EHIME PREFECTURE
The proposed memorial for the victims of the Ehime
Maru-USS Greeneville crash.

State OKs Kakaako
memorial for sunken
ship Ehime Maru

9 black granite slabs will represent
victims of the sub collision
off Oahu last February

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By Gregg K. Kakesako
gkakesako@starbulletin.com

A state agency agreed today to allow the Ehime Prefecture government to erect a granite memorial on the Kakaako waterfront in remembrance of the February collision between the Ehime Maru and the attack nuclear submarine USS Greeneville.

After more than four weeks of searching the interior of the 190-foot vessel, Navy and Japanese divers have not been able to recover the body of Takeshi Mizuguchi, a 17-year-old Uwajima Fisheries High School student. The Navy is about to complete its $60 million Ehime Maru recovery operation that yielded the bodies of eight of the nine victims from the Feb. 9 accident.

Before the Navy began searching the three-deck, 190-ton ship, officials predicted they would find five to seven bodies.

Yoshikatsu Matsuoka, Ehime Prefecture board of education representative, told the Hawaii Community Development Authority that the $65,000 memorial at the Kakaako Waterfront Park is an attempt "to comfort the nine souls who perished," to remember the accident and strengthen the friendship between the Ehime government and Hawaii and between Japan and the United States.

Nine black granite slabs will make up the 12-foot square memorial that will be financed and maintained by the Ehime government. It will feature the anchor recovered from the Ehime Maru by the U.S. Navy, the emblem of Uwajima Fisheries High School, which owned the vessel, and the names of the nine victims.

Matsuoka said the Ehime government would like it completed by the first anniversary of the collision. The victims' families wanted the memorial to be near the Aloha Tower, where other educational fishing vessels like the Ehime Maru will dock. They also wanted it facing the ocean within view of the site of the accident, the place where the recovery operations were held, and the area where the Ehime Maru will be laid to rest.

Sixty Navy and six Japanese civilian divers have been searching the wreckage since Oct. 14. Before the end of the weekend, 30 Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force divers are expected to do a final sweep of the Ehime Maru.

Navy divers have been removing environmental hazards, such as fishing longlines and nets, before a 400-foot barge moves the Ehime Maru to a spot 12 miles south of Kalaeloa Point where it will be permanently sunk. The Navy wants to complete the entire operation by the end of the month.

The ship lies in 115 feet of water a mile south of the Honolulu Airport's reef runway. It was relocated there from nine miles south of Diamond Head because it was unsafe for divers to work at the 2,000-foot depth where the Ehime Maru ended up after it was rammed by the nuclear submarine. The sub was practicing an emergency surfacing maneuver when it rammed the hull of the Ehime Maru.