Utah Scout honors ancestor by donating soccer balls to school in Japan

YAMAMOTO-CHO, Japan — It is easy to forget about the tragedy that surrounds the Yamashita Middle School here while watching a soccer game in this community in northern Japan. Shouts of joy, in stark contrast to the recent sorrow, fill the atmosphere as the ball moves up and down the field.

And that's just what Sterling Peterson, 17, a Timpview High School student from Utah, wanted.

He traveled to Japan to do what he could to help these students after a 9.0 earthquake and powerful tsunami devastated their community. Four of their classmates died in the disaster, which left 15,401 dead, displaced thousands and destroyed more than 551,000 homes throughout Japan, according to the National Police Agency. To date, some 8,146 people remain missing.

For miles around the school, piles of rubble are a somber remnant of the homes that once dominated this desolate landscape and the people who lived in them; a pot, a baby blanket, a fisherman's boot and a stuffed doll are the belongings of some of the 750 people who took refuge in the school's halls and classrooms following the disaster.

Three months later, 120 people remain in the school gym, waiting for temporary housing.

Shuji Watanabe, the school principal, said despite the disaster, everyone at the school is working hard to focus on one thing: educating students.

But today, the students seem to have shifted their focus to soccer.

Sterling has spent three days in Yamamoto-cho, a town south of Sendai, where he attended classes and, of course, played soccer with Japanese students his age. Through his Eagle Scout project, he raised money to give the young people soccer balls, uniforms, training cones and whistles. He also purchased portable fans for the school's classrooms, which do not have air conditioning.

Sterling and the students don't speak the same language, but two things unite them: soccer and their Japanese heritage.

In 1949 — in the aftermath of World War II — Sterling's great-grandfather, Masao Watabe, met Mormon missionaries and was baptized; he became the first person to join The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Tohoku area.

A short time later, his wife, Hisako, and his son, Masahisa, were also baptized.

Masahisa Watabe was raised in the northern Japanese city of Sendai, where his father served as the first native branch president. Today Masahisa Watabe and his wife, Faith, serve as senior missionaries in the church's area office in Tokyo.