Immediately following the tragic earthquake and tsunami on March 11 in the Tohoku region, U.S. military forces in Japan began sending supplies, equipment, and personnel to the devastated area to assist in the relief operations known as "Operation Tomodachi."
We are still in the middle of this large effort to support the Japanese people through its government and the Japanese Joint Task Force, but some of us participating in the relief operations are already accumulating lessons learned and thinking about the future.
One of those lessons learned, which I identified years ago in a published paper, is the need to increase the involvement of the U.S. military in domestic disaster exercises here in Japan. There are only a few prefectures, such as Tokyo and Shizuoka, that include elements of the Japan-based U.S. military in their exercises.