By George Galer,
A northern California city on Friday celebrated the 10th anniversary of the washing ashore of a small boat two years after it was sucked out to sea during the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan.
Crescent City held the Kamome Festival for the first time to commemorate the wild journey of the boat, the Kamome, from Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, and the bond it created between two cities on opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean.
Blake Inscore, a 61-year-old former mayor of the U.S. coastal city, said the 10th anniversary was a "reminder of the undeniable reality that our communities were destined to be forever friends." The organizers plan to make the festival an annual event.
Around 750 elementary school students attended events in the morning, learning about tsunami and the story of the Kamome, trying their hand at origami and writing letters to students in Rikuzentakata. A "taiko" traditional Japanese drum group from Eureka, south of Crescent City, performed during the event.
Local artist Harley Munger, 80, unveiled his mural commemorating the relationship between the sister cities during the festival and an identical mural will be sent to Rikuzentakata.
The tsunami that brought the Kamome from the marine science department of Takata High School to Crescent City destroyed thousands of buildings and left over 1,500 people dead in Rikuzentakata.
The boat washed up on Crescent City's South Beach in April 2013. Students at Del Norte High School in the city decided to clean the boat and help return it to its rightful owners.
While most of those at the festival live in Crescent City, a delegation from Rikuzentakata also attended the event.
Kiyoshi Murakami, 63, a member of the Rikuzentakata delegation and CEO of a company involved in post-disaster reconstruction and promotional activities, said the return of the boat "gave hope during the rebuilding of the city."
The story of the Kamome also reminds residents of Crescent City of their own history of tsunami. In 1964, what the University of Southern California Tsunami Research Center called the "largest and most destructive tsunami to ever strike the United States Pacific Coast" hit the city, killing over 10 people and destroying hundreds of buildings.
Del Norte and Takata became sister schools in 2014 and Crescent City, along with Del Norte County, established a sister-city relationship with Rikuzentakata in 2018.
"As they were rebuilding a city we were also building a new friendship, and that needs to be celebrated," Inscore said.
