Acting with tact and a dispatch, an American Air Force team based in Okinawa restored the airport at Sendai, now reopened and under Japanese control.

The situation was quite different after the Kobe earthquake in 1995. Then, Tokyo rejected assistance by the United States military, a decision that many Japanese criticized as possibly raising the death toll. This time, Tokyo accepted, and promptly.

[snip]

Within minutes of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake on March 11, some 1,400 passengers and workers in the terminal suddenly found themselves surrounded by black, churning waves that crumpled parked aircraft like paper toys.

The people were rescued, but the airport seemed a near total loss — until Col. Robert P. Toth, commander of the 353rd Special Operations Group, based in Okinawa, heard of the airport’s destruction. His unit specializes in turning ruined landing strips and patches of empty desert into forward supply bases for American aircraft, but usually in war-torn countries, like Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan.

“It was clear that opening Sendai Airport was the No. 1 priority, but everyone had written it off,” Colonel Toth said. He approached his superiors with a plan to turn it into a hub for American relief.

Bravo.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 14th, 2011 at 10:30 am.