A picture says a thousand words or there's a story behind every photograph, say as you like, but there's no denying how precious these stills are to us. Be it a birthday, an anniversary, a party, a travel excursion, or just a get-together, these stills are the immortal fragments of our past that we often re-visit while browsing through the photographs. They remind us of what we were in that exact moment, sometimes we deliberately stressed our cheeks to say "cheese" and there were also times when we were up to something stupid and that spontaneous candid caught us in a click. They mean a lot to us as they have our memories contained in them and just a thought of losing them scare us to the bones.
Unfortunately, a woman misplaced her camera during one of her travel excursion that contained the pictures of her experience. She had never expected to retrieve it back, but it seemed that the lady luck was on her side as a series of serendipitous encounters would lead to this woman finding her camera after 2 long years. Find out how it all happened.
Remember those field trips we had been to as school kids? Yeah, I know some of you found museums and educational tours boring and loved the outbound trips more such as a hiking expedition or visiting a sanctuary or just camping around and setting a bonfire, playing different games while you sang and danced the night away. But I bet none of your field trips led to something that the kids at Yue Ming School experienced. Curious much? Read and find out for yourself.
It all dates back to March 27, 2018, when a bunch of fifth graders was attending a lecture about the adverse effects pollution has on the beaches and oceans in their island and across the world. The students at the Yue Ming Elementary School, Taiwan, had gathered to learn from their environmental education teacher Park Lee. But soon their clean-up campaign would take an unexpected turn.
The foremost objective to take such a session with the kids was to create awareness in them about how to protect marine life against non-degradable wastes such as plastic bags and bottles that float in the ocean. While they were all excited for this expedition, one of the students would discover an object which was certainly a lot more than just a piece of trash.
The students left for a clean-up tour along with their teacher Park Lee as they had planned. They targeted the closest beach to their school in an attempt to clean the shores, and to show the students how awful can things get due to human ignorance. Field trips are much better while addressing such issues instead of sitting inside a classroom and watching a presentation over the screen, as the students get to see the real-life scenario that helps them understand things better. Also not to mention that they are much enjoyable and fun.
The little environmentalists arrived at the beach equipped with garbage bags, sun hats, and their school uniforms to get the job done. The students were divided into sub-groups, assigned with different parts of the beach enabling them to clean the beach thoroughly. It was a tiresome task but they pulled it off with fun and a smile on their face. However, their happy faces would soon change and wear a look of surprise when they discover a peculiar object.
While searching, one of the kids found an unfamiliar object that certainly didn't look like trash. It was quite heavy and hard. The peculiar object looked like a rock as it was covered in barnacles and the other side had a screen enclosed in a plastic box that made it difficult for everyone to identify what exactly it was. When the students couldn't figure it out, they headed to their teacher, Park Lee, to help them identify their exotic discovery.
Park Lee took a closer look before cleaning off the barnacles from the unusual object. After removing some of the barnacles it appeared to everyone that the unusual object was nothing but a waterproof case of a camera. But it wasn't an empty case and the reason it was so heavy was that it had a Canon G12 camera contained in it. “We thought it was broken, but then by chance, knocked off a barnacle on the casing and found a button to open the case,” Lee said.
The protecting case's seal was intact but was it just enough to save the camera? It had to endure strong waves and currents and various other forces that lie in the water body, which for sure would have made it difficult for the case remain sealed all this while. Or if this wasn't the case, maybe a local would have lost it here. Among all these speculations lay the truth, which would soon be disclosed.
All credit goes to the waterproof case, it protected the camera from the seawater and kept it intact as well as in a good physical condition. By the looks of the plastic case, it was right to say that the camera must have been there at the beach for a long period of time. However, despite its good physical condition, the question remained; did it work as well?
The curious yet excited students tried to turn the camera on and when they hit the power button, to their surprise it did switch on and had enough battery power left in it. Moreover, it had hundreds of pictures stored in its memory card that still functioned to its best. It didn't take Lee much time to understand that this camera had an interesting history and a story to tell...
The students made it back to the classroom but the question still remained unanswered - what to do with the camera? Going through the pictures of a stranger's camera struck as unethical to Lee, but this was the only thing they could do if they were to find the owner of this camera. “Some children thought we had earned the camera and could keep for ourselves. Others suggested we should try to find the owner – and so we all sat down to think about how to do that.” Lee said, But in a case to do the latter, they had to browse through the pictures.
