MATSUSHIMA, Japan—The first U.S. Marine Corps humanitarian assistance team to survey the damage to infrastructure and public health arrived in northeastern Japan Wednesday with some 20,000 donated bottles of Canadian spring water.
Traveling aboard a U.S. Air Force cargo plane, an 11-member Humanitarian Assistance Support team brought 10 pallets of water, each carrying dozens of cases of the half-liter plastic bottles.
The plane landed amid a snowstorm at a heavily damaged airfield in Matsushima, located 17 miles (28 kilometers) north of the city of Sendai. More than 20 jet fighters of Japan's Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF) were damaged at the base, and the hangers and headquarters building reeked of mud.
A U.S. Navy crewman delivering bottled water in northern Japan Wednesday; a team of U.S. marines was also heading to the disaster area.
The base sits on elevated ground, which spared it the worst of the 10-foot tsunami that washed away cars and submerged homes nearby. Still, inside buildings on the base, the first floor walls were scarred with waterlines that were nearly six-foot high. Windows were smashed and waterlogged furniture had been dragged outside and stacked for disposal.
"The tsunami left behind about two feet of silt in our base headquarters building," said 1st Lt. Sakurawo Ishikawa, a member of the JASDF 4th air wing at Matsushima Air Base. "We had to shovel it out by hand."
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