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Though they stumbled over an unfamiliar language, Yamada Ichio and Gabe Howard shared the same hope for a next chapter in Kamome’s story.

Speaking in English, Yamada, Rikuzentakata’s superintendent of schools, on Friday celebrated the partnership that grew out of an act of fate when Kamome landed on South Beach two years after the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in 2011.

“We’re proudly displaying this symbol of friendship in our new city museum we just completed in November of 2022,” Yamada told the Del Norte County community at a festival commemorating the 10th anniversary of the boat’s arrival on Crescent City shores. “Many museum visitors are excited and interested in Kamome’s journey across the Pacific Ocean.”

In Japanese, Howard, president of Del Norte High School’s Japan Club, spoke of the foresight previous students had when they scrubbed the barnacles off Kamome and returned her to Takata High. The boat symbolized hope for Takata High School students a decade ago, Howard said, and continues to inspire his classmates to this day.

“The students of Rikuzentakata have inspired us to strive for greater heights, even overcoming our own tragedies,” Howard said. “In celebration of this historic occasion, we are committed to continuing the relations between our two schools, but we need your support to do so. We look forward to exploring new ways to collaborate between our communities. Perhaps most of all, we’re looking forward to restarting the student exchanges between Del Norte and Takata High School.”

Humboldt Drum Taiko provided a thunderous soundtrack to the ceremony that followed the unveiling of Piece by Piece Pottery’s puzzle mosaic mural commemorating the Sister City relationship between Rikuzentakata and Del Norte County.

Created by Harley Munger and Laura Haban, the 600-pound mural features Katsushika Hokusai’s “Great Wave off Kanagawa.” Harley’s wife, Jill Munger, said her husband had seen renderings of the famous woodblock print all over Japan when they visited their daughter in Sendai and vowed to include it in a future mural.

Hokusai’s wave towers over two lighthouses and a group of Japanese and American youth holding up Kamome. Crescent City’s mural is on display at Beachfront Park.

Del Norte will send a second mural to Rikuzentakata for display at its museum alongside Kamome, said Blake Inscore, Crescent City’s mayor pro tem, who is also on the Kamome Foundation Board of Directors.

“We’re still trying to figure out when exactly that’s going to go, but I want to extend to you a personal invitation that when we prepare to send the mural over, we would love to take a delegation of people from Del Norte County and Crescent City to go along with that,” he said. “The Kamome Foundation is going to be engaging with you and giving you the opportunity to be the next citizen ambassador on behalf of Crescent City and Del Norte County.”

The evening also included a screening of the feature story NBC Sports created for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.

Senior Producer David Picker, who visited Crescent City with a delegation from Rikuzentakata in 2019, said NBC aims to highlight relationships between the event’s host country and the United States.

Picker said he was clued into the story of Kamome through a four-paragraph article, which led him to Bill Steven, who worked with the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office and took control of the boat when it washed ashore in 2013.

“A 2-year-old could have said this is an amazing story,” Picker said. “And it keeps going with another chapter. Tonight’s a chapter too.”

Steven, who founded the Kamome Foundation in 2021, said the foundation’s goal is to continue to use the Sister City relationship as an educational tool to teach the importance of disaster preparedness to Del Norte County youth. That was the focus of activities Steven and Inscore participated in with 1,000 elementary school kids on Friday morning.

The Kamome Foundation’s larger goal, however, is to continue to facilitate cultural exchanges between Del Norte and Rikuzentakata youth, Steven said. The mural Crescent City unveiled at Beachfront Park on Friday and will send over the ocean symbolizes the enduring firendship between both communities, he said.

“It shows that we have a relationship with Rikuzentakata and it also shows the nice thing those kids did for somebody else and what it blossomed into and that’s a great thing,” Steven said. “We want to see those kids go back and forth again.”

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