"But when I see them working at the airport every day, I'm really thankful. They are working really hard. I never imagined they could help us so much."

Arika Ota, 29, quoted above, has more nice things to say about the U.S. Military in an insightful story by the AP.

"To be honest, I didn't think much about the U.S. troops until now," said Arika, who works at an amusement center in the coastal city of Sendai. "But when I see them working at the airport every day, I'm really thankful. They are working really hard. I never imagined they could help us so much."

More people around the world are learning, hopefully, that it’s damn handy to have a lot of highly organized and disciplined young men around when such things occur. But even so, in this story and others, the fear of having our legions close by is evident in some of the quotes further down.