The U.S. Forces Japan on Sunday airlifted a total of about 33,000 bottles of drinking water for victims of the recent powerful earthquake that struck Kumamoto Prefecture.

A KC-130 aircraft of the U.S. military transported the water, weighing about 16 tons, from the U.S. Air Force’s Yokota Air Base in Tokyo to the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force’s Vice Camp Takayubaru in the Kumamoto town of Mashiki.

The water will be conveyed to relief goods management stations by land by the Self-Defense Forces and then delivered to people affected by the temblor, which struck on July 28.

U.S. Ambassador to Japan George Glass inspected the operation at Vice Camp Takayubaru.

Glass later visited Kumamoto Gov. Takashi Kimura at the prefectural government office with Lt. Gen. Stephen Jost, commander of the U.S. Forces Japan.

The ambassador told Kimura that it was an honor for his country to provide assistance for Japan, and that the U.S. was glad to respond to a Japanese government request for support.

The U.S. Forces Japan conducted Operation Tomodachi to provide support after Japan’s Tohoku region was hit hard by a strong earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. Tomodachi means friend in Japanese.

The U.S. military also delivered relief goods using its transport aircraft after major earthquakes in Kumamoto in April 2016 and a powerful quake in the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture in January 2024.

Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi told reporters Sunday that the U.S. military’s assistance shows the strength of the bond between the two countries and that their cooperative relationship is working well in the support of disaster victims.