott Van Buskirk in a posting on his Facebook page on Saturday. “It creates complications in our planning and execution, but I am more confident each day that we have the ability to manage and mitigate this risk without endangering the health of our people.”

Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.  Reprinted here for educational purposes only.  Visit the website at wsj.com.