Alaska soccer ball traced to tsunami survivor

A Japanese teenager who lost his home and belongings in last year's tsunami will get one thing back -- a soccer ball he received as a farewell gift from his classmates.

NHK: The soccer ball washed ashore on Middleton Island in the US state of Alaska. David Baxter, an Alaska resident found the ball during a visit to the island last month.

The ball carries messages dated March 2005 to Misaki Murakami, a third grader at a primary school in Rikuzentakata City, Iwate Prefecture. The owner is now 16 and still lives in the city. The ball was a gift from his homeroom teacher and classmates when Murakami was transferred to another school after finishing the third grade.

Murakami says he was astonished to hear that the ball had been found. He also says he is happy because he has lost everything else in the disaster.

He thanked Baxter for taking the trouble to find out where the ball came from.

A lot of debris will be floating towards the U.S. and Canada, I hope it will be taken care of. Much of it will be from people here that did not survive the March 11 disaster. The Pacific Ocean is a reminder of how close we all are to each other.

Comments

Tom O said…
Good you are keeping up with the 'current' news ;o) The great thing was all the writing on the ball was preserved, not washed out/away by all that saline water etc. Also, on a tangent, reminds one of those thousands of yellow rubber ducks that got released from a container that been washed over a ship. We've covered that elsewhere somewhere.

Btw, in the JT, there are new photos of the Tsunami aftermath - taken by a American guy who went there working for German tv.

If want to check the article/photos out here's the link:
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fl20120421a1.html
11:05 pm, April 23, 2012
Martin J Frid said…
Haha, yeah, I tried to put a positive 'spin' on the story...
9:26 pm, April 26, 2012
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