In meetings in Tokyo on Sunday, Prime Minister Naoto Kan, Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto and U.S. State Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed that Japan and the United States will fully cooperate with each other as Japan attempts to reconstruct the nation from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami and to contain the nuclear crisis at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
It was most appropriate that Mr. Kan told Ms. Clinton that Japan would never forget the support and help the U.S. provided to Japan through its Operation Tomodachi following the deadly natural disasters. Relief and search operations conducted by the U.S. armed forces for disaster victims and missing people in the Tohoku-Pacific region involved some 20,000 personnel, 20 ships (including the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan) and some 160 military aircraft.
The U.S. also sent Japan fresh water to cool the Fukushima plant's reactors, and members of the U.S. Marine Corps Chemical Biological Incident Response Forces assisted at the nuclear plant. It also offered photographs of the plant taken by a Global Hawk unmanned reconnaissance plane.