NATORI, Japan — Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. met with survivors of the Japanese tsunami and spoke at an airport that was reopened just a month after the disaster with American military help, in a visit aimed at highlighting strengthened ties with Japan.
Mr. Biden was on the final leg of an eight-day trip to Asia that was dedicated mostly to improving relations with China, whose rising economic and political power is a challenge to the United States and has overshadowed a Japan mired in two decades of stagnation and then hit in March by an earthquake, a tsunami and a nuclear disaster. Mr. Biden used the first of his two days here as a counterbalance, offering reassurances that the United States remains committed to its disaster-stricken ally.
He stressed the two nations’ economic and military ties, at times sounding almost as if he were giving a pep talk. He said it was in the United States’ interest for Japan to recover and help lift the sagging global economy. “Some around the world are betting on the decline of America and the inability of Japan to recover,” Mr. Biden said at a speech at the Sendai Airport. “They are making a very bad bet.”
The airport serves as a showcase of the goodwill created here by the American military’s large relief efforts after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami struck northeastern Japan, leaving some 20,000 people dead or missing. The United States Army, Air Force and other services worked with Japanese military personnel to reopen the airport, after it was struck by a 10-foot wave that covered the runway with mud and mangled cars and stranded more than 1,000 people in the terminal.
In his speech at the immaculate, modern terminal building, Mr. Biden noted that just a few months ago, the lower floors had been gutted by the tsunami and its upper floors filled with shivering and frightened refugees, many from neighborhoods that had been swept away.
“I’m proud that our military was given the privilege to join your forces” in repairing the airport, Mr. Biden said in the speech, as several Self-Defense Force generals looked on. Above them, a banner proclaimed, “Stay Strong Japan!”
Earlier in the day, Mr. Biden met in Tokyo with the Japanese prime minister, Naoto Kan, who thanked him for American assistance. Mr. Biden praised the dignity and perseverance of the Japanese people in the face of the disaster.
Mr. Kan, 66, is deeply unpopular here, and a cabinet minister said Tuesday that his expected resignation is likely to come next week, adding to the country’s uncertainties. The fifth prime minister in as many years, he was first criticized as being haplessness in foreign and economic policy, then for blunders in response to the disaster at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.
The American relief efforts, known as Operation Tomodachi, or Friend, provided a chance to strengthen ties with Japan that had frayed last year during a dispute over an American air base on Okinawa. On Tuesday, Mr. Biden repeatedly spoke of the friendship between the nations, saying that he had no doubt Japan would have come to America’s aid if the tables had been turned.
Mr. Biden spent several hours in Natori, a town made famous by video, broadcast worldwide, of the tsunami tearing through homes and farm fields. He joined the town’s mayor in laying a bouquet of white flowers at a pile of what had once been decorative garden stones in front of a shattered home near Natori’s ravaged waterfront.
He also visited a community center that had served as a refugee center after the disaster and nearby temporary housing for some 400 people whose homes near the airport were destroyed. He nodded gravely as he listened to survivors who described their ordeal.
“The American military made the airport very clean,” said one survivor, Kyuichiro Sakurai, 70, whose home was washed away. “We won’t forget that.”
Mr. Biden seemed relaxed, making jokes about his thinning hair and holding a young boy for several minutes in one arm as he shook hands with survivors. The Japanese applauded him and seemed genuinely touched.
“I want you to know that America will stay involved here as long as you want us to,” he said, prompting several older Japanese women to break into tears. Mr. Biden hugged one of them.
“I feel gratitude that he would come all the way here to support us,” said one of the women, Katsuko Suzuki, 79.
At several points during the visit, Mr. Biden said Americans had been moved by the survivors’ stoicism and quiet courage.
“The American people admire the spirit of the Japanese people,” he said. “Disaster met its match in the legendary industriousness and perseverance of the Japanese people.”
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