Editor’s note: Tom Ford is the son of Times News photographer Bob Ford and his wife, Sharon, of Jim Thorpe.

Most of us have been startled by emergency alerts on our cellphones, but imagine checking the message and finding it was in a different language and you had no idea what was happening.Tom Ford, an aviation support equipment technician in the United States Navy stationed at Marine Corps Air Station, Iwakuni, Japan, was awakened by an alert on his cellphone at 1:25 a.m. The message was in Japanese.Japan is 13 hours ahead of Pennsylvania, so the Saturday earthquake, the second in Japan, hit the news here on Friday morning. At least 42 people died and more than 1,000 were injured in the 6.4- and 7.3-magnitude quakes that struck Japan on Thursday and Saturday.“The emergency alarm on my phone went off, most of the message was in Japanese so I didn’t know what it meant,” Ford said. “I sat up to figure out what was going on and my room began to rumble, like when a heavy truck drives across a bridge.“I’ve felt small quakes like this before and they’re usually over before you realize what’s happening,” he said. “That wasn’t the case with this one. It went on for a few minutes and kept getting stronger.“My bed shook violently and my closet doors began to bang against their locks. It got to the point where I wondered if I should stand in a door frame or go outside.”The earthquake epicenter is about a five-hour drive from where Ford, a 2011 Jim Thorpe graduate, is stationed.While there wasn’t any real damage to the base, Ford said a few pre-existing cracks got a little bit bigger.“After the initial earthquake (on Saturday) there were a few aftershocks that I was able to feel.” Ford said. “The second earthquake came at about 11. This was a lot less severe.”The area was rocked by more than 500 aftershocks. As of late Monday, 93,874 people were still in shelters.The 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit has four MV-22 Osprey aircrafts on station that were able to provide immediate relief to the most-affected areas. The U.S. military operates 24 Ospreys in the southernmost islands of Okinawa, where most of its Japan-based troops are stationed.Early Monday here, The Associated Press reported that flights by two of the MV-22 Ospreys were a gesture of cooperation between the two allies.The tilt-rotor MV-22 Osprey flies like an airplane but can take off and land like a helicopter, making it suited for mountainous areas like Minamiaso, said Lt. Yuichiro Inoue of the Japanese army.U.S. relief flights delivered tents and portable toilets and waste treatment kits to Minamiaso, a town of 12,000 on the southern island of Kyushu, which was partly cut off by landslides and road and bridge damage. Residents there marked their location with chairs aligned in a giant “SOS.”Rescuers were redoubling search efforts, shoveling through mud and debris as they rushed to beat forecast heavy rains that would make land and collapsed buildings even more unstable.The U.S. has about 50,000 troops stationed in Japan, and the American military played a large role in rescue and relief in 2011 after a massive earthquake and tsunami hit the northeastern coast of the main island of Honshu.“We’re here to support the Japanese defense forces, and so whatever they need and we can provide that support, we’re here to help,” said U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col. Tom Chalkley.“We’ll stay as long as we’re needed, and that’s our task, and that’s our mission, to be here.”“I will volunteer myself without hesitation if needed,” Ford said. “The U.S. has a good relationship with Japan.”The Associated Press contributed to this story.