Hurricane Katrina and Japanese Tsunami in the Media

Here's an article from fox.com, Official: Astrodome Can't Take More Refugees, from Friday September 2, 2005.  I was surprised that this article does attempt to rationalize the acts of violence quoting one police captain as saying "These are good people.  These are just scared people."  But because all major television networks were reporting the same few acts of violence (unconfirmed) it appeared to be much worse than it was.

After Katrina, crimes of the immagination is an article from the New York Times written by Jim Dwyer and Christopher Drew on September 29, 2005 which discusses the probability that many of the crimes reported to have happened after the hurricane in reality did not.

Finally, here is an article about Japanese victims, Japan Will Rise to the Challenge, written April 6, 2011 by Xiaxiong Yi.  This article paints a picture of coopertive, patient victims who have rallied together even in the face of such tragedy.

To compare tragedies is a dangerous thing; akin to comparing the feeling of loss relatives of a loved one feel.  There is no way to compare, both of these natural disasters were devastating.  However, I do think that government response in each situation has made a huge difference.  I believe that the presence of special forces in New Orleans only added more terror to the situation naturally causing tension and violence to escalate.  From this article from CBSnews.com, Japan's Troops play major role in tsunami relief, it seems obvious to me that Japan's military is not only viewed as more peaceful by Japan's people (the military is actually called the Self-Defense Force) but the troops were the ones providing food and water, cleaning up buildings to use as shelter, and physically digging through rubble in search of dead bodies (CBSnews.com, March 31, 2011) relaying a message of help and relief rather than of violence.  Having heavily armed, heavily armored police and special forces storming through New Orleans was inevitably going to perpetuate fear and violence regardless of the race of the majority of the victims.