What a result – balls lost in tsunami turn up 3,000 miles away in Alaska

the chances of finding the owners of not one but two balls that floated more than 3,000 miles across the stormy expanse of the Pacific Ocean must be remote, but that’s exactly what has happened.

Alaskan radar technician David Baxter discovered a football with Japanese writing on it in while beachcombing in March. A few weeks later, he retrieved a volleyball, also carrying Japanese script.

On finding the football, he deduced it had probably floated all the way across the Pacific after Japan’s disastrous tsunami of March 2011, when thousands of tons of debris were swept into the sea.

Mr Baxter showed the football to his Japanese wife, Yumi, who decided to try to contact its owner, and at the weekend, Misaki Murakami, 16, received a phone call from her about the lost ball. “It was a big surprise. I’ve never imagined that my ball has reached Alaska,” he said. “I’ve lost everything in the tsunami, so I’m delighted. I really want to say thank you for finding the ball.”

The football, which also had messages of encouragement written on it, was given to him in 2005 as a goodbye gift when he transferred to another school.

He was particularly glad because all furniture and sentimental items in his home had been washed away in the tsunami, which devastated a long stretch of Japan’s north-eastern coast and killed about 19,000 people.

Mr Baxter, from Kasilof, Alaska, found Misaki’s ball on Middleton Island, 70 miles south of the Alaskan mainland. “When I first saw the soccer ball, I was excited to see it and I thought it was possible it came from the tsunami zone,” Mr Baxter said.

His wife reached Misaki with help from a Japanese reporter. The teenager thanked the couple “for wanting to take the time to even try to find him”, Mr Baxter said.

Yesterday, broadcaster NHK reported the owner of the volleyball had also been found – Shiori Sato, 19, from Iwate prefecture, which had also been hit by the tsunami.

The ball had her first name on it, and a viewer called in to suggest contacting Shiori after watching the story about the football’s owner. “Good heavens!” she told NHK. “I want to say [to the ball] ‘Welcome back!’ I think it’s a miracle.”

Officials from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) say the balls are among the first pieces of debris from the tsunami to wash up on the other side of the Pacific.

The debris initially formed a thick mass in the ocean off Japan and has since spread across the Pacific. In February, the NOAA said currents would carry much of it to the coasts of Alaska, Canada, Washington and Oregon between March 2013 and 2014, though they noted that some of it could arrive this year.

Earlier this month, a US Coast Guard cutter fired on and sank a fishing boat in the Gulf of Alaska that had drifted from Japan after the tsunami. Authorities had deemed the ship a hazard to shipping and to the coastline.

The Baxters plan to visit Japan next month but do not plan to deliver the football to Misaki. They are reluctant to visit him as they don’t want to create too much of a fuss, Mr Baxter said.