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U.S. Helps Transport Americans Out of Japan

Under Secretary for Management Patrick F. Kennedy today stated that the United States has sent flight to Japan to help transport Americans out of the country.

Question: Would you like to update us on the implementation of some of the measures that you announced last night, specifically the flights that were supposed to come in, and then also the efforts to evacuate Americans who are within the 50-mile radius around the nuclear plants?

I did want to ask you one question I didn't get to ask you last night. If you could be a little bit more specific about the reasoning for going to authorized departure; is it specifically because of the radiation concerns, or is it because of the broader picture going on?

Under Secretary Kennedy: Okay. Flights - we put in one flight today. It left about four hours ago and it's on its - it was en route to Taipei. The flight did not leave full. We had teams of consular officers and management personnel at both Haneda and Narita Airport, in effect sweeping for American citizens and all American citizens that we could find who wanted to be transported out, were transported. We plan to put another aircraft, at least one, in tomorrow depending upon what we assess the demand will be.

The second question was about -

Question: About getting them outside the - well, if you want to address, just keeping them in order, the reason you went to authorized departure, if that - because of specifically the radiation concern, or broader?

Under Secretary Kennedy: Well, it is - it's clear - and I am not an expert. My B in high school physics does not qualify me to address this question to any depth. But we depend in the State Department in this matter on information that's coming to us from the Department of Energy, from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Those are our experts. We discuss with them, we listen to their guidance, their concepts and their predictions. And we operate, to a degree, in a matter of caution, and the - it reached the point where we thought that it was advisable to simply tell American citizens the information that we had, and leave it to American citizens to make an informed choice on the basis of the information we provided.

Question: Okay. And then on the question of getting Americans out of this radius, I mean, do you have any update on - around the 50 - the 50 miles (inaudible), you had mentioned last night that they would - there would be efforts to get them out. How do you plan to do that? How do you -

Under Secretary Kennedy: Well, the answer is we put out lots and lots of information, consular warden notices, information on the website, telling people to contact us if they need assistance. And that's our process. We tell the people that - what assistance is available and how to contact us, and then they do that.

Now, there are - there have been a large pocket of American citizens who have been, in effect, stuck north of the sight of the reactors in the Sendai area. Those individuals can - have not been able to move south to Tokyo because of the absence of transportation, and they have not been able to move north towards Misawa on the northern tip because - again, absence of transportation and because of severe damages to the roads. So the Consular Affairs people in Tokyo, they've organized and dispatched, earlier this evening Tokyo time, 14 buses, which is - and that capacity around 600, which we believe relates to the number of people who have contacted us, plus a little extra for comfort.

Those buses are en route. They - the consular teams are up in that area. They're getting the word out where the rally points are. We will then load the buses and then begin dispatching them as each one of them are filled back down to Tokyo because, as I said, it - we're - it's been - our determination is they cannot move north, go around the area of the radioactivity, and down to Tokyo where they'll be met by other consular officers, put - depending on the time the buses arrive, put up overnight and then offered transport out of the country.

As we've said before, commercial transportation, regularly scheduled flights are still available. And so if someone wants to go somewhere, they can make their own arrangements. We are not forcing them to go anywhere, but we will tell them that we have a flight. Our next charter flight is going from Tokyo to Point A, wherever that happens to be, and they may avail themselves of that, or they may make their own arrangements once we've gotten them to Tokyo.

Question: But isn't Sendai in the radioactive zone, and so aren't you saying -

Under Secretary Kennedy: No.

Question: It's 35 miles from the reactor.

Under Secretary Kennedy:It's - we're going around - think of it as at least ignoring the ocean as a half-moon curve, and we can go around the edge of it to come back down.

Question: Can you give us some details about the flight which left today? How many people were on board?

Under Secretary Kennedy: I would say just under a hundred.

Question: Okay. And these were people from -

Under Secretary Kennedy: Under Secretary for Management So from Taipei, they will be met by personnel from the American Institute in Taipei, pointed at hotels, showed how to get commercial onward tickets, and then it is their choice about where they want to go.

Source: U.S. Department of State