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Japan: Relief supplies left undelivered from firms to quake-hit areas
Kyodo News ^ | 03/17/11

Posted on 03/17/2011 6:16:54 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster

Relief supplies left undelivered from firms to quake-hit areas

OSAKA, March 17, Kyodo

Many relief supplies offered by food makers and other firms to areas struck by last week's devastating earthquake in northeastern and eastern Japan have not yet been delivered, sources familiar with the matter said Thursday.

The situation was attributable to confusion in commodity distribution and difficulties in making arrangements between the government and quake-hit areas, the sources said.

Nissin Food Products Co. said Sunday it will supply 1 million cup noodles to quake-hit areas but has been able to send only 600,000 so far. Its rival Acecook Co. also decided Monday to supply 120,000 cup noodles, but has not been able to send any yet.

Wacoal Holdings Corp. has also decided to supply about 30,000 items of underwear, while the Ezaki Glico Co. group offered powdered milk and retort pouch foods, but they are still waiting for the government's instructions to actually ship them.

Relief supplies are sent by the government through arrangements with the Self-Defense Forces and others after checking lists for such supplies and demand from quake-hit areas.

Executives at manufacturers complained about the government's sloppy responses to offers of their firms' relief supplies to the quake-hit areas.


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Japan; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: earthquake; food; incompetence; japan

1 posted on 03/17/2011 6:17:04 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
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To: TigerLikesRooster; sushiman; Ronin; AmericanInTokyo; gaijin; struggle; DTogo; GATOR NAVY; Iris7; ...

P!


2 posted on 03/17/2011 6:17:42 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster (The way to crush the bourgeois is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation)
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To: TigerLikesRooster
This is where we could make a real difference. If there is one thing that the US Military does better than anyone else in the world is logistics movement. And we have the equipment to make it work on short notice. Now we just need a leader in the CinC position to give the orders to start the machine in motion.
3 posted on 03/17/2011 6:40:55 AM PDT by GonzoGOP (There are millions of paranoid people in the world and they are all out to get me.)
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To: GonzoGOP
Now we just need a leader in the CinC position to give the orders to start the machine in motion.

I know it is a grand idea to blame President Obama for this, but it is still the issue of the Japanese Government giving us the request before we can move.

4 posted on 03/17/2011 6:44:44 AM PDT by Anitius Severinus Boethius
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To: Anitius Severinus Boethius
I know it is a grand idea to blame President Obama for this, but it is still the issue of the Japanese Government giving us the request before we can move.

You can preposition before the requests are made. As of Tuesday the Pacific fleet's hospital ship was still in San Diego. That should have sailed last Friday as soon as the size of the quake was known. That way if the Japanese Government requested help it would be 3 miles off their coast not 6000 miles away. Get your logistics people in place so that when the request comes you are ready to start shifting boxes, not shifting people from the continental US. And use some imagination. The LCACs and AAV7s are almost perfect for this sort of rescue, but much of the gator fleet is still at anchor. Obama only mobilized our equipment that was in the Western Pacific. He should have mobilized everything that might be useful. If it didn't get used write it off to a training exercise for the next time a disaster strikes.
5 posted on 03/17/2011 6:58:04 AM PDT by GonzoGOP (There are millions of paranoid people in the world and they are all out to get me.)
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To: Anitius Severinus Boethius
"I know it is a grand idea to blame President Obama for this, but it is still the issue of the Japanese Government giving us the request before we can move. "

Agreed. While I wouldn't expect him to actually come up with the idea himself, if he were asked he might not deny a request. After all, he can take credit for all those people saved and add it to his claims for jobs saved.

6 posted on 03/17/2011 7:00:39 AM PDT by Think free or die
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To: GonzoGOP

As you point out, we already have boots on the ground and ships on the water in the Western Pacific.

Why mobilize a hospital ship? There are thousands of hospitals in southern Japan. Medical facilities are not lacking as they were in Haiti and Indonesia.

Japan is the third largest economy in the world. They have top rated facilities and medical services. They need to let us know how we can help them.


7 posted on 03/17/2011 7:17:13 AM PDT by Anitius Severinus Boethius
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To: GonzoGOP
You can preposition before the requests are made. As of Tuesday the Pacific fleet's hospital ship was still in San Diego. That should have sailed last Friday as soon as the size of the quake was known.

Obama is just being frugal with the fuel it would take to move the fleet. After all, he needs the fuel to fly his family and himself on the junkets they are taking in the next week or so. Obama’s trip to March 19-23 Latin America will take him to Brazil, Chile, and El Salvador.

8 posted on 03/17/2011 7:21:19 AM PDT by greyfoxx39 ("Take a look around this country. Outside the Beltway, we are all Jews now." Stuart Schwartz)
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To: Anitius Severinus Boethius
Why mobilize a hospital ship? There are thousands of hospitals in southern Japan.

