State roundup for Nov. 25

Man gets back tsunami boat

HONOLULU (AP) — A Japanese man has been reunited with a small boat that got swept away in the deadly 2011 tsunami and found three years later on a small atoll about 800 miles southwest of Hawaii.

Tomomune Matsunaga of the Fukushima prefecture lost his home and personal watercraft to the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami that killed 16,000 people.

Hawaii volunteer Danielle Lampe was conducting a bird survey for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Johnston Atoll when she found Matsunaga’s boat in May.

A student training vessel carried the watercraft from Honolulu to Japan, and Matsunaga got it back on Nov. 10, his birthday.

In a letter thanking people who returned the boat, Matsunaga said the vessel brings back memories of working on it in his garage and of his children playing on it. He wrote that he looks forward to using it again when it’s repaired in a few years.

“No doubt, in a few years time, I will be enjoying leisure in the small boat with my children … as we did in the happy days before March 10, 2011,” he wrote.

Chinatown sees rise in vagrants

HONOLULU (AP) — Store owners in Honolulu’s Chinatown say they’re seeing an influx of vagrants and that it may be connected to the ban on sitting and lying on sidewalks that took effect in Waikiki in September.

Shop owner Sam Say said he’s familiar with many homeless people in the area but the arrival of others from outside the neighborhood has led to an increase in problems.

He says his business has been affected by vagrants behaving erratically and that fighting is common.

The Honolulu City Council has approved an expansion of the sidewalk sitting ban to Chinatown and other areas. Mayor Kirk Caldwell says he’s waiting for a legal opinion before signing it.

Critics say such measures criminalize homelessness and don’t get to its root cause.