On March 12, 2011, the day after a huge tsunami hit Japan's northeast coast, the USS Ronald Reagan entered the Sea of Japan on a humanitarian mission.
The massive US$4.5 billion ($5.4 billion) Nimitz-class nuclear-powered "super aircraft carrier", with a ship's company of 5500 men and women, was in the vanguard of a force of 24 US Navy ships, 189 aircraft and 24,000 service personnel deployed to help Japan in Operation Tomodachi.
By then the tsunami, triggered by a magnitude-9 offshore earthquake, had killed 19,000 people and engulfed the Fukushima nuclear power plant, owned by the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco). A catastrophic failure followed, triggering explosions and releasing highly radioactive material into the ocean and atmosphere, as three reactors went into meltdown, the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl in 1989.
Back on board the Reagan, sailors began the grim, exhausting work of locating survivors amid apocalyptic devastation.
"On that first day, we pretty much immediately started search and rescue," recalls Lindsay Cooper, 34, then an aviation bosun's mate with the 500-strong flight deck crew. It was a frantic time as aircraft were launched and recovered.
"Next thing we know we've got this nasty, metallic taste in our mouth." She says the crew were ordered below. She believes they "had just got slammed by a radioactive plume".
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