Episode 29. Japan’s Triple Disaster: Helping An Ally In Need With Admiral Robert Willard And Ambassador John Roos

Episode Transcript:

Amb. McCarthy: [00:00:09] Welcome to a conversation in the series, The General and the Ambassador. Our discussion focuses on how our military leaders partner with our ambassadors to advance American national security interests overseas. This program is a project of the American Academy of Diplomacy and the Una Chapman Cox Foundation. My name is Ambassador Deborah McCarthy and I'm the host of the series. Today, our conversation will focus on the massive US assistance to Japan when a triple disaster hit that country in March 2011. It was a major earthquake followed by a tsunami and then the failure of a nuclear power station. This led to radiation leaks which made people flee from their homes and contaminated water, land and air. This month marks the eighth anniversary of this tragedy. I warmly welcome our guests, Admiral Bob Willard and Ambassador John Roos. Gentlemen, welcome. Admiral Willard was the commander of the US Pacific Command from 2009 to 2012. Previously, among his many senior assignments, he was the 24th vice chief of Naval operations, commander of the US Pacific Fleet and commander of the Seventh Fleet in Yokosuka, Japan. Admiral Willard is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, an organization focused on the promotion of the highest levels of safety and reliability in commercial nuclear power plants. Ambassador Roos served as a US ambassador to Japan from August 2009 until August 2013. In August 2010, he became the first US ambassador ever to attend the commemoration ceremony of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima. Ambassador Roos is the founding partner of Geodesic Capital, a venture capital fund and senior advisor at Centerview Partners. He is a member of the board of directors at Salesforce, Sony Corporation and the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation. He is on the Global Advisory Board of Mitsubishi Financial Group and chairs the Toyota Research Institute Advisory Board. Thank you for joining us today. Ambassador, can you give us a sense of the magnitude of the disaster and what your first actions were as chief of mission?

Amb. Roos: [00:02:29] First of all, thank you, Deborah and Admiral, for putting this together. It's wonderful to see Admiral Willard. I have such admiration for him and we haven't connected up for the last eight years. So it's great to be on this podcast.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:02:42] Well, I'm glad this worked out.

Adm. Willard: [00:02:44] Good to see you, too, Ambassador.

Amb. Roos: [00:02:47] It was a pretty incredible period. Think about the great earthquake and fire of San Francisco, Katrina and Three Mile Island all rolled into one multidimensional, unprecedented disaster, an earthquake that was the fifth largest ever recorded. You had tsunami that went 4 or 5 stories high that led to the tragic death of almost 20,000 people. And of course, you had the nuclear crisis, which for a time there, we thought it might be as big as Chernobyl. Let me just give you quickly a sense of what the role of the ambassador is. The ambassador, of course, is the president's representative on the ground in the particular country, in this case Japan. The ambassador has a role of providing the link to the interagency process. The different agencies in Washington that are represented in Tokyo. The ambassador is the link to the Japanese government from the prime minister down and of course, the link to the American citizens in Japan. My responsibility was first and foremost, as is every ambassador, as the protection of the American people. But secondarily and very, very important was the fact that the ambassador has a responsibility for the relationship with Japan. And in this case, we have one of the most important alliances in the world. To answer specifically your question. The first actions the embassy began to shake, I should say, had already had a really rough week, challenging week. The foreign minister had resigned earlier in the week and that came into play in working with a new foreign minister in Japan at the time. There was a senior State Department official that made an inopportune comment about Okinawans off the record that was leaked.

