Pfc. Louis Rivera, left, a soldier with the 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, Fort Wainwright, Alaska, samples a lunch of beef curry from a Japanese MRE. Sgt. Toshihiko Iida, center, and Pvt. Osamu Shibuya, both with the 21st Regiment of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, said they enjoyed tasting entrees in American MREs. All are taking part in North Wind exercises in northern Japan. (Wayne Specht / Stars and Stripes)
TAKIZAWA, Japan — When East meets West, interesting exchanges can happen.
Case in point: U.S. soldiers from Alaska’s Fort Wainwright taking part in North Wind bilateral exercises here grabbed MREs — Meals, Ready to Eat — to take to the field for their midday meals.
It’s the basic subsistence GIs consume to fortify themselves for arduous outdoor activities when a full-blown dining facility isn’t available in field training locales.
Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force soldiers have access to MREs, too.
But quantum differences stretch between the made-in-Japan version and its American counterpart.
Pfc. Louis Rivera, an infantryman from Corona, Calif., sampled a Japanese MRE at North Wind, as two Japanese soldiers with the 21st Infantry Regiment sampled the American version.
“Usually I don’t like curry, but this tastes OK,” Rivera said as he plunged a plastic spoon into a green pouch containing a Japanese beef curry entree.
Rivera said he wasn’t quite sure what to think about a package containing daikon, a pickled Japanese radish that’s a popular garnish in Japanese diets.
Then there was the package of dried tuna. Rivera passed on that.
The U.S. MRE has evolved over years of intense research and product development to become what’s today considered the world’s finest operational ration — making the U.S. military the world’s best-fed fighting force.
The number of American MRE menus increased from 12 to 24 over the years. That includes four recently introduced vegetarian meals, according to the Army’s Natick Laboratories in Massachusetts, which tests food items for U.S. forces.
Today’s MREs replaced the canned version, or C-rations, in the early 1980s. Each MRE provides about 1,200 calories of sustenance.
As recently at the early 1970s, U.S. C-rats even came with a package of four cigarettes, but those long since been deleted in lieu of a healthier lifestyle for troops.
Japanese versions of MREs contain about the same number of calories but are stripped-down affairs compared with their U.S.-made counterparts.
They consist just of pouches of food. Soldiers must supply their own eating utensils; in Japan, that traditionally means hashi, or chopsticks. Nor are there condiments; soldiers must carry their own stash of flavor enhancers.
U.S.-made MREs, in comparison, come equipped with eating utensils, flameless rations heaters, condiments and candies — almost everything but the kitchen sink.
“Japanese MREs are not very good,” admitted Sgt. Toshihiko Iida, a 21st Regiment soldier, after savoring cheese tortellini, the main entrée packaged in his U.S. MRE. “I like the tortellini, it has a good taste,” he said through an interpreter.
Fellow soldier Pvt. Osamu Shibuya said he particularly enjoyed a package of nacho cheese-flavored pretzel nuggets in his MRE, which featured a turkey breast entrée.
“It tastes pretty good,” he said of the turkey entree.
Other Japanese MRE menus feature dried varieties of fish, ham steak and vegetable stew.
A perennial gripe among GIs around the world is dislike of individual items tucked in the plastic MRE pouches. Shibuya and Iida were no exception. Both passed on the sports nutrition bar that came in their U.S. MREs.
“I don’t blame them,” Rivera said. “It usually tastes like a brick.”
