Nearly 12 years since the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami hit the Tohoku region, triggering the worst nuclear crisis in recent memory, a day of tragedy can now also be seen as one that set in motion a broad and important shift for the Self-Defense Forces and the country’s alliance with the United States.
In retrospect, the day is proving to have been a turning point in the more than 70-year-old alliance. At the time, what former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Mike Mansfield termed “the most important bilateral relationship in the world” was in 2011 facing strains over the then-governing Democratic Party of Japan’s handling of ties as well as backpedaling on a controversial agreement to move the Futenma Air Base in Okinawa Prefecture. Yet the alliance saw a dramatic improvement in the weeks, months and years following the two countries’ disaster response.
The Japan Times sat down with two of the allies’ top military commanders overseeing those relief operations and the response to the triple-disaster, which killed nearly 20,000 people and left scores homeless, to get their perspectives on what happened in the ensuing days, as well as the indelible impact it had on the alliance.
<p>The Japan Times sat down with two of the allies’ top military commanders overseeing those relief operations during 3/11 obtain their perspectives on what happened in the ensuing days, as well as the indelible impact it had on the alliance. Then Gen. Ruoichi Oriki, chief of th SDF's Joint Staff at the time, recalls immedialy mobilizing 10,000 personnel and establishing the first joint task force in history among JSDF components. At Pearl Harbor, Adm. Patrick Walsh, command of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, initially through the 9.1 magnitude event signalled trouble with monitoring equipment, but once evidence poured in to the contrary, the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet based in Yokosuka, sent ships off international waters near Tohuku in order to be prepared to assist the JSDF. The interesting aspect was that both national forces were focused on saving lives, but the Japanese side had no experience with nuclear safety and thus felt the nuclear disaster unfolding in Fukushima was outside Gen. Oridi's purview; from the American aspect, the nuclear aspect is what 3/11 a different type of disaster. In particular, information sharing beween both nation's forces was an on-going problem as was Washington's lack of appreciation of the struggles of Japanese forces in trying to understand the sitution that was unfolding. If there was positive aftermath, it was that the experience of 3/11 helped revised the Guidelines of U.S.-Japan Defense Cooperation in 2015 to create a formal Alliance Coordination Mechanism to allow both Japanese and U.S. military to coordinate and share information in peacetime as well as war. In addition, the effectiveness of the JSDF increased when earthquakes hit Kumamoto prefecture in 2016. Finally, U.S. officials felt the joint response to the disaster sent a powerful message of deterrence to China by highlighting the U.S. military's capabilities in East Asia.</p>