Japanese girl delighted that her message in bottle found in Hawaii

Petty Officer Jon Moore has lived in Japan before and presently his wife and children reside in Japan.

Can't you just enjoy something without politicizing everything. Oh and mikediab your so special.

This is so sweet. When I was a kid, I was dreaming that something like that would happen to me.

beangry

A gross exaggeration and a tangent at best. Nothing is sustainable if EVERYONE did it, but they don't do they? Not every school child throws five bottles in the ocean. If they did, it would be a problem, but for the insignificant minority that do the educational benefits and cherished memories far outweigh the "pollution" factor". If a global ban on messages in bottles were to be enforced today I seriously doubt that there will be any recordable/noticeable difference in littler/pollution levels in our oceans. Do you really think that these kids grew up believing it was okay to pollute the oceans because she and her classmates threw messages in bottles into the ocean in sixth grade? If you do I think you need to lighten up a little.

I think five bottles each is a bit gratuitous if it were to become a trend, but I agree that the educational benefits of this far outweigh any 'pollution' the activity will have generated. What's more, glass is not all that much of a pollutant. Even if the bottles broke they would be basically sanded over time into soft round pieces of glass that wash up somewhere and are actually quite beautiful. It's not like it's radioactive waste being ditched at sea.

And hey, for the naysayers, this bottle was picked up -- therefore the result is ZERO pollution. In the mean time it reconnected old classmates, and I have zero doubt it will connect the recipient with the sender and result in young Saki being more open to the world and international communication.

It's a nice story amidst a whole lot of 'garbage' in the news these days.

Japanese sea garbage ends up at a US military installation in Hawaii. NATION, WE ARE UNDER THREAT..

I think it's nice, and if I had done that as a kid and had a response, I'd've been over the moon. It's a years-old tradition, like time capsules that people - cities even - make and bury. I am amused, though, by this approach to 5 years as being sooooooooo looooooooong ago. Stop that - it's barely a drop in the vast ocean of life!

@lowan

What happened was a beautiful and memorable thing. If you have nothing good to say about it, please keep quiet. No need to be a wet blanket. Jeez.....

I dunno, I can see the romance of bygone days in this - people from far off lands connected through a mysterious message in a bottle. Connections made, communities learning of one another. Perhaps there is also a very valuable environmental lesson for kiddies her though - that stuff they discard or let loose in the ocean/environment ends up SOMEWHERE, it doesn't just dissolve into the ether. Seemingly contradictory, I realise, but a pertinent message if taught properly.

If everyone would stop littering the way they do, this would not be an issue. I think a "message in a bottle" is a nice idea, but I wouldn't want to see everyone doing it otherwise it would become an issue. I think it's a nice story. In the future, if anyone did do this, I would prefer to see the bottle specifically identified as "A message in a bottle" so that it would not be confused as rubbish. I am an active Geocacher (a high-tech treasure hunting game). What this means is that objects (specifically identified as such) are placed in concealed places and are searched for by active members using a portable hand-held GPS device. Once the object is found, one small gift is removed from the container and one received along with signing the log. Some folks have said this is littering just as "a message in a bottle" but it is not. Every one of these objects are accounted for and logged at the Geocaching website. Perhaps to keep messages in a bottle from being considered rubbish, they can be accounted for and also logged on a similar type of website. Interesting to say the least. Nice story!

I wonder how many graduating classes this year will be throwing bottles into the ocean after reading about this story.

There is billions of garbage and waste being dumped into the ocean by companies and others, and you guys are getting butt hurt over a handful of school children throwing bottles? Your anger is trivial.

What did these kids throw in the ocean? A few pieces of paper in glass bottles. Biodegradable, harmless. But any story like this has a tendency to bring out the "life of the party" types who can't help but shoehorn their own agendas into every place where they don't belong.

What color was the bottle?

The clear glass bottle was found Thursday.

The fact that is was found during a trash clean up is pretty fitting.

All in all though, a nice little story.

Linking up people from all walks of life around every corner on earth, it sounds like easy tasks given modern gagetries but it is not in reality ! Keep throwing bottles into the oceans, it is just a bottle in an ocean however that offers surprises, hopes & friendship !

Paper is Biodegradable. Since when is glass which is basically a crystal?

Enlighten us please.

Since I work with marine ecology & have had a couple of bad cuts from glass on the beach, I'm with those who say these kids are litter louts. There's enough junk in the sea without adding to it and as this was only dumped 5 years ago, we were already in to the "Should have known better" era. Hardly one that was dumped by Captain Cook.

The clear glass bottle was found Thursday by Navy Petty Officer Jon Moore during a beach cleanup

Which indicates that these people were removing rubbish from the beach/coastline. Did anyone pause for a moment - instead of sobbing and saying 'how nice' - and think about the massive amounts of garbage that we as humans are adding to the seas? They were just kids when they did it, but "she and her 31 classmates dropped five bottles each," which comes out to 155 bottles, probably 155 pictures, 620 cranes - if all had the same contents. All of those bottles not recovered will add to the garbage in the ocean.

Instead of peace , it's a message that polluting is ok, so much the recycling craze in Japan. How contradictory. I can understand a few JHS students doing it, but why are adults cheering this behaviour?

Litter-bug.

This news is everywhere, I see nothing extraordinarily about it. Anyway, for those who don't agree, shut up and don't jump on me!

trash is trash, ever go to the beach in Japan ? I regularly go to the beaches in Shonan, and some days it's terrible.

ask the local surfers who clean the beach at 10am every weekend !

(and it's all garbage with Japanese text on it in this area)

want some memories ? take a photo, or put a time capsule in your own school yard!!

stop this stupid practice, and do not encourage it, the kids should have all been fined for littering!

“Thanks to the bottle, some of us could get together and had a great time,” she said.

Ooohh . . . the trouble that makes.