Japan Reactor Crisis: Island Nation Gave Us Aid Aplenty After Katrina

Seeing how the Japanese people are suffering now, considering the terror they're enduring as their nuclear power plants remain under unimaginable stress, you have to ask yourself, how can I help?

There are so many ways. And they deserve our help. In this decade more than any other, Japan and the Japanese people have been our friends.

In case you're wondering what Japan did for us in our worst national disaster:

According to the U.S. government, the island nation Japan came through with aid and friendship bigtime after 2005's Hurricane Katrina devastated 90,000 square miles along the Gulf Coast, from New Orleans to Florida.

Japanese private citizens and the government alike sent a virtual tsunami of assistance to Katrina victims. The country pledged more than $1.5 million in private donations, the government gave $200,000 in cash to the American Red Cross and $800,000 in relief supplies -- from blankets to generators. Japanese firms with operations in the United States donated $12 million total, including $5 million from Honda Motor Corp., $1 million from Hitachi and more than $750,000 from Nissan.

Here's a story widely told in Katrina's aftermath: "The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo was overwhelmed by the generosity of one Japanese citizen -- Takashi Endo -- who donated $1 million from his personal funds to Katrina relief efforts. Endo said he was moved when, during a business trip to London, he saw a televised report about a mother separated from her children in the chaos of the flooding in New Orleans. The story so disturbed him he could not sleep that night. Next morning, he resolved to do something to help."

Also, Yuji Takahashi, president and chief executive officer of the Japan Petroleum Exploration Co. Ltd., a company with operations off the coast of Louisiana, personally donated $100,000 to Katrina relief efforts. Takahashi said he felt as if his own family had been affected by Katrina's terror and destruction.