Motorcycle Washed Away in 2011 Japan Tsunami Returns to Owner

A few weeks ago, a child's soccer ball that had washed ashore in Alaska all the way from Japan got returned to its owner. Now, something else that was taken away by the Japanese tsunami of 2011 is returning to its owner, but it's a bit bigger than a soccer ball...

A Canadian man found something pretty unusual in a storage container in British Columbia: a motorcycle. The motorcycle had apparently been washed away in the tsunami that devastated Japan last year. Now, the bike will be making its way back to its owner in Japan, fully restored courtesy of Harley-Davidson.

Ikuo Yokoyama, 29, of Yamamoto, Japan, says a Harley-Davidson representative tracked him down after the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. ran a story about the bike, which was found in a storage container on British Columbia’s Haida Gwaii islands, the CBC reported. Harley-Davidson now intends to restore the bike, which had rusted but still had its Miyagi Prefecture license plate, and send it back to Yokoyama, Japanese broadcaster NHK reported Wednesday.

Yokoyama, who NHK reported lost three family members and his home in the disaster, said he was "so glad that (the motorcycle) will be returned to me.”

“I would like to thank the man who found my bike in person,” Yokoyama said in an NHK interview aired on the CBC.

We'll likely be hearing more stories like this as more and more of the debris from the tsunami makes its way over here. Hopefully, more of the people who were affected by this disaster will be able to get some of their things back.