SENDAI — In September 2009, I resigned my tenured faculty position at a Japanese national university to begin working for the U.S. Marine Corps in Okinawa. While at Osaka University, I had the opportunity to teach many talented Japanese and international students over the years both at the undergraduate and graduate school levels. Several went on to join the media.

I met one of those former students while I was in Miyagi Prefecture participating in the initial two weeks of "Operation Tomodachi," the American contribution to the Tohoku earthquake relief efforts that now involves more than 20,000 military service members and other U.S. personnel. He is currently based in Sendai and works for a major Japanese news agency. He visited the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force's Northeastern Army Headquarters, which is serving as the headquarters of the Joint Task Force set up to respond to the earthquake, and to observe and report on the Japan-U.S. Bilateral Coordination cell, which was established to coordinate the U.S. contribution to the Japanese efforts. I was one of the U.S. participants in the cell.

Afterward, I received a short note from him by e-mail. "I was so glad to see you the other day. Thank you for working so hard every day. I already began to feel it the other day when I came to report (on your meeting), but as a victim of the disaster, I want to say that I have never felt as strongly as I do now about the importance of the U.S. forces in Japan and thankful for all their contributions."