After the disaster, better ties?

OSAKA — The unprecedented involvement of the U.S. military in rescue and relief operations amid the Tohoku disaster has U.S. and Japanese policy experts hoping the effort will lead to closer bilateral cooperation on disaster planning and other issues, not least the Futenma base relocation.

But the difference in the way Washington and Tokyo publicly responded to the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, and subsequent Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant emergency, has others worried it could make a host of bilateral issues more politically difficult.

With Japan the second-largest holder of U.S. Treasury bonds, after China, there is also worry on the U.S. side that Japan may be forced to dump some of those bonds to pay for a reconstruction effort that will be in the tens of trillions of yen.