By Arwyn Rice
Peninsula Daily News
FORKS — As debris from the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami continues to arrive on Washington shores, more can be traced directly back to a specific Japanese city, club or individual.
The most recent find, a volleyball discovered at Kalaloch Beach, appears to be one of these.
“It had been there for a while. It was higher than the tide line,” said John Anderson, 54, of Forks, who discovered the ball.
On Saturday, Anderson had gone camping at Lake Ozette with a group of Boy Scouts, and discovered the beaches at Cape Alava were littered with tons of debris.
The ball Anderson found had been signed with permanent marker, and much of the writing survived the trip.
Reiko Barclay of Sequim, whose first language is Japanese, provided Anderson with a translation.
The ball was a memento, she said, to wish someone luck at another location.
“I wish you wonderful work and life at your new place,” read one message written in Japanese characters.
“When you have free time, play with us,” another one said.
The person to whom the volleyball was presented wasn’t named, but the ball was signed by at least four people — Sugiura, Suzuki, Horie and Amai, Barclay said.
That information was sent to a news service in Japan in an attempt to try to identify the owner of the ball, Anderson said.
The grim possibility remains that the owners might not have survived the deadly earthquake and tsunami.
The disaster killed 15,854 people, injured 26,992 and left 3,155 missing.
Sports balls, which float easily and have a high profile to catch wind currents, have been among the most common finds on beaches from Alaska to Oregon.
The balls also represent some of the earliest confirmed tsunami debris because the ball owners tend to write their names on them.
Other tsunami debris on North American shores that were traced to specific owners include a Harley-Davidson motorcycle that crossed the Pacific Ocean in a foam shipping container, a commercial fishing vessel, part of a dock and a small boat.
Anderson said he has been visiting the coastal beaches for at least 40 years and in the past found some trash that had possibly come from Japan.
“There is always been something, but not in this volume,” he said.
He described the debris the Scout group found: a child’s plastic riding car with a name written on the side in Japanese, lumber with Japanese writing on it and a lot of Styrofoam, ranging from the type used in commercial applications to household items.
Many glass bottles and plastic jugs also had Japanese writing on them, he said.
The Boy Scouts packed up as much as they could carry and packed it out.
“They didn’t put a dent in it,” Anderson said.
Meanwhile, the Olympic Peninsula chapter of the Surfrider Foundation traveled to Cape B Beach on the Makah Reservation, last week to evaluate the debris there.
Cape B Beach is where the first-known piece of tsunami debris was found during a major Surfrider cleanup last October, and where members of the Ikkatsu Project found what appeared to be the wreckage of a Japanese house in June.
Last week, the beach appeared to be as littered — or even more littered — than it was before the cleanup, said Darryl Wood a Surfrider member.
Wood, who has been surfing and cleaning beaches with Surfrider on the Olympic Peninsula since 1963, said there was as much debris built up in nine months as it had before the last cleanup in 1978.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.