Amb. Roos: [00:04:38] And I flew down to Okinawa, and then Wikileaks was about to come out with some embarrassing information with regard to senior Japanese officials. And I was preparing to talk to those Japanese officials with regard to what they should expect. So it was a tough week. And I was sitting in the embassy with our senior staff and the earthquake shook. We thought the building was going to come down. We honestly thought we were going to die. We got down out of the building into the parking lot. First thing we did was contact the State Department Operations Center, which both of you are fully familiar with, which in turn informed the President and the Secretary of State. I got on a satellite phone with Lieutenant General Burt Field, who was head of US Forces Japan, and we began our coordination effort. USAID informed me that I should declare an emergency, which I did immediately, which freed up a lot of resources. We began to watch video on people's cell phones of the tsunami that took out so many lives. And then a conduit from the Ministry of Defense informed me that there was a nuclear situation developing at Fukushima in the middle of all this. We had an aftershock that was bigger than the Christchurch earthquake that had taken place three weeks before, and there were thousands of aftershocks after that, president was briefed and released a statement directing Admiral Willard, myself and all Americans to do whatever we could to help the Japanese, which of course, we did. I spoke to the foreign minister and subsequently released a statement, and this was all on the Friday afternoon and Friday evening after that earthquake struck.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:06:26] Normally in these natural disasters, we send out an off day team. But in this case, because of the magnitude and the complexity of the disaster, we had a much bigger effort. And luckily we had our military forces. Both in country and obviously nearby. Admiral, what were your first actions when the disaster, the triple disaster, as I call it, struck?

Adm. Willard: [00:06:51] The US military maintains about 50,000 service members in Japan and they consist of some significant command elements, including the US seventh Fleet, the third Marine Expeditionary Force and the Fifth Air Force, which Lieutenant General Burton Field, United States forces Japan Commander Dual hats as that fifth Air Force general. We have a smaller presence of army, but again, a large military presence. Additionally, there are about 40,000 military dependents in Japan and about 10,000 contractors that work at our bases. Each of the commanders themselves maintains a close and continuous relationship with their Japanese self-defense force counterparts, and they're all well known to the embassy and to the ambassador and his staff in particular US forces Japan, which is a Subunified command element working for US Pacific Command in Hawaii, oversees the administration of the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security, which is our defense treaty with Japan and the Status of Forces Agreement between the two countries. So in that his staff is largely administrative and working for the Ambassador and the embassy in support of those two significant issues. Coincidentally, in the year leading up to this particular crisis, we at Pacific Command had been working closely with US Forces Japan to operationalize its staff, which was intended to give him a more prominent role in some of our war planning. Frankly, I was able to assign the initial task force duties to US forces Japan. As the crisis began to unfold. You had asked about first actions, and we in the military will actually execute a number of actions in parallel, in a circumstance like this.

Adm. Willard: [00:08:43] When the earthquake struck, it was Friday in Hawaii and I was at work in my headquarters at Camp Smith. I recall seeing on the television the lineup of waves that were heading for the coastline of Japan. And one of the first actions that I took was to phone the chief of Defense of Japan, General Araki, who was a close friend and strategic ally at the time, and offer him our support. We initially assessed what effect the earthquake and tsunami had had on our presence there. So we have an airfield in northern Honshu in the far north Misawa, and we needed to understand whether or not the earthquake and tsunami had had an effect on those forces. We began to organize commanders into a response force. We began to determine which units were already proximate to Japan, such as the Ronald Reagan Strike Group, which was in the vicinity. I received very quickly a phone call from USAID, and they were asking actually for a description of our early response intentions so that we could avoid unnecessary duplication. And soon thereafter, I was conferring with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the White House in the Situation Room. So a lot of things happening at once in the headquarters that we're well equipped to execute in parallel.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:10:05] And we launched Operation Tomodachi, which I gather involved over 20,000 service members, 189 aircraft and 24 ships. Can you tell us a bit about that massive program?

Adm. Willard: [00:10:20] The intent immediately was to give the Japanese sufficient help so that we could assist in the search and rescue. We could assist in the disaster response. And frankly, in the very earliest days, Fukushima was unfolding, but really hadn't become a focus yet. You'll recall that it was day two of the disaster that the first hydrogen explosions took place. And then we began to all educate ourselves in terms of what was going on at the reactor. But up to that point, we had already launched the disaster assistance. It was intended to be large scale, so we immediately moved seventh Fleet in charge of the Navy response and the Ronald Reagan Task Group and two amphibious ready groups that were also in the vicinity of Japan were immediately assigned to begin their support. We had the third MEF commander begin to bring his Marines up to mainland Japan so that he could fold in into a supporting role with the ground forces of the Japanese defense Force that were largely conducting the search and rescue operations in the tsunami stricken region up north. It was the Marine Corps Special Operations forces combined with our other special operations forces in the region that within a day or so were opening Sendai Airport, which was a very important airbase that had been largely written off because it had been struck by the tsunami. But we were able to set up communications and begin to use that base as a logistic hub very quickly. So all of those efforts were underway, but we intended to put our command elements in support of General Araki, who himself had placed in the end over 100,000 Japanese Defence Force personnel into northern Honshu to assist the civil authorities in all of the search and rescue and disaster relief that was required up there. So we were augmenting his forces and intending to complement what he was trying to do.