Which are separated by miles of destroyed roads from the people that need them. The local hospitals, those that were not trashed by the quake and tsunami, are overwhelmed. A hospital ship is designed with multiple helicopter landing facilities. The shorter round trips, (6 miles to a ship off the coast 300 miles to a hospital in Tokyo) combined with extra helicopters, LCACs and landing craft can get the people to the help they need.

Despite all the worry about radiation, the real problem in Japan today is snow. People are dieing from exposure, bad water, and cold. It is simple things like that where we could make a big difference. Also there are the CBs. They could help out the Japanese in getting the bridges back up and the roads repaired. Military engineers, unlike civilian engineers, are trained for expedient solutions. They don't spend a year designing a new bridge then six months building it. They bulldoze the rubble out of the way and throw a prefab bridge across the span in an hour or two. Not a perfect solution and it will need to be replaced with something better when time becomes available. But it gets the supply convoys from the south moving again.
9 posted on 03/17/2011 7:27:06 AM PDT by GonzoGOP (There are millions of paranoid people in the world and they are all out to get me.)
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To: GonzoGOP

“You can preposition before the requests are made. As of Tuesday the Pacific fleet’s hospital ship was still in San Diego. That should have sailed last Friday as soon as the size of the quake was known. That way if the Japanese Government requested help it would be 3 miles off their coast not 6000 miles away. Get your logistics people in place so that when the request comes you are ready to start shifting boxes, not shifting people from the continental US. And use some imagination. The LCACs and AAV7s are almost perfect for this sort of rescue, but much of the gator fleet is still at anchor. Obama only mobilized our equipment that was in the Western Pacific. He should have mobilized everything that might be useful. If it didn’t get used write it off to a training exercise for the next time a disaster strikes. “

You’re 100% correct. That fool in the White House couldn’t manage a Kentucky Fried Chicken much less a whole country. With a one sentence stroke of the pen, Zero could have done exactly what you and thousands of us here know should have been done. This total failure of leadership is particularly infuriating because of the magnitude of suffering of the people who are a key political and economic ally of ours, and whose suffering will be worse than it has to be because of the failure of our pathetic “leader” to think about anything more important than golf and NCAA basketball.

The minute we saw the first images of the tsunami footage, both my wife and I realized the magnitude of this disaster and we both predicted the immediate and long term consequences of this disaster. We both understood that within a couple of days, food, potable water, and medicine supplies would be unavailable.

I guess community organizers and their diversity staff of affirmative action babies, neo-Marxists, labor union chiefs, Berkeley professors, and assorted “progressive” riff-raff are clueless about the cause and effect issues on a world-scale basis. Hell, they don’t even understand cause and effect on a micro basis. Witness Hillary’s pathetically ignorant statement about the non-existent emergency shipment of some “very special coolant”, otherwise known to the rest of us as dihydrogen oxide.


10 posted on 03/17/2011 7:44:50 AM PDT by catnipman (Cat Nipman: Made from the right stuff!)
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To: Anitius Severinus Boethius

I know it is a grand idea to blame President Obama for this, but it is still the issue of the Japanese Government giving us the request before we can move.


Just like it was for President Bush in Katrina. He couldn’t do anything until the proper channels had requested Federal help. Which came way too late, although he practically begged them to do it. so those guilty and James Carville, decided instead of placing the blame where it belonged they would blame Bush....

Like that right?


11 posted on 03/17/2011 8:08:43 AM PDT by Freddd
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To: TigerLikesRooster

Wow roads are gone, washed away and covered in boats, houses, cars , I wonder why it isn’t getting delivered yet?


12 posted on 03/17/2011 8:17:35 AM PDT by Freddd
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To: TigerLikesRooster

I have begun to wonder about the logistics issues in Japan. In the US we have the best logistics in the world, but others do not. Much of the logistics here are not government but are voluntary organizations.

There are a large number of organizations in the US which will chainsaw there way into a destroyed area with food and cooking equipment. One guy on the truck, the other with a 24” chainsaw clearing the path.

The grocery business has a an organization that is something to behold. Many warehouses are emptied immediately after a disaster and company trucks are put in motion. I was a part of that effort during Hurricane Hugo and it was stunning. Everything went onto the trucks, grocery stores loaded their short dated food onto our trucks and those trucks were sent. We, and others, had 280 (IIRC) trucks positioned on the West side of the Smoky Mountains as Hugo hit and when the winds died down to accepatble levels, they headed out. It was amazing. Mind you, the trucks were in motion before the hurricane hit.

I am not sure Japan has that type of logistical expertise.


13 posted on 03/17/2011 9:19:20 AM PDT by texmexis best
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To: GonzoGOP

they did they same thing in Haiti, it took them a week to pass the order to move out and then another week to leave port. we had tons of stuff that could be useful and it would have been “Good Training” for the Navy and Marines.


14 posted on 03/17/2011 10:56:57 AM PDT by ClayinVA ("Those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it")
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