Rescue Efforts in Tohoku(日本語バージョンあり)
Here I am (left) in downtown Ishinomaki with Phil Anderson from the Australian Embassy.
After the March 11 earthquake and disasters, I went to Miyagi Prefecture with another officer, two Japanese consular staff and two Embassy drivers. We literally went from one end of the prefecture to the other to locate missing Americans and make sure they were alright.
We often felt like detectives, as we needed to visit multiple locations to track down and find each missing American, since our information was sometimes incomplete. We visited evacuation shelters, hospitals, morgues, city halls, police stations, and anywhere else our leads took us. All told, we found or accounted for 62 individuals during our seven days in Miyagi.