Uwajima to resume fisheries training off Hawai'i
| • | Special report: Collision at Sea |
By Tanya Bricking
Advertiser Staff Writer
The Japanese high school that lost nine people in one of Hawai'i's worst maritime accidents four months ago is preparing to send 14 more students and two instructors to Hawai'i waters.
But the loss of the school's training vessel, the Ehime Maru, means Uwajima Fisheries High School, one of Japan's smallest, must farm its students out to neighboring high schools to complete training programs at sea.
The school already has sent two students, who were not aboard the Ehime Maru, on a training vessel from the neighboring Kochi Marine High School for a 10-day voyage to Miyako Island.
By the end of the summer, the Uwajima students and teachers will embark on a trip to Hawai'i, the school's administrative director said.
Journeys to Hawai'i have been part of the training at Uwajima Fisheries High School for more than half a century. Honolulu became a popular destination because of its year-round fishing, relatively gentle waters and safe training base. A port call here became a rite of passage for Uwajima boys learning to become commercial fishermen.
It remains a destination and refueling spot for training vessels such as the Omi Maru, the ship docked in Honolulu this week from the neighboring region of Yamaguchi, across the Inland Sea from Uwajima.
After a U.S. nuclear submarine collided Feb. 9 with the Ehime Maru in waters off Pearl Harbor and left nine boys and men from Uwajima lost at sea, Toshihiko Nakao, the Uwajima school's administrative director, worried that the accident might lead to a further decline in young people seeking careers on fishing boats.
Uwajima Fisheries High School already is among the smallest of Japan's nearly 50 fisheries high schools, enrolling about 200 of the country's 12,000 fisheries students.
In Uwajima, the last train stop on the southwest side of an island best known as the center of Shingon Buddhism, the hometown fisheries school competes against three other schools in the region to prepare teenagers for a fishing trade that employs about 400,000 people across Japan.
Nakao had worried that the accident and the loss of the Ehime Maru would leave Uwajima without new students, but he already had a stack of about 20 applications a month after the tragedy. That is about average, he said, and the steady number came as a welcome surprise.
Support for the school has been one of the only constant factors in a tumultuous few months. Four students, two instructors and three crewmen did not survive the shipwreck. Only two of the nine surviving students who were on board have returned to classes.
None of the surviving students will be returning to Hawai'i for the fisheries program. Many of them are still debating whether to continue to pursue careers in fishing.
"We are all hoping they will be restored mentally and emotionally," Nakao said.
The surviving boys who want to return to Hawai'i want it to be a trip to remember those they lost.
Students and victims' families want to come back in August or September, when the Navy is expected to move the Ehime Maru to shallower waters for a salvage effort, said Motoyasu Ota, who works in Uwajima's Ehime Maru Family Support Center.
They have discussed raising the ship's anchor to make into a Honolulu monument for the missing.
In Uwajima, it is still hard to accept that the missing are gone.
The Japanese language has two words for "family" — "kazoku," the regular word for "family," and "izoku," which means "family of the deceased." Ehime Maru victims' families still cannot bring themselves to call themselves "izoku."
Chihoko Nishida, widow of Ehime Maru engineer Hiroshi Nishida, said she expects families to have anxiety about sending Uwajima students back to Hawai'i waters.
But she says she would come back every year, if she could.
She wants a place for people to be able to go to remember the missing.
"This is not just for the survivors," she said. "But I would also want Japanese visitors to notice it, and, hopefully, put their hands together."
Interpreters Junji Ono and Joanne Ninomiya contributed to this report.
Call staff writer Tanya Bricking at 525-8026 or send e-mail to tbricking@honoluluadvertiser.com
