A monument to Nelson’s Lt. Robert Hampton Gray that toppled in last year’s massive earthquake in Japan is expected to be replaced within a few months.
The word comes from Capt. Bruce (Skip) Walker of the Canadian Defence Attache in Japan, who recently received a letter from new Onagawa mayor Yoshiaki Suda.
Suda’s father was mayor when the monument was erected in 1989 in tribute to Gray, who died in an air strike at Onagawa Bay during the final days of World War II.
Walker says the town’s budget, approved in December, includes funds to re-establish the marker in a different location.
“The original site was destroyed by the quake and aftershocks (not the tsunami),” he said in an email. “The entire park is now out of bounds and the cliffside is slowly falling into the bay.”
The monument will be moved to the hospital, close to the centre of town. Walker says officials hope it can be completed by March, one year after the disaster.
“The only complication is that someone took (either nefariously or for safe keeping) the original plaque and it cannot be located,” Walker says. “It was apparently made in Canada so the Japanese are kindly requesting that Canada provide the replacement.”
The monument, built by a Victoria masonry firm, arrived in Tokyo with the plaque. Another plaque, which explained the monument’s significance in Japanese, was donated by a Mr. Haruna, who was then CEO of Marubeni Corp. He took a keen interest in the project, as he was at Onagawa with a defensive gun battery during allied attacks on the bay.
Onagawa was among the communities hardest hit by the earthquake and tsunami, with over 300 people confirmed dead and 1,000 missing.
In recent years, several student delegations have come to Nelson from Onagawa, most recently in October 2010. In the disaster’s wake, the Nelson area raised $40,000 towards scholarships.
