HONOLULU — A Japanese man has been reunited with a small boat that got swept away in the deadly 2011 tsunami and found three years later on a small atoll about 800 miles southwest of Hawaii.
HONOLULU — A Japanese man has been reunited with a small boat that got swept away in the deadly 2011 tsunami and found three years later on a small atoll about 800 miles southwest of Hawaii.
Tomomune Matsunaga of the Fukushima prefecture lost his home and personal watercraft to the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami that killed 16,000 people.
Hawaii volunteer Danielle Lampe was conducting a bird survey for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Johnston Atoll when she found Matsunaga’s boat in May, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Monday.
A student training vessel carried the watercraft from Honolulu to Japan, and Matsunaga got it back on Nov. 10, his birthday.
In a letter thanking people who returned the boat, Matsunaga said the vessel brings back memories of working on it in his garage and of his children playing on it. He wrote that he looks forward to using it again when it’s repaired in a few years.
“No doubt, in a few years time, I will be enjoying leisure in the small boat with my children … as we did in the happy days before March 10, 2011,” he wrote.
The Japanese appreciate that some of the items washing up in other countries can be returned for sentimental purposes, said Megan Lamson, the marine debris project coordinator for the nonprofit Hawaii Wildlife Fund.
Out of thousands of potential items, 53 have been confirmed as stemming from the tsunami, she said. They were found in Alaska, Hawaii and on the West Coast.