After a devastating earthquake and tsunami hit Japan on March 11, 2011, a group of Japanese students from Vancouver started the Japan Love organization to raise funds for the revival of their home country.
Japan Love added a volunteer component to its mandate and visited the West Coast of Vancouver Island to help clean up some of the debris floating in on the tides from Japan and landing on beaches all up the coast. The group's first visit was in March 2013, where they helped clean up marine debris in advance of the incoming material swept to sea by the tsunami.
Their first trip included a sombre day at Big Beach, where wreaths were laid to mark the second anniversary of the disaster.
In May 2013 about 70 volunteers with Japan Love returned to Ucluelet and Tofino and spent a weekend divided into six debris-clearing groups. Westerly News editor Andrew Bailey interviewed Hanako Yokota, one of the group's organizers, who said of the visit: "This is one of our ways to show our appreciation to the world for giving us so much help during the disaster, the hardships, the hard times.
"We wanted to say thank you and at the same time protect this nature from getting damaged because of the debris."
Jamie's Whaling Station donated transportation to a remote island location when asked by Ucluelet's emergency and environmental services manager at the time, Karla Robison.
