September 12, 2003. 30 schoolchildren stand on a dock in the
coastal Japanese town of Niigata, on the Japan Sea. The Indonesian
national anthem is playing loudly over the public address system
and the kids, in shorts and tee-shirts, are calling out and waving;
a ship, almost blindingly white in the afternoon sun, is pulled
slowly away from the dock by a small red tugboat. On deck, a few
men in yellow coveralls wave back, smiling.

From here, the ship will head out to sea, anchor to wait out an
approaching typhoon, and then proceed to Indonesia.

The ship, costing millions of dollars, was
completely funded by The Nippon Foundation,
working through the Malacca Straits Council.
She will be donated to the government of
Indonesia on the 10th of October.

Now since The Nippon Foundation is not in the
habit of simply handing ships over to just
anyone who wants one, what is the guiding
concept behind this donation? To answer that
question, first let us take a look at the ship
itself.

She is named the KN Jadayat. She is 58 meters long, weighing in at
858 gross tons, and yet has a draft, fully loaded of no more than
3.5 meters. She can move laterally. When fully crewed, she boasts a
compliment of 45 men And most importantly, she has the large, open
foredeck and double crane of a buoy-tender vessel--one of the most
important craft to ply the waters of the Malacca-Singapore Straits.

A buoy tender basically does exactly what its name says: it takes
care of buoys. While this may seem like a relatively minor job to
those unfamiliar with the sea, it is actually crucial. This is
especially so in areas like the one that Jadayat will be active in.

The Malacca-Singapore Straits are one of the most treacherous
places in the world for ships. Stretching 1,000 kilometers in
length and ranging from 40 to 400 kilometers in width, these
straits are notorious for their rapidly changing currents, reefs,
shallows, and pirates. Until 1981, the International Maritime
Organization was not even able to define basic sea-lanes there. Yet, in spite of all of these dangers, more than 75,000 large ships
pass along the straits every year.

75,000--more than five times the traffic that either the Suez or
Panama Canals have to handle.

And ships, unlike cars, do not have the luxury of well-defined
lanes. Thus, they must rely on buoys and lighthouses to help them
find their way. To reduce the danger of accidents in the straits,
The Nippon Foundation has pursued a very active support program
there for more than 3 decades.

It funded an underwater geological survey of the straits in order
to facilitate the development of sea-lanes. It funded the building
of 38 buoys and lighthouses along the straights. It funded the
development of a low-cost pirate alarm and then made the plans
public domain--free. Finally, it has funded four buoy-tender
vessels, as a way of protecting its investment in the safety of the
area. Two have worked from the Malaysian side, and two from the
Indonesian. The work that they have done, combined with the buoys
and lighthouses of the area, have made passage along the straits
much more safe than it once was. In fact, the captain of the new
ship says that he has never himself seen an accident on the
straits. This is a very different situation from the way it was
30 years ago.