(7 Jun 2012) A nearly 70-foot-long (21-metre) dock that floated ashore on an Oregon beach was torn loose from a fishing port in northern Japan by last year's tsunami and drifted across thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean, a Japanese Consulate official said Wednesday.
A commemorative plaque on the dock showed it was one of four owned by Aomori Prefecture at the port of Misawa on the northern tip of Japan.
One of the four docks turned up several weeks later on an island south of Misawa, but the other two are still missing, said Akihisa Sato, an engineer with Zeniya Kaiyo Service, the dock's Tokyo-based manufacturer.
The docks weigh 165 tons each, Sato said.
The one that floated to Oregon was first spotted floating offshore Monday, and mistaken by several people for a barge, said Chris Havel, spokesman for the Oregon Department of Parks and Recreation.
Havel said it was "the first real verifiable evidence in Oregon of debris of this type."
It washed ashore early Tuesday on Agate Beach, a mile north of Newport on the central Oregon Coast.
It's made of concrete with a metal pontoon and measures 66 feet (20 metres) long, 19 feet (5.8 metres) wide and 7 feet (2.1 metres) high.
The distance between Japan and Oregon is roughly 5,000 miles. (8,046 kilometres)
A radiation check of the dock came up negative, which was to be expected if the dock broke loose before the nuclear power plant accident triggered by the waves.
The parks department was overseeing efforts to identify and remove the dock.
State police were posted to keep people from climbing on the dock, said Mitch Vance, shellfish programme manager for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Beach-goer Marjie Cannon described the event as "a piece of history, right here in front of us."
The Japanese coastal town of Misawa, where the dock originated, sustained extensive tsunami damage but is north of the most heavily hit areas in Iwate and Miyagi prefectures.
The four docks that swept away from Misawa were installed four years ago, Sato said.
They were used to transfer fish from fishing boats to trucks waiting to transport them to market.
Sato said the March 2011 tsunami also destroyed many buildings and structures around the port.
The bulk of the debris from the tsunami is not expected until winter, but fast-moving examples have been arriving on North America's shores.
They include a soccer ball that washed up in Alaska and a shipping container holding a Harley-Davidson motorcycle with Japanese license plates that turned up in British Columbia earlier this year.
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