Amb. Roos: [00:12:29] Japan is a wealthy, proud nation, an important ally of the United States, which is one of the reasons for the level of forces that we have there. But we were in a situation that Japan was not used to receiving aid. It's a major player in providing aid internationally. So it was a unique situation where this wealthy, strong country was in a position of needing assistance on the military side and the civilian side. We were very careful to define our role as one of assistance. And I think Bob just made reference to that. The Japanese were always in the lead and that was very important because we didn't want to get into issues of sovereignty, then fill in that we were overstepping our bounds in the embassy. You set up an emergency action committee and you have different task forces that are set up back in the States and the different agencies and all that was done. But there was a whole nother level of support here through US aid that sent aid. What is called the Disaster Assistance Response Team. And that team, along with our embassy, coordinated very closely with the military throughout the entire crisis. Interestingly, at the very last minute, a couple of nuclear experts from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission were added to the DART team. There were search and rescue teams. And so that allowed for and helped facilitate a lot of the coordination between the military and the civilian side. The Dart team played a very important role, in my judgment, in the unfolding crisis.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:14:18] So did you find, John, that in this process with Bob, that you were able to communicate with each other to deconflict because so many people were arriving? I know your embassy had a huge surge of personnel in a small space. And very often when so many agencies arrive, it gets a bit confusing. So how did you put order to this.

Amb. Roos: [00:14:37] General Field and set up a daily phone call? When Admiral Walsh came, we continued that level of conversation. We embedded representatives of both the embassy and the military at each other's places. We worked closely on different parts of the crisis. For example, as I said, one of the primary responsibilities that we had was a safety the Americans. And we had wanted to send up consular representatives to help Americans who were caught in the crisis zone and help identify them and get them out. We couldn't do that on our own, so we had to and wanted to coordinate with the military in that. So there was the whole communications on the logistics side and trying not to duplicate actions. There was also an important part of communication to the outside world between the military and the civilian. So, for example, from the very early days, we did joint press conferences. Again, General Field and I a couple of days into the crisis, I think Saturday, the next day we're standing in front of the media, Admiral Willard and I, 12 days into the crisis, took a trip together up to the disaster area.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:15:55] I was going to ask you about that.

Amb. Roos: [00:15:56] Well, quite frankly, I will never forget this moment where the two of us, along with our teams, had looked at the incredible devastation over hundreds of miles along the coastline. Bob and I walked into an evacuation center together. I hope it was an important statement. The full force and power that the United States was putting behind, helping the Japanese people. And then at the end of Operation Tomodachi, about one month into the crisis, I flew out to the USS Reagan, along with Admiral Walsh and General Field, the defense minister of Japan. And I will never. Forget this site of standing in the hull of the ship, looking out at the sailors and marines and listening to the Japanese thank the Americans and particularly the military for what they did in Operation Tomodachi. It was an incredibly moving moment. But all of this, both internal communications and communications to the outside world, were coordinated between us.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:17:09] I was going to ask you both, gentlemen, about the messaging to the American citizens. And as the information on the nuclear radiological incident spread out, the decision was made to tell Americans to stay outside of a 50 mile radius of the facility, whereas the Japanese were told to stay only 12 miles out. How did you work that in terms of your public messaging?