Park Lee along with his students decided to go through the pictures and they found that the last picture clicked on the camera was dated September 7, 2015. It was a picture of a female who had been clicking snaps while scuba diving. The picture didn't help them much in identifying the place where she had been diving and neither did her diving suit give any clue that could help discern the location. So they started to look at more pictures.
As they began scrolling the pics they finally saw a picture with a face in it. Much like the previous photograph, it was a visual of a lady diving under a water body. They presumed that the woman in the picture must be the owner of the camera but they just weren't sure yet. While the speculations were still on, they would soon figure out who this camera belonged to as more clues were about to pop-up.
Looking at the pictures they had retrieved by now, Lee and his students perceived that this lady along with other scuba divers had been diving through some sort of reef and she had captured these mesmerizing photos at the time of her experience. At this point, the students were empathetic to the woman who they thought to be the owner of the camera, thinking how terrible it would have been for her to lose her camera and the memories she had contained in the pictures.
Judging by the visuals, the next picture on the camera which was dated August 5, 2015, was supposedly captured at some sort of light festival. This picture was captured almost a month ago from the diving one, could this possibly mean that the woman was on a vacation when she lost her camera? The whereabouts of these pictures were unknown and the place where the woman had been traveling to still remained a mystery. Although it was something Lee deemed unethical, digging through more pictures was the only way out to solve this mystery.
When Lee and his students progressed to the next picture, they were blown away by what they had seen. It was a picture of a fish restaurant that had Japanese letters inscribed over the display. The picture was clicked on July 30, 2015, that clearly indicated that this woman must have been in Japan on the day this picture was clicked. But the question was how did the camera make it to Taiwan?
The easiest detective job ever, just browse through the pictures and solve the mystery. A lot of questions were pondering in Lee and his student's mind, and the best way to find the answers were to keep scrolling through the pics until they get a concrete clue. And when they did, they bumped into a picture of illuminated dolphins which was dated July 30, 2015, the same day on which the woman had visited the Japanese fishery.
It took Lee and his students a couple more pictures but finally, they were up to something. The next photograph helped in identifying the owner's whereabouts before she had lost her camera at the sea. The next photo which was taken on July 25, 2015, was of signboards that read "Tsuribari", that means a “Fish Hook”.
It was a fishing pond and a visit to it would cost 1,000 Yen per hour. It was as clear as a crystal that a local won't capture a picture of such ponds. Lee and his students further examined the place based upon the photographs and drew a conclusion that the woman must have traveled to the Ishigaki Island.
From what they have analyzed by looking at different photos that included the visuals of different streets of Japan, scuba diving and dolphins, Lee and his students drew the conclusion that the woman was perhaps Japanese and was on a vacation in Ishigaki, Okinawa. However, the next picture of an airport sign was the mother of all the clues which clearly indicated that the woman had traveled from Nishinomiya North Exit to this island on 24, July 2015. They were just as astonished to know the camera was lost in Japan and had somehow traveled over 155 miles before ending up on a beach in Taiwan.
As strange or impossible as it may sound, but all the clues were indicating the fact that the camera had floated away with the waves from all the way to Ishigaki Island before ending up on a beach in Taiwan. Quite a swimmer for a camera right! While it must have been obvious for the camera owner to believe that her camera was lost forever, she would soon get the surprise of her life in the most unexpected way ever.
It's a known fact that a message can spread like a wildfire on social media especially when there's a cause behind. Lee and his students used the power of social media and posted the pictures available on the camera online on Facebook explaining in both Japanese as well as the Chinese language about how and where the camera was found at the sea.
It is overwhelming to see how determined Lee and his students were about finding the owner of this camera. What they were doing was a sheer display of selfless behavior and empathy. It had only been a few hours since they have found this camera and it didn't take them long to post the pictures and the story about how they crossed path with this camera.
In his post, Lee started off by mentioning the details about how he and his students were out there to clean the beach when they accidentally found this camera. He also apologized for looking at a stranger's personal pictures and further added that he had no other choice left if he were to find and establish the owner of this camera.
Being a teacher it was natural for Lee to be smart, but he just wasn't just book smart, he was street smart. He highlighted the fact in his post that the pictures on the camera appear to be of a young Japanese woman, something he acknowledged by the diving scenes and party pictures they found in the camera. Moreover, he made sure to mention the dates on which the pictures had been captured to establish the time frame in which the camera had been misplaced.
