If someone asks you how much a single family's life is worth to the United States Navy, tell them the exact price: ten million dollars of steel. On April 29, 1975, as Saigon fell, a tiny two-seat wooden-and-fabric Cessna plane with almost no fuel left circled desperately above the American aircraft carrier USS Midway. Inside that tiny cockpit, a father named Major Buang-Ly had crammed his wife and five small children, including a baby. He scribbled a note on a map, wrapped it around his pistol so it would not blow into the ocean, and dropped it onto the carrier deck. A young American sailor picked up the crumpled paper and ran it up to Captain Lawrence Chambers. The note read: "Can you move these helicopter to the other side, I can land on your runway, I can fly 1 hour more. Please rescue me. Major Buang, Wife and 5 child." The flight deck of the USS Midway was completely jammed from bow to stern with military helicopters. A Cessna has no tailhook to catch carrier wires, and its pilot had never landed on a ship in his life. By every military regulation, Captain Chambers had been in command for only five weeks. Throwing millions of dollars of U.S. government aircraft into the sea without permission from Washington could end his career in a court-martial. Chambers looked up at the tiny plane circling in the wind with five children inside. He did not call an accountant in Washington. "Clear the deck," the captain ordered. Hundreds of young American sailors in yellow and green jerseys ran to the edge of the ship, put their shoulders against massive Huey helicopters, and shoved ten million dollars worth of machinery straight off the cliff into the South China Sea. Captain Chambers turned the giant carrier into the wind at twenty-five knots. The tiny Cessna came down, bounced once on the steel runway, and rolled to a safe stop with feet to spare. When the cockpit door opened and five small children stepped out onto the deck, three thousand American sailors roared so loud it drowned out the engines, and immediately passed around a hat to collect cash for the family's new life in America. When the math says a child's life is too expensive, an American throws the math into the ocean.

How many Americans know that for eight straight years after September 11, Japanese warships stood in 120-degree heat in the Indian Ocean to pump 135 million gallons of free fuel into the U.S. Navy? After the twin towers fell in 2001, American carrier strike groups raced to the Arabian Sea to strike terrorist strongholds in Afghanistan. Why could American warships not simply pull into Middle Eastern ports to refuel? Because just one year earlier, suicide bombers in a small boat had blown a forty-foot hole in the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen. Entering port meant risking ambush and losing days off the front line. Within weeks of 9/11, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force dispatched its fleet oilers, including JS Towada, JS Tokiwa, and JS Mashu, ten thousand miles from home. Sailing side by side with U.S. destroyers and cruisers at twelve knots across heavy ocean swells, Japanese sailors shot steel cables across the water and winched thick rubber fuel hoses into American tanks without spilling a single drop. From December 2001 to January 2010, Japanese crews completed 939 underway refueling operations. They delivered 510,000 kiloliters, roughly 135 million gallons of fuel, plus 11,000 tons of fresh water, entirely paid for by the Japanese taxpayer. On the final day of the mission in January 2010, American sailors lined the rails of their warship in the blazing sun, took off their caps, and saluted the Japanese crew as the hoses were uncoupled for the last time. True loyalty does not ask for a camera. It holds the line for eight years in the sun.