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Families visit s Family members yesterday dropped several boxes of loose flowers into the water near where the Ehime Maru sank, in a tribute to the missing.
collision site, leave
flowers for
those missing
They continue to ask if the
sunken ship can be raised;
meanwhile, the nine surviving
students and one teacher
return to Japan
Submarine investigation
By Gordon Y.K. Pang
and Treena Shapiro
Star-BulletinBut they are still not satisfied with the explanations from the Navy, whose nuclear submarine, the USS Greeneville, emerged out of the ocean and collided with the Ehime Maru on Friday afternoon.
While 26 students, teachers and crew members of the Japanese fishing training vessel were saved, nine others are still unaccounted for and feared dead.
Soichiro Takahama, a deputy superintendent of Ehime Prefecture's Board of Education, was among those who accompanied 25 family members yesterday to the collision site, about 10 miles south of Honolulu, on board a commercial hydrofoil rented by the Navy.
Takahama told reporters later that on the way to the accident site, the families were briefed by Coast Guard and Navy officials on what they believe happened. They were also told that a search effort is continuing.
Takahama said the family members remain puzzled about how the most world's technologically advanced military could let the incident happen.
They also continued to raise questions about whether the fishing vessel could be raised from the bottom of the ocean.
But as was the case on Sunday, they did not get assurances from Naval officials that would happen.
The hydrofoil stayed at the site for about 40 minutes, during which time loose flowers prepared by the Japanese Consulate were dropped into the water, Takahama said.
Much of the Japanese delegation wept during the visit, Takahama said.
The family members appeared more haggard and distressed after the hydrofoil trip, Takahama said, but he believes that partly was because of a rough ride in high seas.
Also yesterday, the nine students and one of the teachers who survived the incident left Hawaii to return home to Japan.
A Japanese consul accompanied them on the trip and was to stay for several hours after they arrived in Japan before traveling back to Hawaii.
"Our duty is to support and protect Japanese students," a consulate official explained.
Students walked to the gate at Honolulu Airport surrounded by airport security and representatives from the Japanese consulate.
Many of the boys wore baseball caps. Holding their heads down, the caps shaded their faces.
Although the accompanying people cleared them to speak to the news media, the contingent declined to do so.
One boy cried as he walked to the gate and even more after he hugged a local schoolteacher who had helped comfort the survivors in the days following the accident.
National Transportation Safety Board officials had interviewed the students about the collision.
Some of them told officials "that to them, it looked like the image of the Titanic going down," said NTSB spokesman John Hammerschmidt.
"As the vessel was sinking, one student described working his way up the mast and attempting to stay above the surface of the water and grabbing onto whatever he could on the mast of the ship," Hammerschmidt said.
The Japan-America Society of Hawaii is the coordinating agency for local residents who want to contribute to the families of victims of the Ehime Maru, destroyed Friday when it collided with the nuclear-powered submarine USS Greeneville. To contribute to
Ehime Maru fundThe First Hawaiian Bank Foundation kicked off the fund with a $10,000 contribution, according to Earl Okawa, the Japan-America Society's executive director.
Checks can be sent to the Japan-America Society of Hawaii, Ehime Maru Fund, P.O. Box 1796, Honolulu 96806. Checks can also be mailed to First Hawaiian Bank, P.O. Box 3200, Honolulu 96847.
Okawa said the Japanese Cultural Center, the Honolulu Japanese Chamber of Commerce, the United Japanese Society of Hawaii and KIKU-TV are putting the word out to their members and the Japanese-American community about the fund-raising effort.
Contributions likely will be distributed to the Uwajima Fisheries High School and the families of the victims of the accident.
"Everyone wants to help and that's why this is a community effort," Okawa said. "We're very concerned. We feel a lot of sorrow for these families."
He added that he is also contacting the National Association of Japan-America Societies to alert its 39 member organizations across the United States.
Japanese teens UWAJIMA, Japan -- It was a quiet reunion when nine tired, solemn teen-agers rescued after a U.S. Navy submarine collided with their fishing vessel returned to their families and friends in Japan today.
greeted with
quiet reunion
'I feel really relieved that
they've come back, but there are
still students missing,'
says their principalSubmarine investigation
Star-Bulletin news services
Some wearing baseball caps, T-shirts and windbreakers apparently given them in Hawaii after they lost all their belongings aboard the sunken Ehime Maru, the 16- and 17-year-old students filed into their school in the rugged fishing town of Uwajima, where teachers welcomed them and their families and held back a mob of reporters.
"I almost cried when I saw them because they are still young kids," said lawmaker Koichi Yamamoto, who spoke with the students when they arrived at Osaka's airport from Honolulu. "I think it was so hard on them to experience death, especially when it involved their classmates."
Just getting home again meant a lot, teachers said, after the students' ordeal in the water last week, then a long flight from Honolulu to Osaka, another to the city of Matsuyama, and a two-hour bus ride to Uwajima.
"The students were exhausted, physically and mentally," teacher Yoshimitsu Abe said. "It was a relief to see them smiling a bit when they were talking to each other and drinking juice."
"Half of the kids are complaining about insomnia," said another teacher , Shunichiro Toya. "Some are still suffering from nausea and skin rashes."
When the teens arrived in the city of Matsuyama, where they were greeted by family members, a few parents hugged their children. But nearly everyone exhibited traditional Japanese reserve and boarded a charter bus without speaking or showing emotion.
The bus, its windows curtained, then departed to the students' hometown of Uwajima.
In Tokyo, Foreign Ministry spokesman Norio Hattori thanked Washington for apologizing for the accident and searching for the missing.
"We all have the view that ... this should not damage our bilateral relations," Hattori said.
Under a mutual security agreement, 47,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Japan, about half of them on the small southern island of Okinawa.
Their presence, though strongly supported by both Tokyo and Washington, is often the source of tensions.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher suggested the accident will not likely become a factor in scheduling a summit between Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and Bush.
He said Bush had already been looking forward to seeing Mori soon.
"That process was under way. I understand they were looking for a fairly early date anyway," Boucher said.
Bush apologizes to Japan's leader
WASHINGTON -- President George W. Bush called Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori today and apologized for the sinking of a Japanese fishery training ship following a collision with a U.S. submarine off Oahu, the White House said today.
Bush "expressed his regret and apologized for the accident," a White House spokesman said.
The spokesman said Bush told Mori the U.S. "would do all it can to be of assistance to the Japanese government and Japanese people."
In Tokyo, Japanese officials said Mori told Bush he wants the United States to take every possible measure to raise the 499-ton Ehime Maru.
Kyodo News Service