Across the prefecture, the bed utilization rate for fiscal 1996 was nearly 90 percent, meaning that it would also be difficult to ask private hospitals to deal with wounded soldiers. Teramoto was the leader of the Japanese medical team sent to the Persian Gulf at the time of the Gulf War in 1991. He visited field hospitals for U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia, and what surprised him most was how efficiently deployed the medical staff of U.S. forces were, even in wartime conditions, he said. However, there are no such networks in Japan. There is not even a plan covering how to transport patients to the hospitals in the first place.
Japan has to start from the beginning.
A typical example was the Great Hanshin Earthquake of January 1995. At that time, over 43,000 injured were transported to hospitals around Hyogo Prefecture, including those in Kobe. However, only 70 people from Hyogo Prefecture were treated at hospitals in neighboring Osaka Prefecture. Because emergency action was organized by fire defense bureaus or firefighting headquarters, coordinated action between prefectures did not go smoothly. Furthermore, almost all communication between hospitals and fire defense headquarters was cut.