Tsunami survivor gets ball back from US

(Telegraph) A teenage boy who lost all his belongings when his home was swept away in the Japanese tsunami in March 2011, has recovered his football from North America one year later.

The ball, which hung in a net on a wall in his bedroom had great sentimental value to Misaki Murakami, 16, as a memento of his old friends.
It was signed by his classmates and a teacher when he transferred schools at the end of his third year in elementary school.
He lost the ball along with all his personal belongings when his home in Rikuzentakata was washed out to sea on March 11, 2011, following the earthquake that shook Japan.
Mr Misaki escaped to a nearby evacuation centre before the tsunami hit his hometown.
But the ball made voyage of thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean, washing up on Alaska's Middleton Island where it was discovered by David Baxter, a technician at a radar station in the Gulf of Alaska.

Last year’s tsunami disaster, which claimed around 19,000 lives, swept away vast swathes of communities, including personal belongings, entire homes, boats and cars.
Many of these items have formed giant floating islands of debris which are slowly crossing the Pacific Ocean and heading towards the west coast of the United States, with an array of items already being discovered.
Much of the debris is expected to hit Alaska, Canada, Washington and Oregon between 2013 and 2014, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the federal agency in the United States.
However, a number of items are arriving already, among them the Ryou-Un Maru, an abandoned fishing vessel which travelled more than 7,200km from Japan before it was found drifting off Alaska.