{"id":8699,"date":"2011-04-23T13:31:55","date_gmt":"2011-04-23T22:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/?p=8699"},"modified":"2011-04-23T13:31:55","modified_gmt":"2011-04-23T22:01:55","slug":"is-u-s-military-relief-effort-operation-tomodachi-really-about-friendship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/?p=8699","title":{"rendered":"Is U.S. military relief effort Operation Tomodachi really about friendship?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A post on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.japantoday.com\/category\/kuchikomi-shukan-post\/view\/is-u-s-military-relief-effort-operation-tomodachi-really-about-friendship\">Japan Today<\/a> blog asks:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">\u201cTomodachi?\u201d Friends? To many Japanese living near U.S. military  bases, the bilateral \u201cfriendship\u201d has seemed more like a prolonged  occupation. Will Operation Tomodachi make friends of them, and turn  their sullen resistance into gratitude?<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">It\u2019s the biggest ever U.S. humanitarian mission in Japan \u2013 20,000  troops, 113 aircraft and 12 ships thrown into the battle against chaos  in the wake of Japan\u2019s greatest postwar crisis, the  earthquake-tsunami-radiation nightmare.<\/p>\n<p>The blogger cites the Shukan Post&#8217;s claims that the entire military operation is for publicity:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">The whole vast operation is  purely for show, it says \u2013 and who will be paying the bill, it demands,  when the hearts and minds have been won? You guessed it \u2013 Japan.<\/p>\n<p>One example cited of the shibai (deception) was story of 78 bodies found along the Iwate  Prefecture coast, supposedly by Japanese and American rescuers working  cooperatively. However, a Japan Maritime Self Defense Force member was quoted as saying: \u201cAll the U.S. side did was send planes and helicopters into the air. The  searching was done by Maritime SDF, Japan Coast Guard and Japanese  police divers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The cost to Japan for U.S. &#8220;friendship&#8221;?:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Friendship doesn\u2019t come cheap, Shukan Post notes. Operation Tomodachi,  it says, is an $80 million undertaking, the cost to be covered through  supplements to Japan\u2019s financial commitment to support American troops  stationed in Japan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A post on the Japan Today blog asks: \u201cTomodachi?\u201d Friends? To many Japanese living near U.S. military bases, the bilateral \u201cfriendship\u201d has seemed more like a prolonged occupation. Will Operation Tomodachi make friends of them, and turn their sullen resistance into gratitude? It\u2019s the biggest ever U.S. humanitarian mission in Japan \u2013 20,000 troops, 113 &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/?p=8699\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Is U.S. military relief effort Operation Tomodachi really about friendship?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2409],"class_list":["post-8699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-movements-resistance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8699"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8699"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8701,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8699\/revisions\/8701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dmzhawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}