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Bill Steven initially thought he bit off more than he could chew.

The 20-foot boat with the Japanese writing on it had been sitting at the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office for about two months after it washed ashore on South Beach in April 2013.

After saving the boat from becoming salvage and with help from representatives of the Redwood Coast Tsunami Working Group, Steven and his colleagues knew the vessel had once belonged to Takata High School in Rikuzentakata, Japan.

Steven also knew that though the seaside community in the Iwate prefecture was still reeling from the March 11, 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, they wanted Kamome — Japanese for seagull — back.

Steven now wondered how he was going to get it home.

“I was like, ‘Am I going to be doing bake sales over the next two years to pay for this thing to get back to Japan?’” He told the Wild Rivers Outpost. “And then I thought, ‘It’s for high school kids and I have a high school kid,’ so I yelled at him to come into the living room and asked if we could launch a project.”

John Steven and five of his classmates spent about a month scrubbing Kamome free of barnacles. With help from Use and Shipping Lines in Oakland and Recology Del Norte, the 20-foot fishing vessel returned home.

Bill Steven said he never imagined the gesture would lead to a series of exchanges and a proclamation of friendship between Del Norte and Takata high schools. That sister school relationship grew into the Sister City pact Del Norte, Crescent City and Rikuzentakata entered into five years ago.

The Kamome Festival on Friday will commemorate both 10th anniversary of the boat’s arrival in Crescent City and an ongoing friendship that has put both communities on a world stage during the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.

“For most people things like this might not seem worthwhile,” District 3 Supervisor Chris Howard told the Wild Rivers Outpost. “At the same time, looking at the long-term economic development potential from the sheer recognition of our community on a world stage during the Olympics, that return on investment far exceeded the amount of money the county or city committed to that relationship over the last (five) years.”

The one-day festival will begin with tsunami and earthquake preparedness education, including emergency “go-bag” making from pillow cases, for school-aged kids. They will have a chance to view the new Sister City kiosk and mural at Beachfront Park and learn how to create origami, Kyoto fan folding and Kanji writing and card making.

At 5 p.m., artist Harley Munger, of Piece by Piece Pottery, will unveil the mural that will be part of the Sister City monument at the park.

An evening ceremony will start at 6 p.m. at the Crescent Elk Auditorium, where local city and county officials and friends from Rikuzentakata will tell Kamome’s story. There will also be a traditional Japanese Taiko drum performance and the screening of the Kamome documentary on Peacock.

The tickets were free, but they've all been spoken for.

According to Crescent City Mayor Pro Tem Blake Inscore, who is part of the Kamome Foundation Board of Directors and has been instrumental in the Sister City relationship since its inception, five people from Rikuzentakata will be in Crescent City for the festival.

“They represent people from the new administration at Rikuzentakata,” Inscore told the Outpost. “The new superintendent of schools is coming and, one of the things on Friday they want to do is visit the high school. The others are policy and tourism people for the city. We have such a limited window with them because they’re flying out Sunday morning from Medford, so they’re leaving Saturday evening.”

Inscore said he hopes the delegation will have time to visit Stout Grove or the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Parks day-use area. However, what they’ll be doing apart from the festival is largely undecided.

“The plan is to have them stop in at the Cultural Center while the kids’ stuff is going on,” Inscore said. “They can walk through, see what’s going on, see the mural and by 10:15 (they’re) going to meet with the school and get an hour and a half with that.”

Since Kamome’s arrival, in addition to being featured on NBC Sports during the Olympic Games in Tokyo, two local businesses, SeaQuake and Rumiano Cheese, have created products celebrating the Sister City relationship, Howard said.

There was a huge celebration when the first two pallets of Kamome Ale arrived in Rikuzentakata last year during the COVID-19 pandemic, he said.

Then there’s Rumiano Cheese Company’s Kamome Dry Jack cheese.

“It’s taking their dry jack and using the salt dehydrated from seawater from Hiroto Bay,” Howard said. “So now, Baird (Rumiano) made that into a fundraising exercise where the proceeds benefit the exchange of students.”

Kamome Dry Jack and other Crescent City products were showcased alongside Rikuzentakata products at a food fair in San Francisco hosted by the Consul General of Japan, Howard said. If Kamome had never made its way to Del Norte County, none of this would be possible, he said.

Now, post-COVID, both communities are working to rekindle their relationship, Howard said. Kiyoshi Murakami, Rikuzentakata’s senior executive, was instrumental in creating a delegation to attend the celebration in Crescent City. Howard said he hopes to return the favor in June.

“I’m hoping to find a large delegation to go over with us and really start having conversations again about the meaning of Sister Cities,” he told the Outpost. “For them, the government to government relationships are extremely important and they have a brand new mayor who was just elected…. I think the importance of having a conversation with the mayor as soon as possible with a delegation from the community to show our interest is important.”

For Inscore, who, along with Howard, has been part of the Sister City efforts since the beginning, keeping that relationship going needs new ideas and new drivers.

The Kamome Foundation is one way that could happen, especially after a donation from doctors Kevin Caldwell and Donna Sund, Steven said.

Keeping the festival an annual event could be another way to extend that relationship into the future, Inscore said.

“We need some people who can bring some new life and some new ideas and say, ‘Hey, this is what this story means to me,’” he said. “Sometimes you need to be willing to pass the torch and let people do things in a different way for it to have the longevity it needs.”

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