Amb. Roos: [00:17:34] Communication overall was an incredible challenge during that period of time, and we did our best to communicate what we knew and just as importantly, what we did know during the crisis from very early on. Interestingly, before Twitter became what it is now, we found that social media at the embassy was incredibly effective in communicating with the American citizens and Japan, 150,000 American citizens as well as the military. The Japanese were listening very closely to what we were communicating as well. In normal circumstances, the White House, the State Department likes to control the communications, but there wasn't the time to have press releases and press conferences or whatever information had to go out in real time. So I became an avid user of Twitter, a YouTube, and that was actually very effective in getting information out to the American citizens. It was challenging because on the news there were banners on cable news that were saying Chaos in Japan, Countdown to Meltdown. So we had unbelievable continuing challenge with regard to communications to the Americans with regard to the 50 mile zone, that was a difficult call and that was an all of government decision. Basically, what had happened was as the nuclear crisis was unfolding, we wanted to stick with the Japanese and rely on the Japanese with regard to the evacuation zones. And we had sent out many communications saying the Japanese evacuation zone is the correct zone. But there came a point in time, 6 or 7 days into the crisis where there was a cascading disaster at Fukushima. And our leaders at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the Department of Energy, the Navy nuclear reactor leadership was involved. And they came to the conclusion that in the abundance of safety, that we should expand our evacuation zone to 50 miles. It was difficult and we made sure to communicate all the way up to the president. The president eventually had a call with the prime minister. I called the defense minister, and we want to explain what we were doing. Not only that was full disclosure, but we tried to stay as close as possible and communication with the Japanese during that period.

Adm. Willard: [00:20:21] I think what was critically important was that the military dependents in my case that are in the region and the military personnel listened to the right sources of information. So we were communicating from Hawaii, actually the situational awareness that we had gathered writ large down to our commanders on the ground in Japan and expecting them to share accurate information with the personnel on base and through all of their forms of communication to the military dependents and the active duty military and contractors that were in country at the same time, we were directing them to listen to the press conferences and the releases from the embassy. As Ambassador Roos mentions, the media in Japan was largely chaotic, both frightening and causing a great deal of confusion among all of the Americans, I'm sure, that were in country, but certainly among our military families. It was one of the reasons why I elected to travel to Japan and actually brought my wife with me. And one comment I'd make, in addition to Ambassador Rice's description of our visit to the disaster zone, we brought our spouses on that trip with us and they were participating.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:21:42] That was a very important signal to all the families. Excellent.

Adm. Willard: [00:21:45] And ultimately, my wife and I stood before a town hall meetings with military dependents while we were in country. And fortunately, I'm a nuclear qualified officer. So I was able to put the Fukushima issues in context for them. We were able to assure them and answer all of their questions. And these were long meetings with many, many questions. And one of the elements in the questions and answers had to do with who to listen to and how to get accurate information from the various sources that they had and who not to listen to, frankly, because of the level of confusion in the country. And then the last comment I would make is, as Ambassador Roos described, that 50 mile radius around the plant was a US government decision. The US military operated inside of that. So we in place were different radiological guidelines for our forces that were operating on the ground and in the air around the reactor plant in order that they knew the monitoring and protocols for understanding their own dose and things like that. The 50 mile radius was the evacuation zone for innocent Americans. The US military operated inside that and we were willing to operate right up to the plant boundary if that was necessary. So our ships and our troops on occasion were receiving low levels of radiation or in some cases were contaminated and had to be decontaminated.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:23:15] How do we draw on the civilian side and on the military side to bring in that nuclear expertise, which you have, Admiral, to bring to bear in this assistance effort for the Japanese?

Amb. Roos: [00:23:26] I viewed my role as the ambassador. One of my roles was to make sure to get accurate information to all of our leaders, including myself, so that all of us on the civilian and military side could make informed decisions. And these decisions were very difficult because obviously, first and foremost, we had responsibility for the safety of Americans. But we also had to balance the fact that we had a critical alliance and a relationship with Japan, that if we did erratic or drastic actions that were unsubstantiated, it could do damage to the relationship with Japan for decades. So we were balancing that and the intensity of the information and the situation. Not only was the media and what the media was saying, but we were hearing things during that initial period of senior Japanese official told me he thought they might lose half of Japan, and NRC commissioner in the United States said this was a crisis of biblical proportions. I had a senior official call me up, thanked me for my service and said goodbye, and I said, I'm not planning on, oh my goodness, going anywhere. You get a sense of not only the media, but the intensity of what was going on each day.

