Welcoming festivities to greet new Ehime Maru
By Zenaida Serrano Espanol
Advertiser Staff Writer
More than two years after a Navy submarine accidentally plowed into a Japanese fisheries school training vessel, killing nine men and boys, a new Ehime Maru will arrive in Honolulu Tuesday with one of the survivors of the collision.
• 8 a.m. Tuesday • Pier 9, Aloha Tower Marketplace • For more information: 524-4450 • The U.S. Coast Guard has granted permission for a welcoming flotilla of yachts, canoes and commercial vessels to greet Ehime Maru in Honolulu. For details: 524-6479.
The new Ehime Maru is part of a lengthy reconciliation between the United States and Japan over the accident. Its arrival will include a flotilla consisting of a tugboat, fireboat and pilot boat to greet the boat as it enters Honolulu Harbor.
Welcoming festivities, flotilla
"We're hoping to get as many vessels out there as we can," said Dave Lyman, one of the event organizers and a member of the Hawai'i Pilots Association.
Participating in the ceremony will be the Saint Louis School Japanese Club. The club's adviser, Rika Inaba of Diamond Head, has followed news accounts of the fatal collision of the Ehime Maru with the USS Greeneville.
"I'm a Japanese national, so I read Japanese newspapers, too," Inaba said. "I know the unfriendly or unpleasant feelings they had toward the United States and everybody in general at that time. ... Now it's slowly changing."
On May 7, the new training vessel left the port of Uwajima in Ehime prefecture, about 420 miles southwest of Tokyo, for a two-month cruise to Hawai'i.
The ship, with a crew of 36 teachers and students from the Uwajima Fisheries High School, includes Daisuke Shinoto, 19, a survivor of the 2001 collision.
The vessel was built at a cost of $9.25 million as part of an $11.47 million compensation package paid to the local government.
Since the tragedy, Hawai'i has maintained ties to Ehime; an Ehime Maru memorial at Kaka'ako Waterfront Park was unveiled in February 2002, and in November, 11- to 15-year-olds from an O'ahu youth baseball league participated in a goodwill tournament in Ehime.
On Tuesday, the welcoming pilot boat will include the Saint Louis students, who will present a lei fashioned out of kukui nuts and red and blue beads. It will will be hung on the bow of the Ehime Maru.
"The lei symbolizes friendship between the Uwajima High School students and the Saint Louis Japanese Club," said club president Ahren Miura, 16. Since the unveiling of the memorial in Kaka'ako, the club has volunteered to maintain the monument once a month, Miura said.
Once docked, the students, teachers and crew of the Ehime Maru will participate in a welcome ceremony that will feature entertainment by the Royal Hawaiian Band and hula dancers.
"It's going to be kept simple, as requested by the principal (of Uwajima Fisheries High School), because the thing is to let the students, teachers and crew relax when they're here," said Earl Okawa, president of both the Japan-America Society of Hawai'i and the Ehime Maru Memorial Association.
The visiting students will be in Honolulu for a few days, Okawa said, and the crew will lay wreaths at the memorial in Kaka'ako.
While the collision was a tragic incident, the Ehime Maru visit will be "a new start," said Hiroko Taniguchi, spokeswoman for the Consulate General of Japan in Honolulu.
"The visit of Ehime Maru to Honolulu is a very important opportunity to exchange the aloha spirit for both countries," Taniguchi said.
Reach Zenaida Serrano Espanol at zespanol@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-8174.
