11 years after...message from sea: The reality that should never be forgotten

URASOE, OKINAWA, Japan -- Kinser Marines found a beat up pallet while they engaged in the clean-up effort on the beach behind Camp Kinser Elementary School during a volunteer activity, Sept. 30, 2022. The significance of this pallet comes from what is written on it.

On it the words "Kesennuma Seafood Processing."

Kesennuma is one of the port cities which was devastated by the Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent tsunami on March 11, 2011.

Mika Miura of the Kesennuma City Great East Japan Earthquake Memorial Museum in Kesennuma, confirmed that the pallet belonged to the Kesennuma Seafood Processing Cooperative and that it was used before the tsunami.

This pallet could have washed up on the shore of Okinawa after possibly drifting in the ocean for more than a decade.

According to Miura, a member of the Kesennuma Seafood Processing Cooperative was surprised that the pallet was found on a distant shore 11 years after the disaster.

"People's feelings and hearts never decay, and when they remember Kesennuma and contact us (like this), we feel a 'connection,'" said Miura.