Amb. Roos: [00:24:57] I would in the morning and the afternoon. And this addresses your question with regard to how we pulled on the nuclear experts. The nuclear experts were not all in agreement. It's an art versus a science. I had in my office literally twice a day, morning and late afternoon, experts from the Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which was really more in the lead role with regard to the Fukushima nuclear crisis. We had a representative from the Navy nuclear reactors because they have incredible expertise. They also have a zero tolerance policy. So we had to balance their view versus kind of where the NRC was coming out. And then John Holdren, who is the head of the president's Office of Science and Technology, and then Admiral Willett right now is in charge of the private sector of the nuclear industry. We also drew upon their expertise. There was a lot of coordination and interaction and discussion going on and trying to sift through what was real information and what was not.

Adm. Willard: [00:26:09] The ambassador is characterizing a bit of the chaos that was resident. Fortunately, we had an understanding of nuclear issues. And I take the ambassador's point that there's a level of art in all of this, because we frankly had levels of disagreement across the nuclear expertise both within our nation and in what information we were receiving from Japan. But we were doing a lot of work together to try and characterize the situation around Fukushima to the extent that we. Brought in some very high tech equipment from the United States to try and fly it over Japan and characterize the radiological effects from the nuclear accidents that had occurred. I was flying a Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle over the plant several times a day. We were characterizing temperatures and other characteristics and sharing that information with the Japanese so that together we were trying to formulate a situational understanding of the set of conditions around that plant that would allow us to make the right decisions along the way. And it was very effective in the end. But again, we were trying to penetrate what in the beginning was a rather chaotic communications effort throughout the country. So the Japanese have monitoring of radiological effects around the country. We have them at our bases and in the vicinity of our bases in Japan because we have a nuclear powered warship there. And even the information from those sources differed at times. The ambassador, through his interactions with the NRC and other members that were there and me with the expertise that we had around us. We're trying to sort through that information and and determine what was accurate and what was not.

Amb. Roos: [00:28:03] Those flights were critical because getting this accurate information was essential. At that time.

Adm. Willard: [00:28:10] We were calculating worst case scenarios and fortunately never got near to those. But we were actually dealing with the radiological effects of the plant in the real time.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:28:22] Well, I wanted to ask about the contaminants in terms of their potential health and safety threats to the US homeland. I gather we set up procedures to vet food imports from Japan cargo passengers.

Amb. Roos: [00:28:35] Our embassy grew by experts by over 50%. We had 150 not only nuclear experts, but disease experts, health and safety experts, agricultural experts across the US government. We brought in communications experts to deal with the food supply. So again, accurate information got out. We had the benefit actually that the Japanese have very, very high standards of food safety and quality. While there was a lot of concern in the American community and the Japanese community and back home here in the United States, we were fairly certain that there was not a high level or even a moderate level of risk, but we played it very, very conservative. And our experts totally spent significant amount of time, even after the end of Operation Tomodachi, for months and probably to this day still spend time on food quality issues. Now, radiation is invisible and scares people. There were times where hotspots would show up in Tokyo and people would be concerned with the food supply. It even came all the way to the United States. Radiation, quote indications. But there was never in this country, in the US, any level of risk. I'll tell you a story that I tell to friends that at one point, several days into the crisis, I was by day working in Tokyo and nights often all night working with Washington, and would be dialed into the interagency process where a lot of decisions were being made.

Amb. Roos: [00:30:21] I, along with my top senior adviser, was sitting in the embassy and we were being piped into an interagency discussion of baby formula safety in California. And in the middle of this long discussion we had a massive aftershock. We had to evacuate the embassy several minutes later, we were able to come back in and that discussion was still taking place. And I said, guys, you know, in the middle of your discussion, we evacuated the embassy. Come back in. And I'm from California. I care very, very much about the baby formula in California. But we have some major crises going on right here in Japan. But that gives you a sense of I was so impressed with the interagency process, the experts that really cared and really looked at every detail with respect to air, water, food quality. So I was never really concerned along those lines.

