Thanks to Misaki Murakami’s name having been written on his soccer ball , which was lost during last year’s tsunami in Japan, the boy will hopefully have his ball back soon after it was found on Alaska’s Middleton Island by David Baxter.
According to the Associated Press report Baxter’s Japanese wife, Yumi, discussed the delightful discovery with Murakami over the telephone and intends on returning 16-year-old Murakami’s soccer ball.
Kyodo News reported that the boy, who is from the town of Rikuzentakata, was surprised as well as thankful to learn that his ball had been located and would be returned.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials said that the soccer ball was one of the first pieces of debris that have been traced back to Japan’s tsunami, also known as the T?hoku earthquake and tsunami, which occurred on March 11, 2011.
The 2011 Tohoku earthquake, a.k.a the Great East Japan Earthquake , was a magnitude 9.0 (M w ) undersea megathrust earthquake with an epicenter approximately 43 miles east of Tohoku. The earthquake, which was the catalyst for powerful tsunami waves reaching 133 ft. high, was the most powerful known earthquake to have ever struck Japan as well as one of the top five most powerful earthquakes in the modern world of record-keeping.
Rikuzentakatais a city in Iwate, Japan, with a population of 23,302 according to the quinquennial census of 2010. The 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami caused considerable damage to the oyster farming city. After the tsunami, the Japan Self-Defense Forces reported that between 300 and 400 bodies were found in the town as it had been “wiped off the map” by the tsunami.