U.S. response to Japan's disaster is growing

Five days after the 9.0 earthquake struck and the tsunami drowned Japan's northeast coast, more than 10,000 people are feared dead, and 7,000 are still missing. More and more countries are sending money and help as the humanitarian crisis continues to grow.

For more than 10 hours each day they search the never-ending piles of wreckage near Ofunato, Japan.

"It just goes as far as the eye can see," said Dr. Steve Chin from USAID Search and Rescue Team.

Complete coverage: Disaster in Japan

There are firefighters, 150 of them from Los Angeles and Fairfax County, Va. They are looking for survivors, but in two days have found just six people -- all of them dead.

This U.S. response to Japan's disaster is growing. Seventeen-thousand military personnel, 14 ships, 113 helicopters, and the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan are now in or on their way to the country. The American Red Cross has already sent $10 million.

But the human need is growing fast. One woman and her two children are living on a blanket in an evacuation center hallway.

She says she worries about their hygiene.

The situation in Ishinomaki is getting worse by the day. The bathrooms in the evacuation center have no running water so people are flushing the toilets using buckets of water.

The United Nations says 102 countries have offered Japan help. It has accepted help from only 15.

"The Japanese see themselves as self-reliant and very effective at dealing with disasters so they're really trying to see what they can do on their own and then we'll see what kind of reaching out they'll do," said Stacy Palmer of the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Japan has not officially even asked for donations, but Americans have already pledged more than $47 million. Yet by comparison after Haiti's earthquake, Americans gave $150 million in just the first four days.

But money is not the main problem right now, getting supplies through this wreckage is. Radiation leaking from this nuclear power plant has kept search and rescue teams out of some of the hardest hit areas.

One house near Shiogama ended up in the middle of a river. There are similar neighborhoods up and down the coast that basically look like war zones. The fear now is that many people will simply abandon their homes and the cleanup could take years.

And Japan, although proud and prosperous, may need all the help it can get.