David Baxter (L) and his Japanese wife Yumi pose with a soccer ball (L) which they found at a remote site in the Gulf of Alaska and is likely the first salvageable debris from last year's Japanese tsunami that could be returned to its owner in this photo taken in Alaska April 22, 2012.
Not only did an Alaskan radar station technician, David Baxter, locate a soccer ball in April 2012 that had floated from Japan, but he also found a volleyball nearby just a couple of weeks later on the largely uninhabited Middleton Island in Alaska. Baxter’s Japanese wife, Yumi, read the writing on the balls and realized out that the soccer ball belonged to 16-year-old Misaki Murakami from Rikuzentakata, Japan, and the volleyball to 19-year-old Shirori Sate from Japan’s Iwate area. Both balls were returned.