Not only that, but Lee also took a picture of the immaculate camera and posted it online to show the determination and respect they had for this search. To his surprise, the post took off real quick and was shared by almost 10,000 people with thousands of people commenting on the post as well. “I received countless messages from people in Taiwan and Japan [who] wanted to reunite the camera with its owner,” Lee said.
Within 30 hours of posting the news about the lost camera they had found, a Japanese friend pinged Lee asking him to check his e-mail. This is an example of how pervasive social media is. Lee was astonished after checking his inbox, the owner of the camera had dropped Lee a text to verify her identity. While I was confident that we would eventually find the owner, I had no idea it would happen so quickly,” Lee exclaimed.
“I was scuba diving and I lost the camera when one of my friends ran out of air and needed my help,” Tsubakihara told Lee. Tsubakihara had to rescue her friend, and to do so she dropped her camera to grab the emergency oxygen tank. She was certain that her camera was now gone forever as finding an object as small in a vast water body was like "finding a needle in a haystack."
Tsubakihara, a Tokyo resident, and a final year English student at Sophia University told Lee about how it came to her knowledge. It was after a friend of hers saw Lee's post over Facebook and informed Tsubakihara about the whole camera thing. “I was super surprised when my friends told me about this and sent me the post with those pictures. I couldn’t believe it was happening,” she stated.
While the lost pictures of her travel were as important, the camera itself had a story behind it. It was a birthday present from her parents and Tsubakihara was upset to have lost her camera. But nature is very compassionate, just when Tsubakihara least expected it or say she deemed it impossible, her camera was found and delivered to her from overseas.
Seeing those pictures evoked nostalgic memories of her travel.“Those pictures remind me of old memories and looking at them brought me back to them.” Tsubakihara said. What's more unfathomable to Tsubakihara was that she and her friends had already been to Taiwan back in March 2017, and eventually her camera had somehow ended up at a coast of Taiwan as well.“I still can’t believe this is happening but the only thing I want to say is to thank you so much for every single person who was involved with this," she said.
It was nothing short of a miracle that the camera case remained sealed for so long, protecting the camera against strong currents and waves for all the time it was floating in the sea and even after when it came to rest at Su’ao, Taiwan. What's more surprising was that all the pictures were still saved in the device and there wasn't a single flaw in its functioning, given the fact that the camera hadn't been put to use for almost as much as two years. Miraculous, isn't it?
Everyone is not as kind and generous as Park and his students were. I mean how many of us would have done the same and carried the trouble of finding the whereabouts of a lost camera's owner over our heads. If it wasn't for the efforts that Park and his students made, the story behind this lost camera would forever remain in the shadow.
Tsubakihara was as glad and excited to know that her long-lost camera was in a safe pair of hands. Now what's left was to visit Taiwan to collect her camera and also thank Lee and his amazing students in person for their kind gesture. For now, she made a video call to Lee and the students to express her gratitude for what they did. "I could hardly contain my excitement about this recent chain of events." she said.
Tsubakihara's story met well with the media and was widely covered over different channels. Numerous news channels across Japan and around the globe got in touch with Tsubakihara. Everyone wanted to know how she had lost her camera and retrieved it after 2 long years. She was surprised by the media attention her story had attracted.
Tsubakihara would always remember Taiwan for its hospitality. Just when you think that nothing could top Tsubakihara's reunion with her camera, a renowned travel agency of Taiwan named Kkday, sponsored Tsubakihara and her mother a five-day vacation between 26th-30th April 2018 including the air-tickets and stay at a four-star hotel named Yilan Yuechuan.
Canon appreciated the kids for their good deed by rewarding them with free cameras, a way to repay them for their efforts in finding the camera's owner. Although there's no materialistic gift that can pay the heroics of Lee and his students at the Yue Ming Elementary School, Canon gave away free cameras to the kids so they could capture marine ecological images during their environmental education classes and educational tours. Lee thanked Canon on behalf his students and assured that they will put the cameras to good use.
The fifth graders at the Yue Ming Elementary School took the city by storm and have since been awarded various honors including an invitation to a youth entrepreneurship business meet in Wenchuang Market. The little guests were treated at the event with local cuisine, fruits and vegetables, coffee, and free dessert, and a lot of respect which they were deserving of.
Not long ago, Lee and his students raised around 20,000 Yuan which is equivalent to $3,176, by hosting a park tour and offering massages and free tea. They further used this amount to visit a couple of seaside schools where they showcased a puppet show named "The Camera Drifting in the Sea." Their goal is to educate other schools and encourage them in coming forth with their own beach clean-up campaigns.