Peninsula Daily News
news sources
VICTORIA — The most-famous piece of flotsam that so far has arrived on North American shores from the March 2011 Japanese tsunami will become a museum piece.
The 2004 Harley-Davidson FXSTB Softail Night Train motorcycle, which was swept off the shore of northeast Japan in a foam storage container and floated 4,000 miles across the Pacific to a British Columbia island, will be displayed at the company’s museum in Milwaukee.
That’s a change of plans.
Canadian Harley aficionados involved in the recovery of the rusted and broken motorcycle — along with Harley-Davidson’s Japanese division — originally planned to have the bike restored to running order and returned to its owner in hard-hit Miyagi prefecture.
But the owner, Ikuo Yokoyama, a 29-year-old Japanese man who lost three family members in the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami, has since requested that it be preserved in its damaged state to honor those whose lives were lost or affected by the natural disaster.
Yokoyama is still living in temporary housing after losing his home in the earthquake-tsunami, which killed 15,854 people, injured 26,992 and left 3,155 missing.
“It is truly amazing that my Harley-Davidson motorcycle was recovered in Canada after drifting for more than a year,” Yokoyama said in a news release issued by Harley-Davidson of Japan.
“I would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt appreciation to Peter Mark, the finder of my motorcycle.
“Due to circumstances caused by the disaster, I have been so far unable to visit him in Canada to convey my gratitude.”
Mark, a logger, found the motorcycle last March still in its storage container on an island beach of the Haida Gwaii archipelago — formerly known as Queen Charlotte Islands — between Vancouver Island and the Alaska panhandle.
Lifelong Harley aficionado Ralph Tieleman of Tofino, B.C., trucked the rusty bike to a Victoria-area Harley-Davidson dealer and restorer, Steve Drane, on May 6.
Drane contacted the Harley division in Japan and was told that it planned to make the motorcycle street-legal and then return it to Yokoyama.
Instead, the bike is now in Vancouver under the care of Deeley Harley-Davidson Canada, from which it will be shipped to Milwaukee, home of Harley-Davidson headquarters and its 130,000-square-foot, four-year-old museum.
That’s where Yokoyama eventually will be reunited with his Night Train.
“I am very grateful to the Harley-Davidson Museum for offering me an opportunity to visit the museum, and I would like to do that when things have calmed down,” Yokohama said in the news release.
While on display at Drane’s Victoria-area store for three weeks, the motorcycle drew hundreds of people.
Some were quite taken by the sight of the bike, Drane said, and would spend a few moments in silence, taking in the story it tells.
“You couldn’t tell a story this good if the bike was restored,” Drane said.
“It just mystified people.”
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The Goldstream News Gazette, sister newspaper of the Peninsula Daily News, contributed to this report.
