Isle group’s shows
raise nearly $1,200
for attack victims

---

Star-Bulletin staff

The Taiko-Maru National Caravan Executive Committee collected nearly $1,200 at its 34th and 35th Hawaiian shows in October in Kamakura and Tokyo, Japan.

The audiences were asked for relief donations for victims of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center Sept. 11. The money was brought to Honolulu by Sonny Ching, who presented the shows.

In October of last year, the National Caravan Executive Committee sent $1,700 to Kauai County, and Mayor Maryanne Kusaka sent the donation to the Blood Bank of Hawaii.

The National Caravan Executive Committee raises funds to support bone marrow donor registration activities and a bone marrow bank, and to stop HIV/AIDS and promote understanding of the disease.

Mitsuru Miyato, committee director, said the program has signed up 130,000 people for the bone marrow registry. He said 100 people signed up in one day in July.

The committee's program to help people suffering from incurable diseases was inspired by a half-sunken fishing boat found drifting off the shores of Kanazawa after a huge tsunami July 12, 1993.

Generated by an earthquake off the southwest coast of Hokkaido, the waves hit Okushiri island and coastal Hokkaido, leaving 201 people dead, 29 missing, 594 houses destroyed and 676 boats sunk.

The fishing boat Taiko-Maru was spared from devastation, drifting more than 600 miles in a straight line from Okushiri.

The National Caravan Executive Committee welcomed it as "a symbol of its incurable-disease campaign because of the vessel's amazing survival."