A little baseball, a little work and a lot of Aloha for Japan

Helping to process seaweed. Assisting in the repair of fishing nets and implements. Cleaning beaches and clearing debris from a disaster-ravaged coastline.

As goodwill baseball trips go in the 108 years of exchanges between Hawaii and Japan, this is hardly your usual routine.

But, then, Ishinomaki, Japan, which was ravaged by the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011, presents a different setting.

The historic fourth-century port town, 220 miles northeast of Tokyo, was one of the hardest tsunami-stricken areas in the country, with 3,280 reported dead.

Which was part of why, we’re told, it was selected as the site for Punahou School’s intermediate baseball team to represent Hawaii in the U.S.-Japan Council’s Tomodachi Initiative with Major League Baseball.

Eighteen team members and families leave Wednesday on a 10-day trip to strengthen Hawaii-Japan ties at the youth level. In December the Ishinomaki team is scheduled to visit Hawaii.

Organizers said Ishinomaki was chosen because the partnership of MLB, the Players Association and the U.S.-Japan Council contributed $1 million to fix a baseball field there. Ironically, officials say, the field was undamaged by the calamities that hit the area. It was torn up after serving as a landing zone for relief and reconstruction supplies. Painted on the field is “Tomodachi” (friend).

With that spirit in mind, the teams will play a series of games, as well as mixing the two squads. But the measure of this series goes well beyond the white lines with its lessons intended to endure long past the last out.  

“We admire the resiliency and spirit of the people from Ishinomaki who have endured so much and we know we can learn a great deal from them,” said Duane Kurisu, local businessman and owner of Hawaii Winter Baseball, who was approached about leading the trip by MLB and the U.S.-Japan Council.

“At the end of the project, I would hope that the children and the parents from both sides will take an introspective look to enhance their own lives in building and fulfilling the hopes and dreams of others, especially those in need,” said Kurisu, who is a director and minority investor in Oahu Publications Inc., publisher of the Star-Advertiser.

For those who knew the late pioneer Wally Yonamine, a Farrington High grad who built ties to Japan pro baseball and changed the game there, there will be a particular poignancy. “When the pregame ceremonies start — and especially when the first pitch of the game is thrown — I know that I will have tears in my eyes because I will be thinking about my dear friend Wally,” Kurisu said. “His spirit still lives in the way the game is played and in how the game is such an important bridge for people especially between the U.S, and Japan.

“When the boys from Hawaii and Ishinomaki start working to clean up the beach in Ishinomaki, I just know I will hear Wally telling me, ‘Eh, Duane, we better not just stand around. We better go help them pick up rubbish, too.’ ”

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Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.