I've got a story for you, though it is not mine: I went to Japan to study abroad in 2002, and was told this on the first anniversary of the attacks by the professor who was in charge of the program (and who had been the same on 9/11).

The first plane struck the World Trade Center in the late evening, Japan time. The American embassy contacted the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs approximately one hour later, asking for all possible assistance in securing Americans. (There are somewhere on the order of 100,000 Americans in Japan at any given time.)

Prior to word arriving from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Ministry of Justice to the various local bodies in Japan which handle civil defense, someone in the Kyoto Prefectural Police heard about the attacks on television and immediately ordered a full mobilization. Cops were called back in in the dead of night, and went down a list of every hotel in Kyoto asking whether they currently or habitually had American guests. Simultaneously, someone woke the Foreigner Registration clerks at Kyoto's several ward offices and pulled the addresses of every registered American in the city. Including some four dozen students of my study abroad program.

My professor was awakened at the first ray of dawn by a police lieutenant, who explained that there had been an attack on America the previous night. He explained that putting a watcher on every American in the city had strained their resources, and apologized that they had only time to scrape together two dozen police in full tactical gear to discourage the, quote, dishonorable no-account bastards from trying to continue the fight at a small American school half a world away.

I have had many, many occasions to grind my teeth due to interactions with Japanese cops, but I always tell myself that, in the balance, we still owe them one.