A 16-year-old who lost his home in Japan’s devastating tsunami now knows that one prized possession survived: a soccer ball that made it all the way to Alaska.
Officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said the ball was one of the first pieces of debris from last year’s tsunami to wash up on the other side of the Pacific.
A man found the ball while beachcombing on an Alaskan island, and his wife, who is Japanese, talked with its owner, Misaki Murakami, over the telephone over the weekend. They plan to send the ball back to him soon.
Kyodo news agency said Murakami, from the devastated town of Rikuzentakata, was surprised and thankful the ball has been found about 8,200km away.
“I have no doubt it is mine,” Murakami told Kyodo.
He was particularly glad because all furniture and sentimental items in his home had been washed away in the tsunami on March 11 last year, which devastated a long stretch of Japan’s northeastern coast and killed about 19,000 people.
The ball, which also had messages of encouragement on it, had been given to him in 2005, when Murakami was in third grade, as a good-bye gift when he transferred to another school.
Debris from the tsunami initially formed a thick mass in the ocean of Japan’s northeastern coast and has since spread out across the Pacific. In February, experts with NOAA said much of the debris would reach the coasts of Alaska, Canada, Washington and Oregon between March next year and 2014, though they said that some of it could arrive this year.
Earlier this month, a US Coast Guard cutter fired on and sank an unmanned Japanese fishing boat in the Gulf of Alaska that had been drifting across the ocean since last year’s tsunami. Authorities had deemed the ship it a hazard to shipping and to the coastline.
David Baxter, a radar technician from Kasilof, Alaska, found Murakami’s ball while beachcombing with a friend in March on Middleton Island, 110km south of the Alaskan mainland.
“When I first saw the soccer ball, I was excited to see it and I thought it was possible it came from the tsunami zone,” Baxter said in an e-mail.
He also found a volleyball that appears to be from Japan, but its owner has not been found.
Baxter’s wife, Yumi, reached Murakami with help from a Japanese reporter.
Murakami expressed his gratitude to the couple for “for -wanting to take the time to even try to find him,” David Baxter said.
The couple plans to visit Japan next month, but do not plan to deliver the ball directly to Murakami.
They are somewhat reluctant to visit him because they don not want to create too much of a commotion, Baxter said.
The vice principal at Murakami’s high school in northeastern Japan said he was absent yesterday with the flu.
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
A documentary whose main subject, 25-year-old photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza weeks before it premiered at Cannes stunned viewers into silence at the festival on Thursday. As the cinema lights came back on, filmmaker Sepideh Farsi held up an image of the young Palestinian woman killed with younger siblings on April 16, and encouraged the audience to stand up and clap to pay tribute. “To kill a child, to kill a photographer is unacceptable,” Farsi said. “There are still children to save. It must be done fast,” the exiled Iranian filmmaker added. With Israel
Africa has established the continent’s first space agency to boost Earth observation and data sharing at a time when a more hostile global context is limiting the availability of climate and weather information. The African Space Agency opened its doors last month under the umbrella of the African Union and is headquartered in Cairo. The new organization, which is still being set up and hiring people in key positions, is to coordinate existing national space programs. It aims to improve the continent’s space infrastructure by launching satellites, setting up weather stations and making sure data can be shared across
RSS