When Danielle Lampe came across a yellow Yamaha personal watercraft on a small island in the remote Johnston Atoll, she knew that despite the craft’s beat-up appearance, it possessed a nugget of cultural and scientific value.
On Sunday the watercraft was hoisted onto a ship and departed Honolulu Harbor for a two-week journey to its owner in Japan, a survivor of the March 11, 2011, 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that left more than 15,000 dead.
"He’s lost everything," Lampe, 23, said of the craft’s owner, Tomomune Matsunaga of Fukushima prefecture. "Getting something back, even if it can’t be used, means a lot."
Matsunaga lives in temporary housing in Iwaki City because officials have declared his home off-limits after the natural disaster crippled a nuclear reactor nearby, Lampe said.
"This is amazing," she said at Pier 31 before a portable crane loaded the craft onto the Japanese fishing vessel Fukushima Maru, which is transporting the craft for free. "It’s pretty emotional."
The craft was retrieved and is being returned at no cost to Matsunaga.
"These people (in Japan) went through so much," Lampe said. "They don’t want to see their stuff affecting the environment. They want to bring it back."
On May 21, Lampe, then an intern for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was conducting a bird survey on East Island, which is part of the atoll about 700 miles southwest of Honolulu, when she found the craft.
She thought she could use its identification number to find where it came from, which would be useful to researchers studying ocean currents.
She and her colleagues loaded the craft onto their research vessel, the Kahana, and brought it back to Honolulu.
With help from government and nongovernmental agencies, Lampe tracked down the owner, who was sent pictures.
Matsunaga wanted the dilapidated craft but had concerns about shipping costs.
Chris Woolaway, Hawaii coordinator for a global event called International Coastal Cleanup, heard about the craft and called a board member of the nonprofit Japan Environmental Action Network.
Woolaway said JEAN had organized a 2013 conference in Japan where some tsunami survivors spoke and apologized for their belongings washing up on U.S. shores. Woolaway, who attended the conference, said the survivors expressed hope in retrieving some of their items.
The JEAN board member Woolaway contacted, it turned out, knew the captain of the Fukushima Maru, which docks three times a year in Honolulu.
Shigeki Kuwabara, the Fukushima Maru’s captain, said the ship was helping because the training vessel is for high school students from Iwaki City, which is Kauai’s sister city, and because Hawaii donated to Fukushima after the natural disaster. He said the ship will arrive in Japan on Nov. 11.
Lee Ann Woodward, a Fish and Wildlife Service resource contamination specialist, said the discovery of Matsunaga’s craft offers some useful data for researchers because currents usually take tsunami debris toward the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, north of Johnston Atoll.
She said Matsunaga’s craft also provides a rare timeline for when it washed onshore. She suspects the craft washed up within the six months before May because Fish and Wildlife Service workers visit the atoll every six months.
Woodward and the others have not spoken with Matsunaga, and they didn’t know what he plans to do with the craft.
"It’s a totally destroyed jet ski," Woodward said, but she added, "He’s just very happy that we found it."
