Sailors, doctors, hospital personnel, and emergency responders from the U.S. Navy and Japanese military participated in a joint disaster response exercise on Sept. 1 at the Kanagawa Prefectural Comprehensive Disaster Prevention Center in Atsugi City, Japan.
The exercise, Big Rescue Kanagawa 2026, brought together U.S. and Japanese military, medical, and emergency response organizations to practice patient reception, triage, treatment, and coordination across military and civilian medical systems. Medical personnel applied realistic injury makeup to role players to simulate mass casualty conditions, with American Red Cross Yokosuka volunteers also serving as role players.
U.S. Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Command Yokosuka contributed doctors, hospital corpsmen, Japanese fellows, and translators to a tri-service U.S. medical team that worked alongside Japanese partners. Translators and Japanese fellows helped U.S. and Japanese participants communicate throughout the exercise, allowing teams to exchange information and work through differences in language, procedures, and medical practices.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi attended the exercise alongside Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi and Kanagawa Gov. Yuji Kuroiwa. Army Maj. Gen. James Dooghan, commanding general of U.S. Army Japan, met with the prime minister on behalf of participating U.S. military teams.
"Exercises like Big Rescue Kanagawa are about more than validating procedures — they are about building the relationships and trust that make a coordinated response possible," said Nikolai Kerry, emergency manager at U.S. Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Command Yokosuka.