ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A basketball which washed ashore in Southeast Alaska has been identified as belonging to a school in Japan, destroyed by last year’s earthquake and tsunami.
Kathy Peavey, a contractor for the Marine Conservation Alliance Foundation, a non-profit which cleans up Alaska beaches, is still trying to determine precisely which school the ball came from.
But after consulting a translator and others in the marine debris community, she believes the ball is property of Kesen Middle School, in the city of Rikuzentakata, along Japan’s east coast, an area heavily damaged by the tsunami.
A family from Craig, combing a beach on Baker Island in Southeast Alaska, discovered the ball in late March, Peavey said.
According to Peavey, Aleasha Hohorst, the student who found the ball, is waiting for a specific address before shipping it back to Japan.
