The Japanese owner of a camera that went missing and was discovered two years later in Yilan County during a beach cleanup yesterday promised the students who found it that she would clean the beach with them when she visits in June.
Serina Tsubakihara spoke via a video call with the fifth-graders of Yilan’s Yueming Elementary School who found her camera, expressing her appreciation for what they did.
She explained how she lost the camera, saying that when she was scuba diving off Ishigaki Island in the summer of 2015, one of her friends’ scuba tanks malfunctioned.
The emergency meant she had to return to the boat, which was when she lost the camera, Tsubakihara said, adding that she looked around for it afterward, but to no avail.
No one could have guessed that the camera would make its way two-and-a-half years later to a beach in Yilan’s Suao Township (蘇澳), 234km from Ishigaki.
Ho Chao-en (何兆恩), the fifth-grader who found the camera, told Tsubakihara that when he first saw the case that the camera was kept in, he thought it was a discarded black box and was thinking of throwing it in the trash.
However, upon further inspection he saw that it was actually a moss-covered, waterproof camera case with a functional camera inside, Ho said.
That was when the search for the camera’s owner began, with Ho’s homeroom teacher, Park Lee (李公元), posting a message on Facebook with a few carefully selected photographs from the camera to see if the owner could be located.
Tsubakihara told the class she looked forward to visiting them in person in June and would be delighted to go with them to where the camera was found and help clean the beach.
The story of the long-lost camera and the search for its owner has been widely reported by Taiwanese and Japanese media, with many people from both nation praising Ho, his classmates and their teacher for their kindness.
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