Bottle From Japanese High School Experiment Washes Up In Hawaii 37 Years Later
Image via Scott Van Hoy / Unsplash
37 years ago in Japan, a group of students from the Choshi High School Natural Science Club released a fleet of bottles containing rolled-up messages into the sea and watched them drift away.
This was part of a science experiment to study the ocean’s currents, per Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun. 750 bottles were released over a year, between 1984 to 1985, from Miyakejima Island, which is near Tokyo.
Around 50 bottles have been discovered over the years since, and these have turned up in the prefectures of Okinawa, Akita, and Kyoto. Some of them were discovered in the Philippines, China, and even the west coast of the US, as reported by Yomiuri Shimbun.
However, the last one to turn up was in 2002, on the island of Kikaijima in southern Japan. That was believed to have been the last one, as almost two decades have passed since then.
But just last week, a nine-year-old Abbie Graham picked up an inconspicuous-looking bottle on a beach in Hawaii’s Paradise Park, more than 3,700 miles away from Miyakejima Island. Inside it, there was a contact form and a letter explaining the bottle’s origins.
The Hawaii Tribune-Herald states that the letter, written in several languages, also appealed to the bottle’s finder to contact the school.
The bottle, having been tossed around by waves for almost four decades, was shaped oddly and sported an incredibly rusty cap. It was so rusty that the girl’s family had to break it open to get to the postcard stock paper inside.
“I thought it was trash, and she thought it was treasure,” Abbie’s father, John Graham, told the news outlet. Because seawater had seeped inside, it “stunk,” he continued. “What did it smell like, Abbie?”
“Wet cat” was her answer.
The form was filled out and mailed back to the school, and Abbie is keen to go find another one. Meanwhile, the science club’s members, now in their 50s, were reminded of their time at school and the experiment they thought had concluded in 2002.
Mayumi Kanda, who’s currently 54, was a member of the club at Choshi High. She wanted to thank those involved for finding the bottle after all this time. As she tells the Mainichi Shimbun, “I was surprised; it revived nostalgic memories of my high school days.”
[via Insider, cover image via Scott Van Hoy / Unsplash]
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