Adm. Willard: [00:31:28] Just to discuss some of the radiological issues that we dealt with. First of all, we're very fortunate to have a nuclear powered navy. So we had a host of nuclear qualified officers and other experts that we. Had embedded with the Japanese to help them understand some of the radiological issues that they were being confronted with on the ground and at the Fukushima plant. So we used the Navy expertise that we had to try and spread some of our level of understanding of the radiological issues around and particularly with general Araki's forces. Additionally, all the US services are trained in what we call chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear countermeasures. So while we sometimes perform some of the monitoring and functions differently depending on our service, we had enough expertise and equipment in Japan to function and eventually we had enough dosimetry and measuring devices in the country to do everything that we felt that we had to do. We did have instances of contamination of aircraft that were flying in and near the plume, near the plant of ships that were sailing in the vicinity and where the plume would drop enough contaminants on them to generate activity. There's actually a pretty famous now photograph of the countermeasures on Ronald Reagan into effect. And the crew is scrubbing the flight deck down with soap and water in order to eliminate a level of contamination that was sensed there. You know, in the case of contaminants, we have prescribed methods of decontamination. They consist of measuring the initial amounts of activity, then decontaminating largely by washing down equipment or people until they're free of any amounts of activity. And we also have measuring devices that can measure whole body radiation. We actually did this for all of the service members that participated in this endeavor in Operation Tomodachi, and we did it for their families if they requested it when.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:33:36] The operation on the military side wound up. John, you started an operation in the Tomodachi Initiative to foster new longer term links and to continue a level of support to demonstrate our long term commitment to Japan. And I know you received several amazing, extraordinary awards for for that work. Can you describe a little bit what the initiative was and are you still involved in it today?

Amb. Roos: [00:34:07] Yes, I still am involved in today. In fact, we're having a strategy meeting this upcoming weekend to talk about the future of the Tomodachi Initiative. That's great. Thank you for asking that question. Let me start by saying this Operation Tomodachi, the military operation was incredible. It had such a major positive impact on the Japanese people. I know I'm sure Admiral Willard, I know the other military leaders. I would bet that to this day, they're still thanked by the Japanese people when they see them for what they did during the crisis. And I know I am when when I go over to Japan, which is quite frequently, people stop me and say all the time, thank you for Operation Tomodachi, the military operation. What we wanted to do after it came to an end, we wanted to find a way to continue to build on the the brand of tomodachi, which means friend in Japanese and on the civilian side, to continue to strengthen the relationship through the groundwork that we had laid during that crisis. And I took a trip up to the disaster zone and met with the mayor of Rikuzentakata, person named Mayor Toba, who had lost his wife in in the in the tsunami.

Amb. Roos: [00:35:37] And I said to him, what more do you think we can do to help you and the Japanese people in the Tohoku region to get over this crisis and get over is probably not the right words because you actually never fully recover from it. And the mayor said to me, you know, Mr. Ambassador, our government is responsible for rebuilding our city and the Tohoku region. But what the United States can do is provide hope to our younger people. And so we went back to the embassy. We brainstormed and we came up with the idea of the Tomodachi Initiative, which has raised millions and millions of dollars to help the young people of Tohoku who were impacted by the crisis, give them a little bit of hope by bringing them to the United States and having different experiences here. And the program actually has been so successful that we have now expanded that to all of Japan. So I think that is an example along with what our military does on a. Day to day basis. It's just an example of how important relations are between two countries and the difference ways that we can build and strengthen that relationship.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:36:52] Well, Bob, I wanted to ask you, as chief executive officer of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations focused on promoting the highest levels of safety and commercial nuclear power plants, how do you assess the situation of the facility in Japan today? I gather it's not completely decommissioned. And do you still in your current capacity, do you still work with Japan?

