Posted on: Sunday, June 15, 2003

EDITORIAL
New Ehime Maru is welcome indeed

Marking the latest in a painful but fruitful series of amends, it is with great satisfaction that we welcome the new Ehime Maru, a fisheries school training vessel, due here tomorrow.

In time, we hope, its crew will come to regard Honolulu as a second home port.

A little more than two years ago, the USS Greeneville, a nuclear submarine, shot out of the ocean off Diamond Head like a breaching whale and inadvertently rammed the first Ehime Maru, sinking it and sending nine crew members to a watery death.

Of course, anger and frustration linger for many of the wreck's survivors and relatives of the victims. Some were bitter that the Greeneville's former skipper, Cmdr. Scott Waddle, did not receive a court martial and was allowed to retire at full rank and pension.

Many didn't understand why Waddle wouldn't go to Japan to apologize to the victims' families. When he finally did visit, ironically, his gesture was widely shunned.

That and other controversies in the wake of the collision have taught us much about the Japanese culture of apology. Their desire for formal demonstrations of remorse, we believe, was not disappointed.

Hawai'i and the U.S. Navy went to great lengths — and expense — to help ease the pain of those who lost loved ones. U.S.-Japan relations have not suffered unduly as a result.

The Navy spent more than $60 million on a remarkable recovery effort. American and Japanese divers retrieved the bodies of all but one of the nine victims, allowing their families to perform Buddhist funeral rites.

Last year a memorial dedicated to those who died was dedicated at Kaka'ako Waterfront Park. It will be visited by the crew of the new Ehime Maru — 36 teachers and students from the Uwajima Fisheries High School in Ehime prefecture on the island of Shikoku — including Daisuke Shinoto, 19, a survivor of the 2001 collision.

The new vessel was built at a cost of $9.25 million, part of an $11.47 million compensation package paid to the local government.

From any perspective, the price of the collision and its aftermath has been huge — and worthwhile, insofar as it has nurtured a bilateral relationship through a rough patch and improved performance standards to make the U.S. submarine force safer.

It's just sad that it took nine lives to reach that point.