Self-Defense Forces helicopters and other aircraft are dispatched on more than 400 assignments a year to transport people on outlying islands who require emergency medical care.
On Feb. 5 alone, a helicopter from the Maritime Self-Defense Force's Omura base in Nagasaki Prefecture flew three separate medical missions.
They involved a 76-year-old man who became trapped in reinforced steel bars on Tsushima Island in Nagasaki Prefecture and was taken to a hospital in Fukuoka Prefecture, an 89-year-old woman in the Goto Island, also in Nagasaki, who was stricken with subdural hematoma, and a 76-year-old woman, also on Goto, who suffered a stroke.