YOU wouldn't think a mother who spent days bringing five children under 5 years old home to Stafford County from an evacuated air base in Tokyo would have lots nice to say about the experience.

But Dorothy Linstrom, who's been at her parents' home in southern Stafford for several weeks since, says she was amazed at the outpouring of support from people all along the way.

From the moment she and her five youngsters queued up for one of the free family evacuation flights out of Yokota Air Base after Japan's earthquake and tsunami, Linstrom said, help just kept turning up.

Five service members helped occupy her children as they prepared for their flight--one to each child. Navy chaplains helped them make it through customs at a layover in Washington state.

USO crews awaited them there with juice boxes, snacks, toys and even a nursery of beds for those under 2.

"Even the seamen from the nearby Kitsap naval base," said Linstrom. "They had heard about the evacuation of so many families coming through there and just showed up to help in any way they could."

She added, "The military gets a bad rap sometimes, but everything about this evacuation, from the way it was organized to the people who just provided help, shows that they do care."

Of course, when the buildings started swaying March 11 as the earthquakes hit Japan, and Linstrom was standing in the kitchen of her house on the base on the outskirts of Tokyo, it wasn't really an upbeat moment.

She had given birth four weeks earlier to son Jeremiah, a blessed addition to a family with twin 4-year-olds, a 3-year-old and a child just over 1.

They made it through the initial earthquake and aftershocks without serious problems.

But before long, she and her husband Kenneth, an Air Force staff sergeant in a communications squadron, found cause to worry.

There was talk of rolling blackouts, and news reports of radiation escaping the reactors were worrisome.

When military officials in Japan declared a voluntary evacuation for military dependents, the Linstroms decided they'd rather be safe than sorry.