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A delegation of elected officials and business leaders will bring two Del Norte icons to Rikuzentakata, Japan next week — a new SeaQuake beer and redwood trees.

The 15-member Sister City delegation will unveil Kamome Ale at a private event for restaurant and bar owners on Monday and to the community of Rikuzentakata on Wednesday, Crescent City Mayor Blake Inscore said.

The Del Norte delegation will also take part in a ceremonial planting of redwood trees. According to Inscore, the trees are symbolic of the ongoing relationship between two communities brought together by disaster.

“They lost their pine forest and they had the one miracle pine that remained,” Inscore said, referring to the devastation Rikuzentakata went through during the March 2011 tsunami. “Mayor (Futoshi) Toba had approached me a year ago had approached me a year ago saying he would like to be able to bring redwoods there as sort of something that’s from here that’s so iconic to who we are that could be a permanent part of their community.”

Along with Inscore, who leaves Friday, the other delegates to Rikuzentakata include Del Norte County District 3 Supervisor Chris Howard and his wife Lisa. Troy and Leslie Duncan, Matt Wakefield, Kevin and Gayle Hartwick and Bob Bargioni will represent SeaQuake Brewing. Rumiano Cheese President Baird Rumiano, his wife Jane Rumiano and the company’s CEO Joe Baird will also be part of the delegation to Rikuzentakata, Inscore said.

Inscore said the goal is to work out a method of exporting Kamome Ale and Rumiano Cheese to Japan. Meanwhile, the local delegation will meet with a fisherman’s association to discuss the possibility of importing oysters from Rikuzentakata and growing them in Crescent City, he said.

“They want to make an appeal in the same way we’re making an appeal with the importing of cheese and beer,” Inscore said of Rikuzentakata’s fishing community. The trip will also include a visit to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. “We’ll be talking to leaders from the Foreign Agricultural Service regarding the next steps for this import/export process.”

Kamome Ale is named for the fishing vessel that was swept away by the March 2011 tsunami and deposited south of Crescent City in 2013. A friendship was forged when students at Del Norte High School cleaned the barnacles off the boat and sent it back to its home at Takata High School in Japan. As Rikuzentakata recovered from the tsunami, students from both communities have taken part in several cultural exchange since then, signing a Sister School pact in 2015.

In addition to sparking a Sister School and, later, a Sister City relationship, the story of Kamome, Japanese for seagull, has resulted in an illustrated children’s book written in English and Japanese.

Next year, NBC will share the story of Del Norte County and Rikuzentakata’s special friendship to a wider audience during the 2020 Olympics. NBC Sports will accompany the delegation during its trip to Rikuzentakata on next Monday and Tuesday, Inscore said.

“I just don’t know how we can even put a value on what it might be worth for people to see Crescent City every night during the Olympics,” he said during a City Council meeting Monday. “Thirty-million people seeing us. We need to continue to be on our best behavior and doing our job both as policymakers and as staff to be prepared for a huge tourist season in 2020, 2021 and 2022.”

In May, the Crescent City Council approved spending up to $2,500 to send Inscore to Rikuzentakata. On Monday, Inscore said that the city dollars were for his airfare to Japan, but that either he or Rikuzentakata is “paying for everything else.”

“I’m not putting for any other expenses,” he said. “I’m not asking (the city) to pay to get me to Medford or to put me up overnight before my flight, but my city is paying for my airfare to get me there and I’ve always felt like it was a justified expense.”

At the Del Norte County Board of Supervisors July 9 meeting, Howard said he was paying for his trip to Japan out of his own pocket. He noted that not only has the relationship been valuable from an emergency preparedness standpoint — Howard and Inscore joined Rikuzentakata’s Mayor Toba at the United Nations last November for World Tsunami Awareness Day — it will a tremendous economic impact.

Addressing an opinion some have in the community that public funds shouldn’t be used to further the relationship between the two cities, Howard said his family has invested more than $20,000.

“I honestly truly believe the importance of this relationship and the future economic impacts to this county are going to be tremendous,” he said. “Being featured daily in front of 30 million viewers… the visibility is going to be awesome.”

By this time next year, though, Inscore said, the Sister City relationship will have to be handed over to a nonprofit organization to ensure its long-term success. The contribution of staff time and money from the city and the county has done a good job in laying the foundation, especially since the business community is involved now, he said. But, Inscore said his role now will be to make the transition to nonprofit involvement.

“It’s been worth the time and the investment,” Inscore said, estimating that the city has contributed about $15,000 to $16,000 in public dollars to the sister city relationship. “We put a lot more time in this than money. But we had lots of community donations. The lodging was donated, the food was donated. This community has come together and has done an awful lot to get us to where we are and I’m very thankful for that.”

Inscore said he would have a complete report for his colleagues on the City Council when he returns from Japan in about a week.

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