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| A Navy-chartered cruiser, right, carrying family members of the nine people missing from the Ehime Maru, passed a Navy ship at the crash site yesterday nine miles off O‘ahu.
Associated Press |
At the same time a group of survivors from the Ehime Maru quietly boarded the passenger jet that would take them back to Japan yesterday, a sightseeing vessel with families of the missing arrived at the deep waters where the ship sank.
Four days after a surfacing U.S. submarine punctured the hull of a Japanese fishing boat, a Navy-chartered cruiser took anxious families to the scene of the tragedy.
On board the 140-foot Navatek 1 during its most somber of deep-sea excursions were relatives of the four students, two teachers and three crew members who remain lost at sea.
The trip gave melancholy family members a chance to survey the choppy ocean surface and ponder its depths, to look after lonely spirits and to leave flowers in their wake.
Hisao Onishi, captain of the Japanese fishing ship, was the only survivor to return to the site. He joined principal Ietaka Horita of Uwajima Fisheries High School, 25 family members representing each of the missing, and several Japanese government and American military officials on the boat.
‘Everybody cried’
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| Smaller boats and a helicopter carrying news media join the Navatek 1 as it heads toward the site of Friday’s collision. Family members of those missing from the Ehime Maru were aboard the Navatek.
Chopper 8 • Special to The Honolulu Advertiser |
When they reached the place of the tragedy, emotions poured out.
"I heard some people calling the names of the lost ones," said Soichiro Takahama, vice superintendent of the southwestern Japanese school district, who was among the 58 passengers. "Everybody cried."
For 40 minutes, they stared out to the ocean in a spot 1,800 feet deep as search-and-rescue crews continued to look for their loved ones.
"I saw some people hugging each other as they cried," said Takahama, who was the reluctant center of attention as he recounted the experience later at a press conference at Honolulu’s Japanese Cultural Center. "Everybody was quiet."
Some threw flowers provided by the consul general of Japan, and others snapped pictures.
When it was time to leave, several people sat at tables inside the Navatek cruiser and put their heads down weeping.
Questions unanswered
The families want the ship raised, he said, because they fear that some of the missing may still be inside. But on yesterday’s visit to the site of their heartbreak, they asked no questions of the officials on board even though they were hungry for more answers, Takahama said.
"They couldn’t be satisfied," he said. "They want to know how the accident took place, what the cause was. But the only answer they’ve gotten so far is that it is still under investigation."
Earlier, at the Honolulu airport, the seven returning high school students and their two teachers waited privately in a lounge area while the rest of the passengers boarded Japan Airlines Flight 77 for Osaka. Then, with U.S. and Japanese officials leading the nine through the usual shuffle of TV camera crews, the survivors walked out to the gate and boarded.
The students, who had lost their belongings, wore new clothes, including colorful windbreakers and sweaters. But their body language remained subdued. An accompanying woman paused at the gate to give one of the youths a heartfelt hug. At home, of course, the group could expect an emotional greeting - and many more cameras.
Other Japanese tourists awaiting flights home watched with interest, and some said the tragedy would be a sad point of reference for their otherwise happy vacations. Hiroshi Kawade of Osaka said his family had climbed Diamond Head and had peered over the water, wondering exactly where the vessels had collided.
Another Osaka traveler, Ritsuko Kuramoto, said the inexplicable collision had left her more worried than usual about flying. She said she already was anxious after the recent near miss over Japan of two Japan Airlines jets.
"When I came here," she said, "I was somewhat afraid. So now my heart is pounding."
Quiet flight home
Sensing that a gathering of media people meant that some survivors would join their flight, passengers standing in line earlier to board the flight had been curious, looking back over their right shoulders as they inched forward in line.
But Ryo Masuda, a Buddhist minister with Higashi Hongwanji Mission of Hawai‘i who was seeing off friends at the gate, said other passengers would not want to bother the survivors once on board. They would provide the survivors privacy to rest tired minds and taxed feelings.
"Maybe," he said, "they can’t accept reality right now."
Translator Junji Ono contributed to this report.
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