Biden Wraps Up Asia Tour, Thanks U.S. Troops for Japan Recovery Aid

Washington — Vice President Biden met with U.S. troops at Yokota Air Base in Japan to thank them for their assistance in Japan’s recovery efforts following the country’s devastating earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster earlier this year.

His August 22–24 visit to Japan comes at the end of a nine-day, three-nation tour of Northeast Asia, which included stops in China and Mongolia.

The White House said Biden met with U.S. service members at the base who “delivered relief supplies, assisted search and rescue efforts, provided specialized technical assistance and helped restore critical local infrastructure” following Japan’s March 11 disaster. The August 24 White House release said the troops were instrumental in helping their Japanese counterparts clear and reopen points of entry to Japan, including damaged ship ports and airports. The most notable symbol of U.S.-Japanese military cooperation in the wake of the disaster is Sendai Airport, which serves the most severely affected area in the country.

Biden praised that cooperation in remarks to survivors at the airport August 23. He said that within one week of the disaster, Japanese forces and their U.S. counterparts had reopened the airport’s runway, enabling the arrival of hundreds of relief workers and more than 2 million tons of supplies. The efforts were part of the U.S. military’s Operation Tomodachi (“Friendship”) — the single largest humanitarian relief effort in American history. Read more

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