Adm. Willard: [00:37:17] We do. And I've actually visited the Fukushima site. It's in the midst of a decommissioning process that had its onset. So this is now, you know, eight or so years ago at its onset, was intended to last about 50 years. So it's going to be a long journey for the Japanese to get that site completely decommissioned. It has been stabilized across the board. In fact, the Japanese have employed some pretty fantastic technologies to remove spent fuel from the spent fuel pools to maintain the water that had seeped into the plant for many years. Demineralized So, you know, decontaminated and stored on site. It's been just an incredible ordeal to get the plant into the stable condition that it's in now. And if you saw it, you know, when I saw it 2012, it was still a lot of rubble and tsunami damage that was evident throughout the site. And today, it's largely concrete water tanks, sophisticated analyzers, and then a lot of robotics and other technologies at the actual reactor sites to try and both characterize their condition on a continuum, but also gradually begin to dismantle what's there. And there are still areas in the plants that are not inhabitable. And only robotics can examine some of those areas. But it's been an amazing process, you know, to have taken that plant through the stabilization and decommissioning process that they have. And they've got many, many more years to be able to accomplish the final objective.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:39:04] Well, as we wrap up, I wanted to ask a general question. What would you say was the major lesson you both learned about the cooperation between our units, Department of Defense and the Department of State in the case of a nuclear incident abroad?

Adm. Willard: [00:39:21] I would offer that the advantage that we had and one of the reasons why Operation Tomodachi and in all the effort by the United States and Ambassador Roos to see this to a successful conclusion, that was largely the advantage of having a large US presence in the country, the fact that we maintain this security arrangement with the Japanese people, we are well acquainted. In fact, our militaries are mirror images of one another in a large way, and we're able to work together the way that we did. We were more closely acquainted with Ambassador Roos and his staff. We enjoy in many other countries where we don't have a defense arrangement like we do with the Japanese that are these very strong allies. So one of the lessons has to do with the very strong protocols that were in place in Japan that aren't in place in other countries and that we have to build out on the fly when we have to deploy into a crisis area, whether it's in a war fighting mode or in this case, a large scale humanitarian relief. So the other major lesson learned we've already talked about, and that's the communications. The most critical issue was the accuracy of the information that we were using to base our decisions on our ability to acquire that. And a big piece of that situational awareness is the level of communication between the United States and Japanese militaries, between the government of Japan and the embassy, between the experts that came in from our national level and internationally, the ability to collate all that information into something that Ambassador Roos and I can really decision from.

Amb. Roos: [00:41:05] First of all, agree with everything he said. I should also say, if I haven't said before, I think I have my respect for Admiral Willard. And the military was already very high and working with him as the ambassador, it went sky high after that experience. And I think he's absolutely right that the fact that there was a significant US presence there, we had been working together before the crisis made an incredible difference as the crisis unfolded with regard to foreign consequence. Management. It's complex. There's a lot of lessons to be learned. Emerald Willard touched upon communication, which is probably the most important, and sifting between fact from fiction in this day and age. I think it's important to say that the relationship between the US and Japan, the alliance, the depth of the trust that had been built up since World War Two, that was invaluable relationships between countries and alliances. They're not zero sum games. They're not transactional. They are incredibly, incredibly important to the United States and to the world. And I think that came out in full color during the crisis. This was a situation where the United States did not have to step up the way it did through Operation Tomodachi and all the other experts that we brought to bear. But we did because it was the right thing to do. And I believe in the end, it will pay dividends for our country, for the United States, for decades to come. Alliance and friends are important in this complex world, and I think the way things unfolded in the March 11th crisis demonstrated that. And I think that's something that needed to be said.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:43:10] Well, gentlemen, I want to thank you for not only participating in the program, but to thank you for your leadership, thank you for your continued engagement with this very important ally of the United States. And also thank you for underlining the importance of steady and established security, relationships and alliances overseas to help advance US interests and to protect our country.

Amb. Roos: [00:43:38] Thank you. Thank you, Deborah, for your leadership and service. And, Bob, I hope we don't let eight years go by before we get together and catch up.

Adm. Willard: [00:43:47] Great seeing you again. All right, Ambassador, thanks.

Amb. McCarthy: [00:43:49] Thank you, gentlemen.