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Is this your hat? Canadian museum bids to reunite Japan tsunami victims with possessions

More than a year since the Japanese tsunami struck, debris from the disaster is washing up 4,500 miles away in Canada.


Now, in a bid to reunite possessions to Japanese victims of the tragedy, a Canadian museum has set up an online project to record items washed up on North American shores and even return them to the rightful owners.

The Maritime Museum of British Columbia is welcoming photographic submissions of items that have beached on the Canadian coastline with the aim of repatriating as many of them as possible.

“Moderators at the museum will attempt to determine the origin of debris, assess any potential value and place photos of the objects on the website,” said the museum. “Even if repatriation of items is not possible, the online curated collection of images will make an interesting exhibit about the flotsam and jetsam that is inevitable following a natural disaster of this magnitude”.

A young Japanese boy had a welcome surprise recently when he was reunited with a football that was lost in the disaster. Misaki Murakami wrote his name and school on it - enough for him to be located when a walker found it on a beach on Middleton Island, Canada.

Misaki Murakami said the ball had added significance as he had until then failed to recover anything he’d lost in the tsunami.

Although a number of items have already washed up around the Canadian and Alaskan coastlines, the majority of debris expected to surface in 2013.